USPS troubles

Are others experiencing delivery issues lately? My wife has had 2 packages get lost this month. My latest package made it to my local post office a half mile from my house in record time from Banggood only to get sent back to sender. Tracking said it was undeliverable as addressed. I checked the address and it is correct. Besides, made it this far so it can’t be too wrong. Ours is a very small rural post office where everyone there knows everyone. I called the post office and they said they never even got it. The post office in the next town over has cut business hours because of labor shortages. The post office used to be a desirable job around here with a pension, health care, etc. I don’t see them surviving if this doesn’t change.

Small rural post office here.

carrier is so lazy he won’t deliver packages that don’t fit in mailbox. doesn’t leave a notice. I wonder where my stuff is, then I check tracking and it will say held at PO.

also likes to spread everyone’s mail out - I get my neighbors mail all the time. I assume they get mine but just throw it out…

FedEx is almost as bad. They like to set packages ON my $60k truck.

Any time I can I use UPS. About 3 different drivers for my address and they’re all great.

I’ve been thinkin’ about moving over to The Pony Express butt I hear they have the same problems as USPS.

All they can hire right now is jackasses. :open_mouth:

I agree USPS has delivery problems.

it is caused by the guy running the place, thank the Donald for that.
USPS cancelled overtime pay, so if an item is on the truck when the 5 0clock bell rings, the driver is not allowed to deliver.

Instead they do one of 3 things.

  1. claim it cannot be delivered, they return to the Post office with the package
  2. they might try to deliver the next day, or, they might unload and return to sender
  3. they pretend they never got the package

the issue is the driver does not want to get demerits for inability to handle the workload caused by understaffing and budget cuts

there is also staff turnover, and the new post person delivers mail in my box, that is not addressed to me. I then redeliver to my neighbor…

this Postal Obstruction is how the Donald wanted to interfere with mail in ballots. It did not work, but, we still have his appointee running the Post Office…

No problems here. Everything is pretty much delivered & most times ahead of schedule too. :white_check_mark:

to be fair, I also receive things sooner than expected, and none of my packages have ever been totally lost.

And I have not have any packages returned to sender.

Sometimes I get a package by suprise, without tracking updates. Otoh, lately the nice post lady scans the delivery, and I get an email within a few minutes.

I like using the USPS email delivery notification option.

Their notification email was updated to package delivered. Must of been a glitch this morning.

USPS is working great for me, no issues at all lately. There were huge delays around the holidays last year running well into the start of this year - unprecedented volumes of packages, covid, labor shortages, winter storms, etc. If there is a problem, call the post office, they are usually very helpful. Don’t know how accurate banggood tracking is, but the post office has access to all of the details from when it entered their system to include images of the package.

A post office that I used to use sometimes to mail packages has a Ahole that works there, but all of the people at my local Post office are great! I’ve also run into a couple bad UPS drivers, but most are real nice, so sometimes you get stuck with a individual not doing the job properly no matter what service is being used. BTW, I have had the most problems with fedex ground and fedex freight services, though their overnight express is very good.

To be fair also, I forgot one episode that occured about 8 or 9 years ago.

We had a new lady on the Rural Route. They are usually great. This lady was not & did not last long… thank goodness.

I had a custom knife coming. A few hundred dollars. It had delivery confirmation BUT no signature required. :person_facepalming:

Well, I was tracking it. It popped up delivered.
Well, she delivered it alright. Just to a house with the same number about 3 miles away it turned out. :open_mouth:

I was beside myself to say the least because it was not at my house.

I called the PO & of course she was still on her route so no info from her.

No sooner had I hung up than the phone rang (still had a land line back then).
It was a guy I knew of vaguely as he did me.

He said he had a Priority Package for me at his house.

I breathed a sigh of relief that day, & immediately went to retrieve it. :wink: :white_check_mark:

The trouble is not in our post office. Our packages are being sent to distribution centers never to be seen again.

I think you may be right pennzy…. that may well be a weak link.

eh, we have a “community” mailbox of locked bins down the street that every few years seems to get damaged by miscreants and has to be replaced. Once that happens we go through a period where we have to go to a “central” post office to pick up our mail because they will no longer deliver to that box. It’s happening right now.

Other than that, we’ve had no problem, and this problem isn’t really a USPS problem, although I’m not sure where the decision was made to set our mail up that way. We are not in a gated community or pay any association fees. That’s how it was set up when my house was built and I bought it.

those “distribution centers” probably have nothing to do with the USPS, they are likely private contractors hired by banggood to pick up packages form the air or sea port and deliver them to the USPS for the “last mile” delivery.

Those aren’t the ones I’m talking about. My wife’s lost packages were lost by the USPS. Orders from US companies. USPS tracking.

They all suck. FedEx is the worst and ironically Fred Smith is still the CEO.

Live in the mountains. USPS does not deliver to houses, only to the PO Box. UPS and FedEx deliver some things to houses and others to the PO to go into the box or be picked up. Post office is closed on weekends and FedEx just marked a package “undeliverable” on Saturday because the PO was not open and he did not want to drive up to our house, lol. I was home. But they did deliver it to the PO on Monday.
Stopped buying flashlights from China because they do not use the full address with house address and PO Box number, even though I provide it and use zip plus four with a box number in the four. The package becomes undeliverable, return to sender, since the post office does not know which box to put the pickup notice in. USA companies put the full address and I actually get the item.

We have a similar situation , kinda. We have always received our mail at the post office. UPS and FedEx won’t deliver to an address if it has a post office box number in it. A lot of companies won’t allow a post office box number in the shipping address if shipping UPS or FedEx. Trouble is sometimes you don’t know how your package will be shipped. Omit the post office box number and the post office throws fits. Include it and UPS/FedEx throws fits. My work around is to leave off the PO and just use Box and the number. Works 99% of the time. Works with orders from China too.

We have mail delivery issues with our physical address (sometimes we can't even get in or out of there) and have always used a PO Box, but recently signed up for a free USPS service called Premium PO Box Service Street Addressing:

With this service, instead of using our PO Box address, we use the physical address of the local Post Office but append a "#" symbol followed by our "PO Box number" to the street address line in the local Post Office's address.

We use this address as our physical address for deliveries from UPS, FedEx, DHL, Amazon and whenever we do not know how a package will be shipped. It has worked well, except for large and heavy items, since all packages must still meet USPS size and weight regulations or USPS will not accept them at the Post Office, but we usually know which items those will be and make other arrangements.

Never knew of that service. Might be good for winter delivery when the driveway isn’t always the best. How much $?

It's "free" (only had to sign a form), but not all Post Offices offer this service.

EDIT: here is a link to the agreement form:

https://www.usps.com/pobox/customer-agreement-for-premium-po-box-service-enhancements.pdf