14 ms·
International Mail Service Suspensions
- jhugo 5y agoThe linked article focuses on New Zealand because it's from a New Zealand publication, but service is actually being suspended to 22 countries. It would probably be better to link to the USPS notice directly, which is mentioned but unfortunately not linked to in the RNZ article: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international/welcome.htm https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...
- Factorium 5y agohttps://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international/welcome.htm https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international... Afghanistan Guadeloupe New Zealand* Tajikistan Australia * Laos Reunion (Bourbon) Timor-Leste Bhutan Libya Saint Pierre and Miquelon (Miquelon) Turkmenistan Brunei Martinique Samoa Yemen Cuba Mayotte South Sudan French Guiana Mongolia Syria How much of this has to do with Australia and New Zealand maintaining closed borders?
- irrational 5y agoOutside of Australia and New Zealand, I can understand most of these (gee, I wonder why Afghanistan?), but what is going on in Samoa that prevents mail delivery?
- angry_octet 5y agoVery few flights due to COVID and no vaccines.
- smnrchrds 5y agoSaint Pierre and Miquelon is less than 20 km from the coast of Newfoundland (Canada). It shouldn't be that hard to get stuff delivered there.
- mig39 5y agoThat doesn't make much sense. USPS can just deliver to France and let them deal with it. Or drop it off in Canada and they can forward it. There's a ferry that runs between St. Pierre and Newfoundland a bunch of times every day. It's still running. Regular flights to St. John's, Newfoundland, even Paris, France are still happening. I don't understand this at all -- it's not like USPS was literally flying a plane to St. Pierre, was it?
- tdeck 5y agoAlso Samoa is right next to American Samoa, which is a U.S. territory.
- markdown 5y agoAmerican Samoa has had tight border restrictions, including from the US mainland. Samoa even more so, given they had a high death toll from a measles epidemic there two years before covid struck.
- Dylan16807 5y agoMore directly, Samoa is only allowing one cargo flight per week right now and it doesn't go to American Samoa.
- gao8a 5y agoI am Canadian and I just learned about this, wow
- smnrchrds 5y agoPeople always think Canada has only one international border: with the US. But in reality, Saint Pierre et Miquelon is so close to Newfoundland that there is no international water between them. So in addition to our land and maritime borders with the US, we have a maritime border with France. Also one with Greenland (Denmark), but that's too arctic for anyone to care about.
- 5y ago
- bellyfullofbac 5y agoI guess the closed borders mean significantly less flights into those countries, therefore significantly less room in the cargo holds for mail. My guess is cargo planes are still flying in goods, but they cost a lot more so that USPS has decided it's losing too much money... As far as I know, passenger flights find out the weight of their passengers and luggage, and then sell the remaining space/weight allowance for cargo, I wonder if that's how most overseas mail are delivered. For time-critical or heavy stuff this system is a bit random, obviously, so if you want to deliver something heavy you'd buy space in a cargo plane instead...
- petschge 5y agoFrench Guiana is where ESA launches rockets from. Anybody willing to bet if JWST is going to get a tiny little extra delay because the US can't get paperwork down there?
- shakna 5y agoAustralia has to do with Australia Post and the backlog. They've closed down intake for October, to try and clear the backlog, and introduced new customs requirements.
- paranoidrobot 5y agoDomestic delivery for Australia Post is backlogged significantly[1] There's reports that AusPost's parcel facilities have so many packages to process, that they're queued up outside (in some kind of undercover area) waiting to be processed. I only have anecdata to support this, but my own parcels from even one or two suburbs away have taken over a week. A parcel from Newcastle to Sydney sat for two weeks in one of the major parcel facilities with no updates, presumably in the aforementioned pile-up. A parcel from Germany showed being processed outbound in Germany in late April, and then complete silence until it turned up in an AusPost facility in early September. It's all very random, though, and not consistent - two packages from the same seller in Melbourne sent two weeks apart arrived in reverse order one day apart - one taking one week, the other three. They passed through the same processing facilities in tracking. I've now given up having any idea how long things will take to arrive. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-01/expect-parcel-delays-to-continue-through-to-christmas/100504602 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-01/expect-parcel-delays-...
