Postal service

[gim]

I, like many others I'm sure, have received very sporadic postal service recently.  Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn't.  Lately, when it has come, it has been delivered in the evening, sometimes at 8 or 9pm.  In between Christmas and New Years, it didn't come all week.  We had a winter storm that week, so not completely unexpected.  I was told by one of my neighbors that when our normal carrier is out, they are so short on delivery employees that they cannot perform that route.  So I guess when he's on vacation or out sick, I just won't be getting any mail.  Not the end of the world, at least for me.

 

Anyone else here having issues with postal service?  I realize that the postal service has had its share of issues over the years, from budget to employees, etc.  I'm not trying to rip on them in any way or turn it into something politically-related.  I am just wondering what type of service interruptions others are having compared to me.  I ordered two t-shirts on Black Friday and one never came.  So the company shipped me a second one a week later because USPS lost the first one.  Well sure enough, the "lost" one came last week.

 

Looks like I posted this in the wrong section.  Definitely should not be under Fishing Tackle.

[MN Fisher]

About the only issue I have is when my normal gal is off - the substitute's service is spotty. Mail occasionally gets delivered to the wrong house - two blocks from me is a house with the same number, just a different street...sometimes they get my mail, sometimes I get theirs...and it's always when Kathy isn't driving that day. From her - flawless service the past 25 years...I'm gonna be sad when she retires.

[softwateronly]

We’ve been in our chgo building for 20years and Sharon has been our carrier the entire time.  She’s the best and deserves her Xmas tip.  But when she’s on vacation our service is beyond spotty and it’s getting worse over time. I think the understaffed excuse is real. 
 

scott

[KSanford33]

I'm in the same boat. My regular mailman is excellent, but anytime there's a sub, ehh... I may or may not get my mail. Like others have said, it doesn't really matter since I don't really have a ton of business transacted through the mail anymore, and no matter who is delivering they're still good with packages. 

[garroyo130]

Austin has been short staffed as well. Lately I've been seeing people delivering mail out of their personal vehicles ... not sure how that works but the first time I saw it I thought they were taking mail, not leaving it

[Choporoz]

Aside from occasional package (that often diverted from UPS), I would not care if mail came once every two weeks.  I definitely support eliminating weekend delivery.

   They should charge triple for Presorted and all other marketing mail.  Might cut down on some junk mail and maybe even get them closer to operating in the black.

 

That said, my carriers have been pretty good; consistent and reliable. 

[GreenPig]

I blamed my post lady for my Dachshund's weight gain the other day at the vet(he gave me the C'Mon Man). She gives her an enormous Milk Bone if we happen to meet her at the end of the driveway. That woman's an enabler.

[FishTank]

Our mail goes in spurts. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. Our postman is old and has a few physical problems that slow him down. I asked him one day why he hasn't retired and he said the USPS has no plans of replacing him. I said, so if you do retire, what happens?..... We would get mail delivered as they could with substitute drivers. 

 

I have also visited our downtown hub in Indy a few times for work and it was a disaster. Mail machines that sort daily #10 envelopes had been removed for no reason.  The mail was then stacked in trucks waiting for god knows how long. People moved to new jobs with no replacements (I was unable to renew my works PAF because of this). Businesses with no clerks assigned. Closing local post offices in smaller towns with no plan in place for PO Box pickup and distribution.

 

I feel for the hard working people that do what they can to get us our mail.

[casts_by_fly]

We have or had a lot of the issues in this thread.  Until 2-3 months ago, our local post office was a shambles (we have a new postmaster now).  Standard mail from local businesses to us would take a week or two.  We have a standing conversation with our neighbor on the next road over with the same number ("just left you a package we got instead", "I've got one for you I'll drop later today").  My wife and that neighbor shop from the same stores so countless times they've opened a package without checking the name and only realizing because they are 2 sizes different.  Last spring/summer the grass at the post office didn't get cut for the first time until June because they couldn't renew their groundskeeping contract.  I think the new postmaster has improved things, or at least there is far less sniping on the local forums.

 

I too would be happy with an every other day delivery schedule.  Stop sundays.  I only get anything relevant on Mondays or Fridays.  Everything else is junk that we never signed up for ("to our neighbors at...").

[gim]

2 minutes ago, casts_by_fly said:

I too would be happy with an every other day delivery schedule.  Stop sundays.

Technically the postal service doesn't provide mail on Sunday.  Mon - Sat is when their mail is supposed to be delivered.  I think they can ditch Saturday delivery too.  We don't need mail 6 days/week.  Give em the weekend off.  Not sure that would solve the problem there though.

[casts_by_fly]

5 minutes ago, gimruis said:

Technically the postal service doesn't provide mail on Sunday.  Mon - Sat is when their mail is supposed to be delivered.  I think they can ditch Saturday delivery too.  We don't need mail 6 days/week.  Give em the weekend off.  Not sure that would solve the problem there though.

 

I think its mostly packages we'll see on sundays but there is always a truck coming through.

