USPS Going Downhill???

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Up until this past month I've been proud of the job my local USPS does.

A few months ago they decided to close the big facility in Norfolk (still not sure that really happened) and all mail goes to Richmond then out to the localities. I got a card from the lady across the street a while back and it had a Richmond postmark on it

Anyway, this past month I've had 3-4 packages come in, 2 were "lost" and a 3rd came a day late. The lost packages were delivered to the next street over and I got them alright.

I ordered some parts last Friday from Scale City Designs. The tracking went from delivery Wednesday, to Friday, then today.

I''ve been keeping track of the progress, as of 09:33 this morning it was "out for delivery", the PO is at most 2 miles from my house.

I checked at 1:11pm - still out for delivery

Checked at 6:08pm - still out for delivery

Checked at 7:01pm - here's what it says:

We attempted to deliver your item at 5:51 pm on March 30, 2017 but could not complete the delivery because the employee did not have access to the delivery location. Your item will go out for delivery on the next business day.


WTF?!?!?! I've been home since 3pm. I printed the 1st page of the announcement from each time check, just in case something goes awry (ooh, always wanted a chance to use that word when posting here!).

DID NOT HAVE ACCESS??? Must have been one heck of a wreck within those 2 miles or a natural disaster that somehow missed my residence. Maybe the street caved in or got swallowed up by a large sink hole!

OR...it could have been locked up in the RENTAL van they've been using to deliver mail, can't the USPS afford mail trucks anymore???

I'm really not as pissed as this suggests, but it is kinda weird

Funny thing is, my regular mail got delivered fine, BEFORE noon

[Rufus T. Firefly]

There are definitely some weird things about the USPS.

About 1/2 my packages bounce back and forth from Capitol Heights and Hyattsville in MD, and I live in VA....why my mail from all over the country goes to those to sorting stations is a mystery.

The rest of my stuff comes in to the big sorting station in Merrifield VA - less than 2 miles from the house, then goes out to Dulles (20+ miles West), and then to a regular PO about 5 miles East of me, and then it gets delivered.

Rather than playing roundabout over and over, maybe just delivering it would be more efficient? Nah!!!

Can't wait to see how my mail at my place in PA will work - just got an address after 50+ years.......on a slate road that I and a neighbor maintain......someday I might have to put up a mailbox,

[Mitch]

One year (and only one year) I was going to get a doe license for Pa.s hunting season. You have to apply to the county that you want the tag for. I dropped it in the mail in Kittanning, the Armstrong County Seat, the night before the deadline, hoping to get the license for Armstrong County. It never came, but my original envelope and application came back in an Armstrong County envelope, and the cancellation on my app was Butler, Pa. Hell, if I'd have known it was gonna go from Armstrong to Butler then to Armstrong, I could've just mailed it from Butler. Who can figure the USPS??

[healey36]

Meanwhile I just received an order of plastic model kits from Japan in six calendar days...

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Forgot to tell,

The same day I ordered the package in question I also ordered some couplers from Kadee.

Got them yesterday thru USPS, go figure

I ordered some Deltang receivers from England, got them within 1 week.

[up148]

One thing hurting USPS service during the past year is both Fed-X and UPS are handing off packages to them. We order quite a bit of supplies at our company and most are shipped via UPS or Fed-X. But, many are handed off to the USPS for final delivery. Can't explain it, but I'm sure the USPS welcomes the business and it must be cheaper for the big two parcel carriers to use the USPS or I doubt they would. The mail carriers hate it because they are handling more boxes than ever before.

Whenever I ship trains overseas the buyer always wants USPS and I can't blame them. Half the cost of UPS and Fed-X and no customs hassles at the other end. But, for all my incoming and outgoing train shipments here in the states I go strictly with the two big guys. Never had them lose a package and being able to track is important to me. USPS tracking is a joke.

BH

[webenda]

A few months ago they decided to close the big facility in Norfolk (still not sure that really happened) and all mail goes to Richmond then out to the localities.

It really happened.

The USPS was doing fine, turning profits over to US Treasury, even after paying out pension benefits to retirees.

