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I operate a DTC company in the Boston area and send thousands of packages every year. Even the tracked Priority Mail packages have delays. The system promises
by ilamont 6y ago
I operate a DTC company in the Boston area and send thousands of packages every year.
Even the tracked Priority Mail packages have delays. The system promises 2-3 day delivery (and that's what customers are told during checkout, no way to change it) but it's often longer than that, particularly for larger/odd-shaped packages such as the long Priority Mail tubes.
In New England, a lot of problems can be traced to COVID outbreaks among USPS staff in processing centers. It was especially bad starting in November and continuing through February.
At one point the Post Office stopped scanning parcels (for us, in mid-December) and huge backlogs built up across the system. We heard from our USPS business rep in Boston that 200 workers were out sick at the giant processing facility in Nashua NH, leading to trucks arriving at the parking lot that couldn't be unloaded. They switched to processing Priority Mail at the facility in South Boston and everything else in Stamford CT, but they weren't able to work through the Nashua backlog until January. One Priority Mail parcel we shipped on Nov 30 that was supposed to be "3-day delivery" arrived at its destination in Kentucky 45 days later, on Jan. 13.
- Spooky23 6y agoThe post holiday COVID surge affected many entities. It’s a viscous cycle, a quarantine in Nashua breaks a process in San Diego! I probably had 50% of my on-site people quarantined during that period, and every vendor was impacted. IIRC, 90% of orders were delivered late.
- flutas 6y agoI believe that backup happened at multiple throughout the country, honestly. I had 2 packages, one to San Diego and one to Atlanta. Both have yet to arrive and both were mailed early December. I'm still getting monthly "we're looking but haven't found them yet" emails from them. I read awhile back (but can't find the source anymore, so grin of salt) that when USPS processing centers get overwhelmed they switch from a queue based system to FIFO. Which would make sense that some packages have been lost for months while newer ones seem to be going through the system just fine.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> I read awhile back (but can't find the source anymore, so grin of salt) that when USPS processing centers get overwhelmed they switch from a queue based system to FIFO. queue and FIFO are the same; from context it sounds like you mean LIFO.
- flutas 6y agoYep, guess I don't need to comment before my morning coffee.
- double0jimb0 6y agoI also operate a DTC company and ship similar volume. 8 years ago, when we started, we shipped exclusively in tubes. The loss rate with USPS was somewhere between 5-10%, it was too painful to measure exactly. I switched to a custom-sized "ear lock mailer" rectangular style box, and lost rates dropped below 1%. My theory was that the cylinder shape was rolling off of some sorting line / conveyor, or possibly the tubes required a different (maybe manual) scan that had a much higher failure rate. So I don't ship in tubes with USPS anymore (UPS and FedEx don't have same issue).
- 34679 6y agoI recently thought a tubed item I ordered was lost in shipment. I found it 2 weeks later in the bushes where the mailman apparently thought was a good place to stash it.
- double0jimb0 6y agoMaybe it rolled in there? Or the delivery agent didn't want it to roll off the stoop, so stuck it in there? Either way, shapes that can roll are not the best choice for items we want to stay stationary!