General Forum

The usps has been an Issue for me for the last 18 months   3 transactions have failed to reach my house   I have no Idea why but I think Its time to try and report It to my It to my local office   As far as delivery times It Is very erratic around the country. I do not care how long It takes as long as It gets there   I live In Jersey and a letter going to the west coast would take 5 days but a letter to the mid west would take 12 days but hey It got there. Seems like NOWADAYS there Is no telling when a letter will get to you but as long as It gets there I guess JMTC

It's been pretty awful recently for me as well.  There have been quite a few lost envelopes in the last three months, compared to none the first year-or-so of trades.

In my short time trading on here, I haven’t encountered any issues yet, but I know I will. Before I’ve gotten into trading, I’ve had many letters get lost in the mail.

Some potentially disturbing stat trends.  I understand that the winter weather this year wreaked havoc on the postal system, but things were not trending positively before that.

It seems to me that USPS issues with delivery are areal issues and not national issues. I've had a very few issues over the past 18 years of trading, buying and selling through the mail. Apparently, my location near a regional hub in Greensboro, NC helps with stuff coming in or going out, but they aren't always great either. The only package that was truly lost was actually from TCDB themselves. I bought a shirt from the site and the package made it to Greensboro but got completely lost there! That was several years ago and the shirt still hasn't arrived. TCDB did refund my money after a couple of months of waiting (at my insistence on waiting). I had another card package get lost there back around 2012 that was eventually found and delivered after 3 months. As for PWE, that's why I don't ship cards that way at all. I've had a couple PWE's arrive completely destroyed, envelope and cards. I also sent out some freebies to someone about 8 years ago and he got the envelope with the protection but no cards and a big slit in the envelope. After the damaged PWE's came in a few years later, I completely stopped with PWE trading.

Also, shipping costs aren't as high as being quoted in this thread if you do it right. I just sent 2 super-thick MEM cards in toploaders wrapped in a thick sheet of corrugated cardboard in a BM weighing 4 oz. for $4.02 through Paypal/Shipstation. That new Ground Parcel service is cheaper than USPS 1st Class Envelope or Parcel that was about $4.15 for the same weight I shipped on Wednesday. Lastly, that BM went from NC to MN in 4 days, even with a massive winter storm hitting the receiving area during that time.

I hate to hear so many bad stories about USPS when I have rarely ever had a single one in all these years of shipping cards and other collectibles through the mail. I've sent cards halfway around the world (to Australia) in a BM through USPS and no issues there. I was even shocked that it got there in about 6 days after taking a boat from Miami, FL to Australia and also going through customs in both countries. People tend to focus only on the bad things these days and the positive people don't care to read or comment in those negative threads. Just stating my POV and my history with shipping well over a thousand packages in the past 18 years of internet trading (95% of which were in BM's).

There has been massive organized mail theft in my area.  Especially big problem at large apt complexes that have large banks of mailboxes outside.  Thieves somehow get copies of USPS keys and clean out the mail for the whole complex.   

That is actually something that USPS has addressed with carriers. If they are threatened for that key to the massive boxes, they are supposed to give up the key and run away, if possible. Then it is on the property owner of that bank of mailboxes to replace the lock or the entire bank of boxes. Neither option is cheap for owners, but USPS also can't risk carriers being seriously injured or killed just to get a key to mailboxes. If boxes like that are damaged from either side, carriers are also not allowed to put mail in the damaged boxes.

Louis DeJoy is partially to blame: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/15/usps-job-layoff-mail-service-delay-louis-dejoy

When sending a PWE consider sending 2 if majorly thick. The package has to be friendly to the machinery. NO hard Top loaders. Making it stiff as hell with cardboard makes your envelope a Target to get "eaten up" . Make it flexible. The 9 sleeve pages with some heavy paper around it will be sufficient and the envelope will Pass through with out incident. I mailed 2 PWE's over seas to Belgium?(i forget,lol) and they arrived no problem. Mean while i mailed 2 Valentines cards to my Granddaughters 20 miles away in the hard cardboard envelopes. lol Only 1 reached its destination.. I got a trade from here in town. westside(i'm eastside) it took 12 days a year ago.

It's a crap shoot.. lmao.

I received a PWE this week within a bag from the USPS with the words "WE CARE" across the top and following paragraphs basically said sorry we lost or damaged your mail but there's nothing we can do about it. The bag contained the front half of an envelope only. No back half or the card I had ordered. Pathetic. The back half of the enveope and card are somewhere. I sold a box of books on eBay once, and the USPS delivered the box to my buyer without anything in it. How can you have 5 large books fall out of the bottom of a box, and you don't notice it or know where it happened?