- jccooper 5y agoIf you keep going down the page, you get actual narratives about the problems. For Australia, for instance, Australia Post has closed the office that handles incoming mail. New Zealand is more vague, but is basically turning down mail processing due to COVID restrictions.
- teruakohatu 5y agoUSPS implies it is because of COVID restrictions. NZ Post is accepting mail, but there is a shipping capacity crunch and very little air cargo capacity. Another way to look at it is USPS did not anticipate a crunch by buying capacity in advance. NZ Post allows us to ship packages from the US to a US warehouse which then ship to NZ. This is still operating with delays. Amazon seems fine with deliveries not being delayed at this point.
- Taniwha 5y agoInternational AirMail mostly travels in the holds of international passenger planes - those are just not flying - package deliver to NZ (DHL/Fedex/UPS) is mostly OK, but plain old mail, not so much
- jhugo 5y agoI count four widebodies between Auckland and California (LAX/SFO) in the air just as a random check on FR24 as I write this, so there's certainly capacity for some mail if USPS want to buy it.
- pkaye 5y agoDo people in NZ normally buy stuff through the US Amazon website? Is that because there are more options/better pricss?
- lostlogin 5y agoAmazon just isn’t that good here. The shipping is either impossible and requires you to use a third party service which gives you a US postal address, or shipping is outrageously expensive. It’s one of the things that happens when you live too far away I guess.
- blondin 5y agothere was an announcement earlier this week saying domestic delivery will be delayed in some areas as well. if i recall correctly, this is due to some internal changes and not entirely due to the pandemic.
- techrat 5y agoIt's due to DeJoy's ratfucking. Let's not obfuscate this.
- potiuper 5y agoThe board shares in the guilt.
- Bud 5y agoThe board is all Trump appointees. The board and DeJoy are basically one and the same. The goal here is to intentionally degrade USPS until it can be killed. This then makes mail delivery an entirely private business, and also allows easier Republican ratfucking of vote-by-mail going forward.
- ceejayoz 5y agoThere are three Biden appointees on the board.
- ceejayoz 5y agoDownvoters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Governors_of_the_United_States_Postal_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_of_Governors_of_the_Unit... Two of Trump’s nominees were Dems, too, because: > No more than five governors may belong to the same political party.
- jareklupinski 5y agoI was about to ask "why Timor-Leste?" but answered my question by checking the state dept page: > Country Summary: Timor-Leste has seen isolated instances of police responding to protests with force and the use of tear gas. Stone throwing attacks on vehicles can occur during gang conflicts and periods of unrest. Gender-based violence is high in Timor-Leste, and sexual harassment is fairly common. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/timor-leste-travel-advisory.html https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...
- Symbiote 5y agoThat's not normally a reason to suspend delivery. It's Timor Leste's postal service's problem to do the final delivery. I can still send mail there from the UK (which seems to have no restrictions) or Denmark. https://www.postnord.dk/en/service-interruptions/reopening-of-denmark-and-europe https://www.postnord.dk/en/service-interruptions/reopening-o...
- tssva 5y agoThe list has been updated to include New Zealand but service to many of these countries has been suspended for quite a while.
- robocat 5y agoOriginally linked article: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/452764/united-states-postal-service-suspends-mail-deliveries-to-new-zealand https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/452764/united-states-pos...
- SllX 5y agoSo, something I’ve been wondering here. USPS cites an unavailability of transportation as the reason, and apparently rental car companies are having a rough time of it as well. Is there a lot of deferred maintenance on vehicle fleets that’s catching up to us now? Lack of parts? Maybe some tie to the chip shortage of all things seeing as how automobile manufacturers are also having to shut down plants due to a lack of chips?
- bombcar 5y agoI doubt many cars are driving to New Zealand even for mail. So whatever planes normally carry the mail must be unavailable, as it doesn’t appear to be saying the countries are refusing it.
- jnsie 5y agoThis article [0] may shine some light on what is impacting rental car companies. [0] https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-13/car-rental-problems-persist-until-at-least-2022 https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2021-09-13/car-rental...