Then the US Congress decided the U.S. Postal Service should prefund its long-term pension and healthcare liabilities. The Postal Service is required to pay the full estimate of its liabilities, currently estimated at nearly $404 billion annually. They have never made that much profit. In order to comply they are shutting down and selling post offices all over the country to gain funds for pre-funding pensions of persons who will retire someday all the way to those not even born yet.

https://www.uspsoig.gov/blog/be-careful-what-you-assume
http://www.zdnet.com/article/us-postal- ... es-a-list/
https://thinkprogress.org/a-manufacture ... a965b2bc63
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fe ... 2714480dc1

[rogruth]

I live in Pembroke, Georgia, 25 miles west of Savannah.. A letter mailed in Pembroke to a post office box in Pembroke is sent to Savannah, then to Jacksonville, Florida, then to Savannah and then to Pembroke where the same people that sent it to Jacksonville will now put it in the box. A three minute delivery has turned into two or three days. I asked in the post office about why this was being done but didn't really believe their answer so I called our local congressman who didn't believe my answer so he contacted the PO big guys and got the same answer that my local PO gave me to start with. It all goes to the regional centers to be counted. Apparently local PO employees cannot be trusted to do an accurate count.
This is NOT a new procedure. It has been around for at least twenty years.
Some mail, of various kinds, is brought to our local PO by UPS and Fedex and delivered to the addressee by USPS. Some days we get stuff from all three.
Some stuff delivered by USPS has UPS or Fedex labels.
There probably is no exact explanation.
What Wayne mentions above has also been going on for sometime.
I have wondered for sometime how USPS contiues. I guess that even today congress persons might get in trouble with their constituents if
the PO closed.

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

I wonder what the impact of the internet has on the PO money they get from collecting revenue?

I pay almost all of my bills online, no stamps. I haven't written a letter to someone in almost 30 years, no stamps. Online bill pay and email have eliminated a lot of revenue the PO collected in the past.

Will the PO/government step in and place a stamp tax on all bill pay and email transactions? Wouldn't that be a hoot

I did see that Amazon will be collecting state sales taxes on ALL purchases as of April 1st. Will the PO follow their lead?

Maybe I should rename this post "POed at the PO"!

[robert.]

If a package goes through Jersey city postal center it's done. It takes about 4 days to go through that place and damage is sure to happen. Other then that they do a great job.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I wonder what the impact of the internet has on the PO money they get from collecting revenue?

Looking at the lines at the PO and numbers with boxes in hand, I have a hard time seeing a decrease - a lot of eBay sales from individuals are going through the PO,

I pay almost all of my bills online, no stamps. I haven't written a letter to someone in almost 30 years, no stamps.

What? No Christmas cards? Ok, I write few letters, but I write a few and keep a stack of pre-stamped PO envelopes in stock for writing to my Amish contractors......

Online bill pay and email have eliminated a lot of revenue the PO collected in the past.

True, and then the Banks and utilities still mail be account statements w/o bills,

Will the PO/government step in and place a stamp tax on all bill pay and email transactions? Wouldn't that be a hoot

I did see that Amazon will be collecting state sales taxes on ALL purchases as of April 1st. Will the PO follow their lead?

No, but the Gov't is going to institute sales taxes for on-line purchases and that's why Amazon and other on-line companies are collecting sales taxes. This discontinuance of internet privacy is a big step forward to inacting internet sales tax legislation.

[Big Jim]

Bob,
The same thing happened around here. They shut down the Roanoke office and sent everything to Greensboro. There has been a big fuss about it in the newspaper with people's mail getting lost. I have had a lot of my normal mail being severely damaged.An envelope containing tickets to an event was so torn up that my address was unreadable, so, it was returned to sender as undeliverable! However, all of my packages have arrived safe and sound.

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

Well, it sounds like the problem is nationwide.

GOOD NEWS!!! The package from Scale City Designs made it to the box today, along with a book I ordered "Atlantic Coast Line Dining Car Cookbook" by E. Gordon Mooneyhan. I was looking at Seaboard Air Line photos on Facebook (again, I don't belong but was able to look at all the photos!) and noticed this guy was offering this book, $15, so I bought one.

I'd still like to know what "Employee Did Not Have Access To The Delivery Location" means

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I'd still like to know what "Employee Did Not Have Access To The Delivery Location" means

Got lost?

[Seaboard Air Line Fan]

I'd still like to know what "Employee Did Not Have Access To The Delivery Location" means

Got lost?

I'm sticking with the notion they locked the truck and couldn't get into it until this morning