 

I don't think stopping one day would solve the problems.  If the problems are manpower, either delivery the same routes half the days (and use the other days for the drivers to be mail sorters or other work) or delivery half the routes on the same days you're already doing.  Either way, I'd be fine with mail one day a week for all the more we get.  Anything time critical could be mailed as a package/parcel envelope.

[Bankc]

Ours had gotten pretty bad a few years ago, but it's improved a lot in the last year or so.  I've also been told by a lot of people that it's almost impossible to get a job at our local post office, yet about two months ago, they were advertising that they were wanting to hire a bunch of new people.  So it seems from my viewpoint that there were a lot of people that didn't care about doing their jobs and most of them either retired or were let go.  Or they were massively understaffed and are now getting up to a full compliment.  Whatever the case, it's now running about as well as you could expect the post office to run.  

 

Amazon, UPS, and FedEx have also improved a lot in the last year.  They were all getting bad, even before COVID.  But after COVID, they all just went to pot.  Anyway, it's nice to be able to trust them again, as there for a while, I was experiencing about a 75% success rate on package deliveries.  

[casts_by_fly]

1 hour ago, Bankc said:

Amazon, UPS, and FedEx have also improved a lot in the last year.  They were all getting bad, even before COVID.  But after COVID, they all just went to pot.  Anyway, it's nice to be able to trust them again, as there for a while, I was experiencing about a 75% success rate on package deliveries.  

 

We've had great service through COVID from all three of those.  We have a great UPS driver (he lives in the next town over).  Amazon and FEDEX have good tracking which is accurate for me.

 

The small carrier are the ones that screw up here.  Lazership is one.  Completely awful.  One was delivering a bottle of scotch (monthly subscription) and just threw it in the mailbox.  Signature/over 21 aside, when the mail carrier came they took it back to the post office as it didn't have postage on it (as they are supposed to do).  Ending up costing $25 or so and my own trip to the post office to figure it out (tracking said delivered and left in mailbox).  Of course the shipper paid that cost, but that delivery service was awful on other stuff too.

[volzfan59]

Here in our little town the USPS is great! When our normal carrier is out the reserve guy actually gets our mail to us earlier. The only real issue that I've had is a package was destroyed, including some of it's contents. I sent pictures to the seller and he made it right. Winter before last, we got 6" of snow and extremely cold weather for a week. Our mail didn't run for the week as we have no snow plows, salt trucks, etc. Where I live the snow rarely sticks.

[detroit1]

No.

[Bankbeater]

No issues with our mail, but many of the new subdivisions they are building near me don't even have mail carriers any longer.  You go to the post office and pick up your own mail.

[ScottW]

Our local post office is a joke. Lazy and doesn’t really care if you have an issue with a lost package. We had a P.O. Box with them for a while and they couldn’t even put all our mail in it. We had one of their larger boxes too. Now we get it or we don’t. Nothing we can do about it.

[Bird]

We have an entirely different issue but still irritating.

The UPS drivers know my wife's office and it's much more convenient to drop all packages there vs driving up the mountain to our residents......the delivery address.

 

Problem is, now I have to drive to the wife's office to pick up all packages that are to bulky for her.

So in reality, I'm a part-time UPS employee.

[SC53]

We are just the opposite. Our regular guy is a joke.
We have community mailboxes and everyone has had mail issues.

Now when he’s out and we get the substitute, things go smoothly.

[Junger]

Mine's been fine, mail is consistently delivered at 4PM....just in time to snipe any tackle deliveries before my wife gets home.

[Woody B]

Ours isn't....great.   We get mail, and packages delivered to the wrong addresses all the time.  (just USPS.    UPS and Fed-EX can read the house number.)   Sometimes we'll go 2 or 3 days without seeing a mail delivery.  Going to the local post office is a nightmare.  Whoever is working there is usually rude, and acts like I'm bothering them by being there.   

 

 

[Kyle S]

7 hours ago, Choporoz said:

Aside from occasional package (that often diverted from UPS), I would not care if mail came once every two weeks.  I definitely support eliminating weekend delivery.

   They should charge triple for Presorted and all other marketing mail.  Might cut down on some junk mail and maybe even get them closer to operating in the black.

 

That said, my carriers have been pretty good; consistent and reliable. 

I second this notion. Another fantastic idea...sort of like getting rid of daylight savings time lol

[DanielG]

What's up with postal among other things. Take Fedex for example. If you wanted to send a Christmas card via Fedex it would cost around $15 They put it in one of thier little bubble wrap packages and ship it. They can charge what they want and don't have to take the little stuff. Parcel shipping pays. USPS will do this: They will pick a Christmas card up at my mailbox in Maine, and fly it 3000 miles to my nephew in California for the price of a postage stamp. And they are obligated to do this with billions of pieces of mail. There are shortages of carriers, they confiscated all the machine sorters and dismantled them recently and several other things but basically they're made to run a business that should break even when It's an impossibility with the pricing and obligations.

[Mbirdsley]

We live in rural Michigan and it has been great!!!   Always between 1-3pm.  Same lady since we have lived in the house since 2014.  Most of the subs are pretty good when the normal lady takes the day offs.  
 

i don’t have any issues with our UPS, fed ex, or Amazon drivers either 

[Ski]

Absolutely despise USPS.