- vharuck 5y agoI liked how another poster explained rental car business models, and how the pandemic royally screwed them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28568896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28568896
- judge2020 5y agoIn most cars you don't often see anything that would require replacing a computer chip-enabled part. From BLS, "air-conditioning repair/electrical system repair" and "Vehicle audio and video equipment" accounts for <4.5% (presumably based on rounding to 0%) of all vehicle repairs, with <0.5% being attributed to audio/video equipment. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/americans-aging-autos.htm#:~:text=TABLE%201-,Average%20expenditure%20and%20frequency%20reported%20for%20various%20types%20of%20maintenance%20and%20repair%2C%20by%20average%20age%20of%20vehicle,-(s)%2C%202012 https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-3/americans-aging-autos....
- jdavis703 5y ago
- DarkmSparks 5y agoPeak oil predicted this sort of thing, given whats also happening in the UK atm with petrol availability and natural gas prices, this is smelling more and more like the 70s only without an OPEC to bribe our way out of it.
- p2t2p 5y agoI don’t see how oil is relevant to post offices closed and air traffic stopped due to COVID restrictions
- pengaru 5y ago> Peak oil predicted this sort of thing, given whats also happening in the UK atm with petrol availability and natural gas prices, this is smelling more and more like the 70s only without an OPEC to bribe our way out of it. There's a global pandemic disrupting everything, it's been in the news, maybe you've heard about it?
- DarkmSparks 5y agonot sure that explains why saudia basically halved oil production in 2019 or north sea oil peaking in 2004 and now all but at zero production. Saudia Lying about their oil reserves seems a lot more plausible to me.
- pengaru 5y agoYou're the only one talking about oil, I never said it explains anything related to oil. TFA makes absolutely no mention of oil, you're completely off the map. The port of LA had a queue of container ships 40+ deep waiting at sea unable to unload for weeks ~a month ago. Are you going to say peak oil caused that too? It's not like those ships were out of fuel.
- cinquemb 5y agoI doubt it would be like that if all the bailoutistan operations hadn't happened or the global lockdown olympics in response to something that has become endemic.
- chris_wot 5y agoThey have also suspended deliveries to Australia.
- sen 5y agoYeah I couldn’t figure out why my US deliveries were failing to show up until I checked my junk mail and noticed messages saying all my orders had been cancelled (from multiple online stores) and I had to contact each one separately to arrange refunds. Online shopping is a clusterfuck lately of no stock and shipping issues, and unrelated-but-relevant, Gmails spam filtering lately is atrocious.
- peterburkimsher 5y agoMore data points from New Zealand, 2021: 36 parcels delivered, 11 parcels undelivered Packet loss rate: 23% From the US, 3 months: SparkFun: I placed an order on 2021-05-23, it arrived on 2021-08-16. Worse, the NS73M FM transmitter and the Raspberry Pi Zero W inside don't even work. From the US: Nooelec: I ordered an SDR on 2021-06-09, and it still hasn't arrived. From the US: 4 parcels from eBay sellers were delivered. From China: From AliExpress, out of 31 orders, 5 of them have not been delivered. I tried to appeal one of them, AliExpress insist that it was delivered and refused to refund. Therefore I now have no recourse but to write negative feedback when parcels aren't delivered before the 90-day feedback deadline. From China: From eBay: 4 undelivered (order dates between 2021-07-31 and 2021-08-14), 2 delivered. From Hong Kong: From eBay: 1 undelivered (order date 2021-06-28) From Germany: From eBay: 1 undelivered (order date 2021-07-06) From Lithuania: From eBay: 1 delivered (order date 2021-02-05, delivered before 2021-03-19) From Taiwan: a Christmas present arrived from my girlfriend in about 3 weeks. A birthday present from my girlfriend arrived very quickly, in about 10 days! From France: a birthday present from parents arrived after about 3 weeks, thankfully just in time. Another parcel from them included an eBay order from France to France that was delivered quickly. From Switzerland: another birthday present from parents, arrived after 6 weeks. They'd taken it to Geneva airport because they thought it would be quicker.
- bbarnett 5y agoProbably gmail wants you to click on "not spam" for each, so they can verify you actually have a relationship with each miscategorized(on purpose) email sender.
