This was a fun one.

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Last week had a letter - just a standard envelope - arrive after taking a full month to travel half way across the country. Almost could have walked it faster. Good ol' USPS, god bless em.

Well I just got a letter from the IRS yesterday. Apparently my taxes were never received. Dropped them first hand at the post office July 14th. Now I owe over $100 in penalties because the USPS never delivered my tax payment. So yes. USPS fucked me

Florida seems to be a USPS black hole.

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Didn’t you hear? Potus has sabotaged USPS to cheat at election. Flame away.

The last few months have been pretty f$%ked with the corona pandemic!

USPS has had its ups and downs for many years, there is no reason why they shouldn't be overhauled to make them more efficient and better at what they do. After all - we as taxpayers are footing the bill and should receive the best service possible.

Up here no home delivery so when a supplier says ship and they mail it ends up in general delivery at the local P.O.
My actual P.O. Box is in Lake Arrowhead.
The Lake Arrowhead P.O. is a clusterfark where you wait in line, local I can just walk up to the counter.
Rolling over a CD bank mailed the check which was lost.
I had 30 days to roll it over without taxes and penalties but it was 90 days to get another cashiers check.
After raising enough hell they found it sitting on a shelf at the Lake Arrowhead P.O.
I would much rather have my stuff sent GD to the local P.O., Debbie has her shit together the dolts at the L.A post office not so much.
I had one item the seller put the Loma Linda zip code on it (off by one digit from mine) and it went from San Berdoo to Denver and back 3 times before they could find it and get it to me.
30+ days later it arrived broken.
I try not to use the P.O but sellers say ship and then mail, at least it will show up in GD.
The best are the ones who say cannot ship to P.O. boxes so I use my business addy and it ends up at my P.O. Box because they mail it instead of shipping.
Never try to explain to a dullard the difference between shipping and mailing, it is an exercise in futility.

Post Office is govt. run, so what do you expect?

Louis DeJoy took over as Postmaster General in early June. I think that has way more to do with it than the pandemic.

From Wikipedia: Upon assuming office as Postmaster General on June 16, 2020, DeJoy began taking measures, such as banning overtime and extra trips to deliver mail, to reduce costs. Critics said these measures would result in slowing of the mail service.[22][23][24] Congressional Democrats called for the measures to be rolled back.[25] More than 600 high-speed mail sorting machines were dismantled and removed from postal facilities without explanation,[26] raising concerns that mailed ballots for the November 3 election might not reach election offices on time.[27] Mail collection boxes were removed from the streets in many cities; after photos of boxes being removed were spread on social media, a postal service spokesman said they were being moved to higher traffic areas but that the removals would stop until after the election.[28]

Any chance we can leave the politics out of this? USPS has been in trouble for a long time.

Let's consider:

Email, texting, paperless billing, online banking, internet shopping versus catalog, POS (debit) versus check writing.

Competition exists from Fed Ex, UPS, DHL etc.

Need for the USPS has dropped significantly; Yet they want to continue with pensions?

Call it a service, call it a business, whichever you prefer. Either way it is losing money and can not continue as is.

But Lake Arrowhead is beautiful...i'd almost put up with it to live there if I could find decent employment that doesn't require a daily trip down rim of the earth.

I mean good luck when one side is making it a political issue.

I found a bubble mailer that was delivered to the wrong house about 8 years ago. I'm going to drop it back in the mail. The original recipient will be a bit surprised when it shows up.

I've seen the delays with USPS. Spoke to the local folks about it thinking it was being driven by the current administration management of the Postal System. They don't like to discuss that, but offered another reason for the delays. I ship everything Priority from Seattle. Packages going across the country have always moved by air. The COVID Pandemic has reduced air travel so much that there are simply not enough planes flying so handle the USPS volume.

Shouldn't you add a poll so we can vote?

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Move.

I had a Priority Mail package from Mezel Mods, in Albuquerque, NM take 15 days to get to me last week. I live in Dallas. If you drive left and up from the DFW area, the first sign of civilization you will come to is Albuerque, NM - 9 hours later. Somehow that drive took 15 days.

I ship 4-12 packages a day lately with USPS. Domestic stuff for the most part is arriving on time or just slightly delayed. There has been some exceptions tho where things took a long time. Every package I dropped off one day a couple weeks ago took like 7 days before they ever got scanned. I got negative feedback on ebay over it just because USPS is slow.

International has been crazy slow like 50 day delivery time, but seems to be getting better.

Why was this negged? The sabotage is true. He stated it himself. Publicly.

Overtime has been eliminated, mail is stacking up because of it. Hundreds of sorting machines have been not just removed, but destroyed.

It’s a federal crime and many states are investigating and may be bringing charges.

USPS has been slowly declining over the last few years. COVID has pumped new life into the USPS that they were not equipped to handle. The changes Dejoy is making don’t make any sense from a business standpoint.

over staffed as well now. my brother in law got paid full salary and pension by the USPS for 3 years to sit on his butt at home. the stories he tell of mismanagement is INSANE.

My wife ships a lot with usps. About 6 or 7 weeks ago thay marked a package as undeliverable for the address for some reason even though she has shipped to this address before.
They marked it return to sender and it hasn’t moved for five weeks we emailed them and they just wrote back problem resolved we’re looking into it so yeah.
This package has $500 insurance on it and has not been sent back yet.

I’ve had problems receiving mail from the USPS since the late 1980’s

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I haven't had any problems as of yet I sell on ebay and receive packages almost daily. Im in West Michigan so that might have something to do with it, being less populated but even all my shipments to people have been delivered on time within a few days. May just be lucky I guess.

