I did too - low priority handling. My WAG is that they stack stuff up in a big bin and deal with it once a week, as part of a deal with Amazon. Maybe they get temp workers in once a week, or rotate their casuals/PTFs onto Amazon free shipping rate packages that one day.
Some of it has to do with the distribution system. When I was in college, mail from Madison, WI took a couple days less time to get to Chicago than vice versa, but apparently the Chicago-to-Madison mailing could be sped up by using a different town’s mailbox. This was due to the other town using a different distribution center in the western suburbs of Chicago, rather than one out south which took longer to apparently get the north-bound mail where it was supposed to go. Same general idea as how FedEx routes (or used to) everything through Memphis even if it’s going across the street, except that the USPS is using trucks to do it rather than super-fast planes.
Ah, hmm. That’s something different then. Maybe someone’s screwed up at the distribution center then (like you said, mishandling all their Amazon shipping) - unless you got anything slower than priority, in which case that might be “normal.” Ugh, I hate to think that might be the case.
Might be the issue of how the distribution centers in your area operate. Is the trouble only with Amazon? I mostly stopped buying from them because I didn’t want to pay for very fast shipping, and other mail-order places didn’t seem to have that holdup problem.
Unforseen circumstances like a terrorist attack and members of the PO being killed by Anthrax? Let’s be fair here, I think it’s reasonable to expect SOME delay under those circumstances.
I’m with DesertGeezer; hats off to the USPS! Consider the sheer volume of mail they move and how infrequently they lose or mangle any of it. I’m amazed at the staggering number of tiny postcards they manage to get from distant lands to your door without them falling behind a file cabinet somewhere.
Re: the Amazon free shipping. I’ve never had a problem with this, but I wanted to note that they don’t always use the USPS for it. Depending on how much you order it sometimes comes UPS or other shipper. I’ve ordered stuff with the free shipping and had it show up as fast as the express mail order (like two days.)
A couple of years or so ago, I worked for a few months as a casual clerk at my city’s mail processing center. A casual clerk is another name for a temporary employee. The processing center has several subdivisions within it: hand-sorting mail, machine-sorting mail, sorting magazines, sorting packages, etc.
The first place I worked was hand-sorting mail. About half of the employees working with me were younger kids, probably under 25. I took to the job, as it was easy to master, and wasn’t as physical as, say, digging ditches. Once all the mail for our area was received from the shipping trucks, our job was over for the night once we’d sorted the last of it. