I was supposed to get a letter about a week ago that had some really important stuff to help Christmas (money) and well, here we are almost a week later and nothing. Thanks USPS.

Even better is the package I had shipped priority from less then 200 miles away. I needed some sanitizer for some home brew that needed to be put into bottles and this sanitizer is really the best stuff. 2 weeks again, and then since nobody was home (more like they just didn’t knock since my roommate is home on disability with a busted leg, so he cannot really just leave) they made me come pick it up or wait 4 more days.

What is even more entertaining is trying to find out if the USPS is working today from their site! Nowhere is there any sort of hours of operation on the website, searching brings me to useless articles. luckily I found they do through this site! Thanks!!

Kevin

i am waiting for a parcel from the states to france it was posted on the 2nd of febuary using global priority mail estimated 4-6 days still not received it any idea who i contact and also will this parcel be delivered by my postman or a courrier service.

thanks in advance for any answers

im an ebay seller myself and from dec 19th up until jan 12th i have had nothing but disasters from the USPS , some items mailed DEC 29th have yet to be delivered .
i received a letter from approx 3 miles away , took them 12 days to get it here !
i have many angry customers but again , what can i do , the delivery confirmation only shows the shipping label was printed ,and gives no clue of their whereabouts until they are actually delivered .
But on the other hand , Canada , OH canada , i will be changing my mailing choices and making them pay for USPS Global Priority Mail , the air letter post regularly takes 3-6 weeks for delivery . hopefully the GPM will work better and allow me to continue to sell to canada , otherwise i will simply refuse sells to Canadians .

The last 4 FedEx deliveries in a row were not delivered on the date FedEx’ website shows it as delivered. Its been 10 days now and I’m still waiting for the one of the “deliveries”.

Anarchy reigns in the driver ranks.

I had found a great deal at outpost and with overnight, it should have arrived in plenty of time, right???

Due to a quirk in my schedule, I actually arrived home early. Not that it matters, as I live in an apartment complex with an office open until 8pm that accepts packages.

So I sit and check the DHL web site to see where my package is.

Imagine my surprise when it goes from “out for delivery” to “delivery attempted–will try again next business day”

It was 4:40pm which means not only was I home, but the main office AND the store that accepts packages was open. So I was like, what the heck? I immediately call DHL.

They are less than helpful–they have NO way of contacting drivers while they are out in the field. Cell phones are NOT something they are big on apparently. Might actually help them get more stuff delivered. At any rate, the manager says she will try to page the driver but no guarantee they can find him or her. They take my phone number and promise they will call me back when they can figure out what happened.

So what actually happened? did the driver go to the wrong address and nobody was home? Did the driver decide he was done for the day, just marked “delivery attempted” and went home? Who knows? No message/sticker was left on my door or in the office with evidence the dhl dude was ever physically in my apartment complex.

SO who knows where he went or left this #$#$ sticker. At any rate, nobody ever calls me back.

I cal DHL back, get the manager on the phone. They make it abundantly clear they will not try to deliver it again that night. Despite I have an 8am flight the next morning and their office opens at 8am, so I can’t even stop by their office at the airport to pick it up if I wanted to. I know I’m beat at this point. So I just complain for a while, and I ask them if there is any way they can figure out if the driver went to the wrong address or just decided to give up on the rest of the day? No idea. I also ask–any idea, since I left a phone number, why nobody called me back? Nope.

And lastly..I asked how can you run a delivery business in which you have NO WAY to contact the delivery drivers! What if they were shipping something dangerous and you had to warn them? ORRRRRR, what if you were just TRYING to help them delivery a #$#$ overnight package on time ?

SO I wouldnt recommend DHL. The manager promised me they would send me a follow up report on what happened. Nothing.

At least they did deliver the package the next day, to the office instead of the store that receives packages….after I was already in california of course.

And in a totally unrelated story, I can mention an experience a friend had–a huge fight with UPS over a package that was never received but UPS swore was delivered. They left it at the house next door and never realized it was the wrong address. Fortunately he had honest neighboors and got his package.

So thats where all the wind is going? To the post office?

They are so horrible because rarely can you get someone to take responsibility for something. I now paying that .45 per package for delivery notificiation because at least they know it is somewhere. Also insurance might be helpful. Not for 2005 of course, but next year.

I hope your packages, like mine, show up sometime. That they are on the bottom of a pile somewhere and will eventually surface.

