Worried about shipping out Christmas items 2020 and USPS

[jajoco33]

This post has to do with the Christmas selling season. I have usually used USPS to ship out my items. I am not a high volume seller and have not had many issues up until this point. I have heard something about POTUS and an issue with USPS and am very concerned as to how long I should keep my Christmas items posted. In the past, I have stopped selling about a week before December 23rd but now am wondering if it would be better to stop selling 2 weeks before 12/23. Does anyone else share my concern and what are you planning to do? I would hate to lose that last week of business but if the USPS cannot deliver before 12/23/2020 and I am put into the position to have to refund people because their Christmas gift was not delivered on time...

Thanks in advance, these are strange times, for certain!

[gwzcomps]

If anything maybe consider increasing your handling time once it gets closer to Christmas.  Not in the sense that you plan on taking longer to ship.  More to pad the delivery estimate further.

[vintagecraze50]

I am hoping that the Govt is going to assist USPS to keep them doing the excellent job they have always done for us during holiday season. If they do not raise their rates or get the Govt to help, I am not sure what we are going to do. Probably have to change shipping services. I do not like UPS, nor the high high charges to get packages shipped fast and free from FED EX. It would cost so much more and probably put us in a really bad financial situation. We sell stuff at low profit margains already. Add that extra cost with Fed ex and it’s over.

[richard1rst]

After a long lifetime of watching the machinations of politicians mucking things about for their own personal advantage I am inclined to believe that many of the current problems will miraculously clean themselves up after the election. (OK - not all, just many).

In other words, I think you are worrying for no good reason.

[gamersbaystore]

If the situation with the U.S. Postal service remains the same, the postal service will collapse completely before the Holiday season ever approaches. I spoke with several postal workers yesterday who confirmed many workers are so outraged over recent changes they are resigning altogether.

The new postmaster general Louis Dejoy has even gone as far as to remove sorting machines from post offices, leaving workers to sort all mail for tens of thousands of residents a day by hand. Obviously there is no way they can do that. Postal union chiefs have made it clear mail is piling up in post offices because there's no way to sort it and no one left to deliver it.

Look at the announcement from ebay yesterday, the situation is so bad ebay is now trying to find alternatives.

I still have packages from over a month ago that have not been delivered. My own mail is not arriving either. My medications I normally get thru the mail never arrived this month, forcing me to pay 3X the price to get them from my local pharmacy.

Louis Dejoy is truly mentally deranged. I dont see the situation improving as long as he remains in charge, it will only get worse over time.

[lja440]

As a postal worker (rural mail carrier) this administration is taking advantage of the virus to compound what the Republican party has been trying to do for decades. The big push now is to cripple the elections to keep tRump in power. It's all about  the 1%. DeJoy is trying to get into that 1% by donating millions to tRumps campaign. His goal is to be in place if they manage to privatize USPS. DeJoy and his wife own between 35 and 70 million dollars of UPS and JBHunt stocks. It really isn't the package services that they are drooling over but  the Postal Service processes and delivers 181.9 million pieces of First-Class Mail each day (do a little check on what it would cost you to send Aunt Fanny a birthday card through UPS). Also it is estimated that in 2019, 4.38 billion retail prescriptions were filled throughout the United States that are shipped to homes through USPS. this is a huge profit source that the other carriers would love to get their hands on. And they really don't give a flying fig about what this will mean to normal Americans.

[fern*wood]

If we lose 1st class shipping due to this sabotage, it could be the biggest problem for many ebay sellers that has ever occurred.  

[myboardid]

I don't think you can make such a decision in August when a hundred things might change between now and December. 

[varebelrose]

If you are talking about Christmas decorations, our experience has been that they sell much better the two weeks after Christmas. In fact, they tend to sell year round, especially good vintage stuff.

YMMV

[airsheep]

I usually mail Christmas parcels Thanksgiving week, as I always have at least on oversize/overweight package, and to send everything Priority is cost prohibitive.  Now I'm wondering if Parcel Post items should go out in October, just to ensure that if the USPS is well and truly ******, my presents have some chance of making it to their destinations for Christmas.

[gkn29]

If this is still happening during Xmas, then there are a lot more serious problems the world will have to deal with and late shipments will be the least of those problems.

[lja440]

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@fern*wood wrote:

If we lose 1st class shipping due to this sabotage, it could be the biggest problem for many ebay sellers that has ever occurred.  

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If we lose first class due to this sabotage the problem will be much bigger than eBay. 

[tiqui1999]

Trump will not be sabotaging usps once the election is over.  It will be fine, "almost like a miracle."

[tiqui1999]

Yes but trump is in no hurry to fire him. wonder why.

[gamersbaystore]

Trump can lose my vote too. The onus is on him, he put this Dejoy guy in there. Trump created this mess, he needs to clean it up, or I suspect he's going to be losing a lot of votes coming November. These ongoing issues with the postal service are a huge disruption to every American's lives.