P.S none of this surprises me I worked at a post office DC in my early 20's for about 2 years and Ive never been around worse workers in my whole life. The place operated as though it was a charity for its workers some making $30 an hour to do almost nothing, that was in the early 2000's. It needed changes then but not sure how it operates today probably hasn't changed much, just my 2 cents.

At least 20 states plan to sue the U.S. Postal Service over service delays, threat to election

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/at-least-20-states-plan-to-sue-the-us-postal-service-over-service-delays-threat-to-election/2020/08/18/c6ca2dc6-e166-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html

We cut overtime during the pandemic to remain in business. The employees didn't like it, and the efficiencies went down, costing more per job. Fortunately, we measure efficiencies on work to remain profitable. We had to make a few examples, but everyone seems to have gotten the message. No one likes their overtime taken away!

I'm not sure this is the case everywhere - there's another pinsider on the forum who's dealing with major understaffing and apparently forced overtime. Nobody's happy about that.

LOL!
Now that is funny considering the advice is coming from someone who lives in New Jersey.

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You need to pay attention to what’s happened in the last month.

Mine posted yesterday on FB that they are hiring.

My Mystery Tackle Box for August was received at the Philly USPS distribution center 8 days ago and hasn't moved.

Things that are not priority mail are really not a priority right now.

You should see the ridiculous test my wife just took when applying for a USPS job. They ask you a bunch of judgement questions in an online assessment which you can't really answer without knowing their official employee policies. They give you four options for handling a situation, and you pick the most likely and least likely way you would handle the situation. But every example is some kind of gray area, and you can't effectively answer them without being trained first. Its a complete joke of a hiring process, IMO.

We ran an escrow company before retirement and I built custom homes on the lake so I never had to do that horrible commute.
Some pics off my back deck.

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I have given up on USPS to get things to New Zealand. Two of four items shipped by USPS have been in transit for months now. I'm now paying a stupid amount of money for express shipping via UPS or Fed Ex but at least I am getting things in a couple days, and more importantly I am actually getting things.

Unfortunately, no. Just about every USPS worker is asking the same thing.

Been waiting for the last 2 months for a spare part to fix my JJP WOZ. Stuck in Chicago in the latest usps update [ 8 of august ]; not tomorrow it will show up in Paris where the post office is struggling as well

We're not the ones who inserted politics into it in the first place. It's real, and it's directly affecting this particular agency.

Canada Post is just as bad. For the last two years, the delivery people don't even attempt to deliver packages. They just write up the slips ahead of time saying they attempted delivery and leave them in the community mailbox with my regular mail.

I live across the street from the box, one of us works from home every day, and I have cameras around my house that record everything, so I can guarantee that Canada Post hasn't been to my door in over a year. Sometimes the slips are even backdated a bunch of days.

I'll see them load the box, I'll go grab the slip immediately and head to the post office where the package will be waiting. I do not know what we are paying for if they won't actually deliver packages to my house or at least the community mailbox.

Yeah, but I live on the beach and receive all of my packages.

Politicians have nothing to do with the pandemic and carriers and staff calling off in record numbers leaving sorting stations and carriers short handed in an unprecedented way.

There threads that mirror what people are saying here on other various hobby forums I follow.
Really disheartening.

Reduction in sorting capacity due to removed machines, with 2016 election results overlaid:

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To dismiss the politicization of this process is dishonest. Here's a cleaner map with the district lines removed:

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Notice anything?

For all the "It's a business, grumble, grumble, grumble" folks - you don't kneecap your ability to provide a paid service where most of your clientele live.

I already hate myself for posting this. It won't change anyone's mind.

I’m waiting for a shippinment since may.
It seems like it’s no more traceable.

https://m.usps.com/m/TrackConfirmAction_detail?tLabels=HJ693502508US

I don’t even know if I will receive it one day...

Not trying to make excuses but the USPS gets no government funding except for occasional loans. It's operating budget comes from the sale of postage. The USPS is not a profit based company but a service. Any profits are supposed to be used to replace equipment, vehicles, buildings and mail processing equipment.

I am a retired (24 years) Electronic Technician from the USPS. I repaired and maintained letter, flat and parcel sorting machines. I could write a book on all of the crazy shit I saw during my time. Like many large corporations there were great, middle of the road and terrible employees. The USPS was forced into prefunding employee health care benefits (for retirees) some 100 years into the future (starting in 2006). Most all of the workers (except management, they have an association) are represented by Unions. I'm not getting into the Union arguments here.

I saw mismanagement at all levels. We (maintenance workers) were severely understaffed. This caused much grief. We were required to do half ass repairs so ALL the mail could get out of the plant every day with nothing left behind because that mail then snowballs until it's piled up every where. The problem with poor maintenance affects all parts of the delivery and sorting process.

I have sent several priority parcels in the last few months and all made it but the scanning (which should happen in and out of every facility) was terrible. I don't know why except employees are tired, understaffed and generally treated like shit from management. Then the anxiety from working next to hundreds of people (covid) in buildings that are very dirty (paper dust) makes people sick. We worked thru the anthrax attacks with little to no protection. Several postal workers died. Now almost 100 postal workers died from covid.

I don't know the answers but think about how much it would cost if you had to deliver a letter 2000 miles for less than 60 cents. Many countries have privatized their postal service and it hasn't always worked out so well.

Living in a rural area myself and most others use the Post office for everything.UPS and Fed Ex will deliver to them.They are a lifeline and they are awesome.Having just retired I kind of like having a pension as well.

This is a very illuminating, and perhaps a little depressing post. Thank you so much for posting this

The “in transit-arriving late” and some of the other updates mean nothing. I mail enough to know the local PO guys and these and other "Your package is on it's way to the destination" are BS updates to stop people from calling and asking. They literally do NOT mean there's any movement on your package at all.

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