The U.S. Postal Service....

[OlongJohnson]

I've heard that people in many places south of our border often pay all their utility bills in person for that reason.

Houston's local USPS sorting facility can go off the rails pretty badly from time to time. I've had inbound packages sit there for nearly two weeks. But it's mostly good.

[beenalongtime]

I dated a gal from Peru. She told me if you mailed something there, it was a 50/50 chance of whether or not it would ever get delivered. Hearing that made me appreciate the USPS a little more.

Thank you for the laugh, I needed it.

Mail order bride sprang to mind reading this.

[vcdgrips]

My experience mirrors Rich. I routinely use USPS to ship from KC outbound CONUS. If I get the package out overnight or first thing in am, 3 days max is the norm. I can count teh number of times things just did not make it one 1 hand in 10 yrs of business. Two or three of those events were in the Gulf right before or after a big storm.

I know of a dealer who does big business in used guns and uses USPS almost exclusively WITHOUT insurance. His rationale is as follows:

1. The package almost always gets there or back to him in the end
2. He passes much of the savings onto the customer
3. He figures he has saved thousands of dollars by not insuring. When he did insure early on and made a claim, it was so time consuming to get them to pay i.e. spending 20-25 hours to track down a gun he had 225.00 in, it was not worth his time even at near minimum wage.

[Malamute]

The USPS usually works fairly well, but certainly have some odd moments.

Temp forwarding. Despite handing it in in person to people that personally know you, they take 10 days to send, to the new temp address, a note asking if you really made the forward, and if not, let them know, if they dont hear from you in a while they will go ahead and send the mail to the new temp address. So, if I didnt make the change, how would I get the notice sent to the new temp address asking if I really made the change? Its usually 2 weeks before i see any forwarded mail. One piece had 3 yellow forward stickers on it, indicating it sat for 3 weeks in the same place before it went anywhere.

One package was at the post office before I left once. No notice. Went in twice asking about it,...'No, nothing here". Checked tracking from sender after it not arriving when expected. It had been at the post office 3 days before I left. Called Post Office, talked to a person I knew personally, they discovered the package, and hand addressed it to the new address so it wouldnt be affected by the long delay in forwarding. It beat me to the destination town, then they sent it back across the country, it bounced back and forth across the country for 3 weeks before I got somebody that said I could change the destination, (which others said was impossible), then it arrived some time later. Took 10 days to go 1000 miles at one point with no info in the tracking data where it was during that time. It turned out that despite the address written on it, the tracking tag kept sending it back and forth.

Sent buddy some cool doo-dads. Had one number off in the zip, a 6 instead of a 5 at the end, it was the zip to the post office 8 miles away in rural-ish area, and had the correct person and town name. PO apparently delivered it to the box number in the zip town, despite having a different name and town written on it (a whole 8 miles away, but apparently unknown to the PO folks). Buddy never saw it. How hard is this?

[41magfan]

One of my brothers has over 30 years with the Postal Service in several different jobs, in various locales. If you knew some of the stuff he's told me, you'd question how the current level of service is even possible. Irregardless, it's a sinking ship and their tipping point of insolvency will require a costly government bail-out at some point. There comes a time where raising prices as your only solution to addressing incompetent business practices becomes futile.

[NEPAKevin]

I once had a vendor call me with an update on a check that they had not received. Flash back, maybe six months earlier, after receiving a past due notice, I went through the SOP of having the bank verify that it had not been presented, stop payment. reissue check, yadda-yadda, and went on with life. Flash forward, the AR guy on the other end told me that he got an over sized envelope which contained pieces of the mutilated check along with a note from the recycling center that it had been found jammed in a mail processing machine that had been sent to them to be destroyed. He just wanted to know if I wanted him to mail the "check" back or destroy it. I requested he file 13 the poor document as the USPO had already had enough fun with it.

[ubervic]

I’m still amazed that USPS can consistently deliver letters coast to coast within a business day of average quoted time for mere pennies.

[Bigghoss]

I have not had an issue that sticks with me for years, and I order plenty of stuff. There was one time several years ago that I ordered something, it made it to the Denver facility (I live in Pueblo) and then they sent it to Spokane, WA for some reason. Spokane sent it back to Denver and Denver sent it back to Spokane. Three times! then it went to Alaska for some reason so I used the contact form on the USPS website. They never responded but the package did conclude it's nationwide tour immediately after and finally made it to me. It looked like they had been dragging it behind the trucks but the contents were undamaged. I did have a local carrier put a package in a parcel locker at my apartment complex and then didn't put the key in my mailbox. I waited up for him the next day and he had to use his spare key to open the locker, he couldn't find the key he was supposed to leave in my box. I suspect he accidentally put it in someone else's box and I was just lucky enough to intercept it in time.

It's a government agency that works like a business except congress won't let them run themselves so that they can turn a profit because granny in BFE won't vote for congressman so-and-so if they close her post office down or charge enough for a stamp to actually cover the cost of mailing a letter. With the volume they do I think they do a pretty good job for the most part.

[revchuck38]

I ordered a hammer spring from LTT in AZ. It went out Priority Mail the same day it was ordered and made it to the Lafayette, LA distribution center, about 80 miles from my house, in good time. Then it was listed as "in transit" for several days...and showed up in the distribution center in Guam. I figured it was going to be a long time before I ever saw it and ordered another. The second one was in my mail box in three days. The first one showed up the following day.

[Rich@CCC]

There are several distribution centers in the USPS that are known for lackadaisical methods and incompetence. Cleveland Ohio being one of them. My post office(Youngstown, Main) used to handle Cleveland's overflow. We would constantly get mail that was a week old as "overflow". A semi trailer was once found parked there, completely full of mail and had been sitting for months because a supervisor didn't want the Number Of The Day to look bad and "forgot" to process it.

What is the Number Of The Day you ask? Well, that is some arbitrary statistic that some over paid mouth breathing knuckle dragger in upper management decide was the most important thing in the world today.

Keep in mind, in the USPS you do not get promoted for doing a good job. You get promoted to get your useless, lazy, dumb ass out of your office so you become someone else's problem. Also keep in mind, those who get promoted in this manor always become the ones who authorize promotions and dictate local policy.