Not to get political or anything, but has anyone noticed a slowdown in delivery of packages at the USPS? I have orders on ebay and Amazon, and almost all of them pass their expected delivery dates and the USPS message is “in transit but arriving late”. I do realize the heavy lifting that the USPS is doing, has been doing, since the whole pandemic exploded and ordering online became the order of the day for many, many US citizens, but things were actually running fairly smoothly until a little while ago.
Yes, I’ve noticed a slow down. I even talked with my regular postal employee delivery person and she confirms the news stories. She no longer has regular overtime and regularly leaves mail at her distribution point.
Congressperson Pelosi and Senator Schumer met with the Postmaster General and have it on the official, public record this slowdown is real and being ordered by the PG.
Wow, yes, just found this:
Actual public record:
Yes, there is a slowdown and it is deliberate, as noted previously by @bardos and @Duckster.
I can attest that my own mail delivery has slowed. I receive a lot of mail due to the work I do. Additionally, my postal delivery person confirmed that the slowdown is the result of the directives they have recently received.
I find all this extremely alarming. I fear many will not realize or appreciate the importance of maintaining an independent delivery service for our citizens until it is gone.
As someone who actually works at the Post Office it’s complicated. I have heard of the deliberate delays and no overtime stuff but that hasnt occured at my post office and in fact we have more overtime than people willing to take it.
From what I understand we were able to weather the initial barrage of packages fairly well, then the country reopening and closing again sent a second wave of packages that was even worse than before. Where I’m at a lot of people are now taking their “Summer Vacations” they had planned at the start of the year, along with people calling in sick more than usual, leading to a staffing shortage. We also have people who over-exerted themselves in the initial package wave and then went and got doctors notes saying they couldn’t work more than 8 hours a day (so no overtime for them). The new postmaster plus the fact Summer arrived basically lead to all the current slowdowns.
Your local mail carrier will tell you it’s all the fault of the current postmaster general (which I don’t like either, hope he gets replaced very quickly) but that’s because he’s the obvious scapegoat since our Unions really hate him for justifiable reasons. I doubt your mail carrier is going to tell you how many people are currently on vacation or taking extended sick leaves as well.
In my case, she doesn’t have to. My post office is run by exactly 2 people, a contract mail carrier and the person who stays in the post office. It’s obvious, sometimes painfully so, when either of them are away.
I’ve been very suspicious of this for several weeks. Then, this past week, I got a mail delivery on Monday, and (because of Hurricane Isaias) I wasn’t surprised that we got nothing on Tuesday. But then we (and I’m referring to my entire apartment building) got none on Weds, Thurs, nor Friday.
So Friday afternoon (yesterday) I called the main USPS number, 800-275-8777, to complain. (I had wanted to call my local post office, but it is too difficult to find the number.) Of course, I reached a computer which greeted me politely and asked if wanted English or Spanish, but then I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the very next thing the computer said was: “If you are experiencing delivery issues, press 1.”
With just a few more prompts, it texted me a link to my phone, and I was able to give my address and explain the situation with a minimum of trouble. They also had some information about COVID-related staffing shortages, which sounded reasonable. I was very impressed and concluded that they are aware of the problem and are genuinely trying to address it. Coincidence or not, we got our mail today.
And then I came to the SDMB, and I see a very different angle on the situation. I wonder what the real truth is.
IIRC, they don’t give out the local post office phone numbers.
I have the number of my local Post Office, great people who always answer the phone. Not like the 800 number with endless recordings. The number is freely available.
They don’t, but you can usually Google your local one.
Extended sick leaves is a problem at ANY business that is still open, especially the “essential” businesses that have daily public contact.
I’ve had to take over the full-time duties of a co-worker whose been on extended leave all month. Fucking virus.
Well, my local carrier is a union steward. And I am a union steward for a different federal agency. We share lots of things.
The plot thickens: the weirdest thing just happened. Today is Sunday and I received a mail delivery, small overdue package from Amazon… There is never a Sunday mail delivery where I am
Sunday delivery had been a thing that’s been going on in my area for the past several months though it’s packages only.
In the SF Bay Area we have USPS Amazon package delivery on Sundays. Just limited to Amazon packages though…
Don’t forget - destroying the USPS not only screws with the election’s mail-in votes but also screws with Amazon and by extension Bezos, who has long been on Trump’s shit-list.
I’ve noticed all sorts of odd mail delivery issues. I work in the downtown area of a fairly large city. In the last month or so there have been days when there was no mail at all. I had some outgoing mail in our box that is always taken whether I get mail or not - when I come in the next morning it’s still there. I can only assume that a mail carrier never even showed up.
I had an Amazon order that was supposed to be delivered yesterday (Sunday) by 9:00pm. I tracked it in the morning and it showed that it was out for delivery. Packages are usually left in front of our garage. I checked throughout the day and saw nothing. Around 4pm I tracked my package online. It said, “Delivery attempted at 11:49am. Unfortunately USPS ran into an issue when attempting your delivery.” My husband and I were both in the house. I never saw anyone attempting to make a delivery. The dogs would have barked if someone had come into the driveway, but they hadn’t said boo. I think that there was no attempted delivery at all. 
We’d just assumed it was our local post office, who has been egregiously bad at delivering stuff for the past few months. As in, stuff just doesn’t show up that we know is coming. Or it shows up extremely late- weeks late in most cases. This is for anything- parcels, letters, etc…