- richardatlarge 5y agoThat's not news worthy! I'm from the US, living in NZ, and let me tell you, unless the delay is more than 6 months, the average time it takes won't change significantly. My mother still sends me b/day cards and has learned to send them on my b/day, but for the following year !
- mdoms 5y agoI'm a kiwi and get things shipped from overseas all the time. Your post is simply untrue. Why are you spreading misinformation?
- richardatlarge 5y agooverseas? well that's a lot of places; USPS to NZ can be insanely slow, everybody knows that
- PostOnce 5y agoIt's normally about 2 weeks for me, USPS from east coast USA to NZ
- richardatlarge 5y agoI was only making a joke, because my experience is a shocker, but then again, I'm referring to letters being mailed, on a stamped envelope. If you look at something like shipments from Amazon, that's a whole different story. But I'm not sure they're the norm.
- cmod 5y agoJapan postal service stopped shipping to most of the world last year and are still (I believe) not fully back to world-wide shipping. Supposedly because of JAL contracts and a lack of commercial flights on which they'd usually piggyback.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- bjornstar 5y agoI was going to comment about this as well. We've been unable to ship packages from Japan to the US for the past 20 months. I heard that as of yesterday we are now able to ship again, but all custom forms & address labels must be printed rather than hand-written.
- Scoundreller 5y agoIs that for legibility or are they fearful that you might smudge covid-19 onto the labels? (Which is pretty backwards given how rare contact transmission is).
- bjornstar 5y agoMy assumption is legibility, should be a nice cost savings when you don't have to read handwriting.
- AnssiH 5y agoMy guess is that it is because electronic customs info is now mandatory (e.g. US STOP Act), and the printed labels come from a system that can transmit this info. With handwritten labels the postal service at the shipping end would have to read them and push the data to an electronic system manually. In Finland handwritten customs labels are still allowed, but you need to register the customs data online since Dec 2020 (or the cleark can do it at the counter).
- maxgashkov 5y ago
- angry_octet 5y agoThis is just cost control. I just had FedEx deliver a package from the US to Australia, it took 48 hours (and four days for the warehouse in Sydney to send me an email about customs inspections fees) and cost US$32 for several kilos of electronics. So freight is expensive but the expense depends more on the volume of the shipper.
- op00to 5y agoWhere is your proof? This has been like this since COVID started. Dejoy is destroying usps but this ain’t his doing.
- angry_octet 5y agoDo you want a receipt? A tracking number?
- throwawayswede 5y agoWth is going on with Australian and NZ governments I don't know, what I do know is that people need to vote those suckers out... Don't listen your politicians and do say hi to your neighbors.
- lostlogin 5y agoHow does this comment relate to what the story is about? I’m missing something.
- paranoidrobot 5y agoCare to elaborate why you think the AU and NZ governments should be voted out? Given that the governments are very different from each other, I don't see much in the way of commonality there.
- sonthonax 5y agoI think it’s the smug xenophobia of their zero Covid policies that people are irked by. It’s effectively calling the rest of the world unclean. It’s eventually going to spread and take hold, but until then, their leaders get to bask in technocratic adoration.
- paranoidrobot 5y agoYou're not the person that I was replying to. > xenophobia [...] unclean [...] technocratic adoration That's some emotive language, and projecting viewpoints that I don't think represent the beliefs or thoughts of most Australians or New Zealanders. > their leaders get to bask in technocratic adoration. That you're saying this about Australia indicates you're not aware of the political situation at a state or federal level in Australia. Governments at all levels have been criticised broadly and constantly over their actions (or lack thereof) in relation to the pandemic. Overall the broad strategy of both countries is to limit the spread long enough to get the country vaccinated. The only way to effectively do that, is through zero-covid approaches. Oh, and by the way - the zero-covid strategy was only adopted by the States in Australia - the federal government didn't (doesn't) want that to be the policy, but the states forced it anyway. These strategies would've been even more important if a vaccine took the 2-3 years that most experts were projecting that it would take to develop, produce and deploy an effective and safe vaccine. For the most part, these strategies have worked, they've limited the number of deaths, the number of people in hospital.