Dec 16 is a peak time. According to my local UPS guys. I used UPS on 12/12 and they said that was great because it was busy 12/16 then crazy on 12/19.

When I called USPS they quickly called back and asked if I had recieved a 3849 then when I told them it was DHL well then that was the end of the story. Obviously DHL scans entire pallets of packages but mine was not really on the pallet. Oh really? Nice bedtime story.

One time USPS really helped but it was my fault. I had HELD my mail while I was out at Christmas then dummy me wondered why no packages. USPS was very diligent about researching my dumb problem, I had forgotted my HOLD notice.

DHL says that DHL passed it to USPS at Love Field TX. Then USPS Love Field only shows that ‘electronic shipping info received’. After many calls both carriers only point fingers at each other. Also I think all they do is refer to electronic information and never ask their people at the location to look. Also DHL has a major programming fix needed (I’ll apply for this job) to track mislaid packages.

I am waiting another week or so before I ask ThinkGeek to resend the package. Maybe its in a corner somehwere. If it was stolen then the dummies lost out because its just books and I know those thieves cannot read.

USPS is pretty good about getting things across. Wish they had more ‘in transit’ information like UPS.

UPS is great. Next year we’ll know all the GPS information. What stop light our package is at or what fast food place its at while the driver is at lunch.

DHL is ok but I do not use them much at all. Once in a while I use them to deliver my trip luggage so I don’t have to mess with that at the airport.

Merry everything everybody, have a great 2006
Jim B.

My friend has told me that the post office problems have been on the news the last couple of days, but I haven’t been able to find any info. Does anyone have a link to a related news story? I’d at least like to be able to send these buyers this info so they realize that I’m not just giving them some song and dance…

Whats bad is last year I had a couple packages stolen from UPS, so that is why I decided to just use USPS this year. Didn’t figure it could be worse, but I figured wrong. So disappointing.

I’m not surprised other people had problems though. I would be furious if a shipper left an item at the front door and walked away…!

That’s it for EBuyer. Never again.

We had regular problems with UPS a couple years ago. Apparently, at the time in Chicago at least, whether a package would be left at the door was “at the driver’s discretion”–including after signing the release on the non-delivery notice. Drove me nuts, as it was not possible to have someone home during the day. Either that policy was changed or the drivers were told that our neighborhood is okay (no real change in the past 5 years). One package got sent back and forth b/t Chicago and Mesquite Texas at least 5 times (I checked its progress for 2 weeks) before finally getting on a truck to our house. Seller replaced with a package sent Fedex which arrived with no difficulty. Either way, no major problems with ups in the past 3 years.

Amazon Prime has been occassionally spotty, with a number of items arriving next day via USPS and a few things getting lost by both USPS and UPS.

Close enough to that already, the USPS has been fending for itself for a number of years now — it isn’t supported by gov’t money anymore. I used to work for them, and while they generally get your stuff to you a day or two slower than UPS or Fedex, they’re cheaper and have far, far fewer problems with theft enroute. USPS facilities have very elaborate and obvious surveilance setups inside, which, along with the whole federal felony part, really discourages mail handlers from stealing. I’ll take that over privatization any day. As for your USPS mail carrier, most are nice, but sometimes you get one that is totally incompetent and/or a jerk — my parents still refer to their carrier as the “mail bitch”, for instance.

UPS sometimes has serious problems with theft, damaged goods, and “delivery attempts” where they didn’t actually do anything of the sort. Personally, I’ve had good luck with them (knock on wood).

The local Fed Ex guy, on the other hand, thinks he’s Dan Marino and likes to drive half way up the driveway, lean out the door, and hurl things at my house — into the lawn, the driveway, the porch, where ever.

This year my family had a lot of trouble with online retailers — Amazon, and a few smaller outfits here and there. Everyone was saying, “order by this date and you’ll get it by the 23rd”. Amazon actually used the word “guarantee”, and then ended up later sending several emails saying there was something wrong with my order, and to go check my account. I checked my account, nothing out of the ordinary. I got another email a couple days later, so I tried to check again and their account system was down. They ended up overnighting the gift without any increase for us in shipping, and it got here on the 24th – but the ’suspense’ was really annoying. If people can’t order with confidence for delivery on a deadline, then they’ll shop somewhere else. Another place, a hardware retailer, wasn’t even close — they said it would get here on the 22nd, but they didn’t even ship the darn thing until the 23rd.