General Forum

Lately, over the last 2 weeks, orders that I've sent out in a PWE or with tracking have not made it to their destinations. I believe that most people are honest when they say they haven't received their order and I end up refunding which means I lose the card/cards plus the refund. Am I the onlyone having this problem? Just an example, sent a card out with tracking information. Customer said didn't receive it even though the Post Office shows it was delivered. On top of that the customer gave me negative feedback on ebay accusing me of non delivery. HUH? Fortunately ebay did the right thing and removed the negative feedback and restored by ratings. What are your thoughts on the Post Service.

Well I know this. I was a mail carrier from 2007 to 2020 and I know that we NEVER had to deal with what the post dealt with last year. Not just covid either. There were decisions made that caused a gradual effect that culminated in 2020. For example, in Oklahoma there were 4 mail distrubution centers. In 2015 or so they closed all but 1 center leaving OKC. Things like this have had a hugely negative impact with the huge influx of parcel volume we saw in 2020. Even though Amazon is delivering some of their own parcels in large cities, the non metropolitan towns saw an increase not decrease in Amazon parcels. Know that I hated Amazon because they were top priority over all of the postal service parcels including their own Priority Mail.

I do believe though that it is getting better. I monitor all my ebay sales on a daily basis to track movement and have opened several cases of "missing mail" as soon as I felt it was needed. As to PWE, I had sent out my Secret Santa on December 5 and it did not reach my recipient until around January 20, so yes things are not very good right now but slowly getting better.

You're not the only person having trouble with mail. I'm still waiting for a comic book I won back in November. As of right now it's probably buried at a dc up north according to the tracking number he gave me. I have a friend who works for the USPS, she put a post up on Facebook days ago and from the way it was worded she was probably crying by the end. She said they are incredibly overwhelmed, people are helping wherever they can but still swamped. Then you add covid to that to make it worse. I can't imagine how bad it is, or stressful. I've cut back on trades for at least a month due to that. I'm hoping it gets better soon. 

Agreed that recent USPS delays resulted a compounding of multiple factors, and they were just flat out overwhelmed.  And I've said it on here before and will repeat it...here in the US we are blessed with extremely low prices to get things across the country (comparitively to other nations) and whether it arrives in a week or three days it's just an incredibly good deal.  

Since late October I've had PWEs taking 3-4 weeks and even first class parcels at Christmas-time that took 4 weeks with tracking.  It does seem the logjam is breaking up and maybe 1-2 weeks is the norm.

What troubles me about the original post, though, is the "post office says delivered but recipient says they didn't receive" type comment.  Even with the Nov/Dec mad rush, I don't recall hearing instances of this.  

I have not lost faith in the USPS, and I hope others will stay with them, as well.  But best of luck to you on your situation, though, and I hope it does turn out well soon.   

Re: my original post. The funny thing about this situation is the the buyer didn't ask for a refund (which I wouldn't have done anyway) because the Post Office said it was delivered to "the door or mailbox". If delivered to the door I could see where someone might have taken it from the porch after all with all the mail theft that's going on lately.

Theft does happen to be sure. One thing about the postal scanners is they have a gps system that shows the actual house or place of delivery. The local office can look up the scan and see an overhead shot of the address where it was delivered.

Ebay item I won was shipped Dec 21. Dec 31 it was still in the same facility. Finally arrived Jan 14. Took 24 days. Glad it had tracking. I let the seller know it was stuck, he said he has had that issue often, stuck in the same location. 

I got a package today 1/15 that shipped 1/11.  New York to Illinois.

This actually happened to me on the receiving end between Christmas and New Year's. Tracking said it was delivered to my door or mailbox and it was nowhere to be found. The other weird thing was that the tracking number did not show up on my USPS informed delivery like it normally does.

That was the exception, though. I don't know that I have had a shipment take more than a week in the past two months.

bbcards wrote:

Re: my original post. The funny thing about this situation is the the buyer didn't ask for a refund (which I wouldn't have done anyway) because the Post Office said it was delivered to "the door or mailbox". If delivered to the door I could see where someone might have taken it from the porch after all with all the mail theft that's going on lately.

I have one from ebay that was shipped 12/19

Still waiting