- reilly3000 5y agoThis is part of DeJoy’s wider cost-cutting plans that were approved in March and are coming into effect now. The are transitioning towards ground transportation vs air mail, increasing postage costs, reducing office hours, automating some processes, and more. It’s all to mitigate a projected $168b loss over the next 10 years. This wouldn’t be needed if they weren’t mandated to pre-fund their retirement accounts or buy separate health insurance, but that is up to Congress to fix.
- coryrc 5y agoEveryone should be mandated to pre-fund their retirement accounts. Not doing so is part of why we get so many fewer government services while paying ever higher percentage of GDP.
- maweki 5y agoDon't forget, it's a service. It doesn't lose money, it costs money. Otherwise please always say "lost" instead of "costs" for all military spendings, and all other government agencies.
- cs2733 5y agoI agree with the sentiment but for all intents and purposes, pretty much any organ within a State is run like a for-profit corporation. Their "income" is taxation, fines, etc.
- hansel_der 5y agoi don't see how that's relevant
- jpmoral 5y agoThis doesn't sound right. It's a pretty big claim.
- mpyne 5y agoI suspect the claim is along the lines of stories like this https://news.usni.org/2021/09/22/navy-plans-to-cut-1000-civilian-jobs-close-u-s-base-libraries-in-280m-cost-savings-drive https://news.usni.org/2021/09/22/navy-plans-to-cut-1000-civi..., where the U.S. Navy is working to fire 1,000 civilians due to budgetary pressure. Even government agencies (even the military!) can't spend inordinately, they have to fit within a topline like private companies have to. There are differences of course but there's a lot of similarity as well.
- gnarbarian 5y agodo we need the USPS anymore?
- bl4ckneon 5y agoDo you still want mail? USPS is obligated to provide mail to every place in the USA no matter how far away or small the communities might be. So yes we still need them.
- dylan604 5y agoHonestly, I don't know that I really do want mail any more. It's pretty mind boggling that for <$1 I can send an envelope anywhere in the country in a matter of days. That's cool and all, but I can't think of the last time I even thought that would be necessary. Important bills are electronic now a days, and I haven't received a holiday/birthday card with $5 from relatives in decades. I frequently forget to even check the mail box, and when I do, it is filled with traditional junk mail and the random politician solicitations. Oh, and the random mail for previous residents at this address.
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoI think this is an extremely bubbled view of how mail works in the United States and the relative access of the internet. A good chunk of the United States doesn’t have reliable internet, but will have consistent mail service.
- dylan604 5y agoThe question posed: Do you still want mail? I responded no. You come back with some out of scope non-sense about thinking outside of me. That's not the question. If the question was "should the mail system be abolished", we can have the discussion you want, but maybe you should ask that question. The original question as actually posted followed with "yes we still need them".
- 5y ago
- 57844743385 5y agoThe USA like a third world country can’t afford a global mail.l system.
- URfejk 5y agoIt said military and diplomatic mail would not be affected, unless noted. What a joke.
- kodah 5y agoSomeone can correct me, but generally I think the military receives mail in the US and delivers it via their own planes. I'm also not sure why that'd be a joke even if it wasn't the case.
- cheschire 5y agoRelevant: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_mail#U.S._Military_Postal_Service_(MPS) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_mail#U.S._Military_...
- op00to 5y agoThe military and diplomatic service have their own couriers that handle their mail.
- qwertyuiop_ 5y agoThis is due to supply chains choking. Lack of truck drivers, containers spots on air cargo. If they is choice to pick up food or mail, I guess is other contractors and logistics partners are picking transporting food and medicine instead of mail.
- TeeMassive 5y ago> It said this was due to "impacts related to the Covid-19 pandemic and other unrelated service disruptions". I think it is time that the causality of the pandemic is re-evaluated. Covid-19 didn't cause any significant loss to the workforce. The cost-benefits analysis of the public-health measures needs a serious update.
- betwixthewires 5y ago> Effective October 1, 2021, the Postal Service™ will stop selling international postal money orders destined to Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, as well as Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. A customer who wishes to purchase an international postal money order destined for these countries must do so before October 1, 2021. I know there's a lot of talk in this thread about commercial flight disruptions and supply chains, but what's up with this? That's almost the entire non-US Caribbean that you can't send money to through USPS.
- swiley 5y agoProbably to discourage people from fleeing whatever comes after the vaccine mandates.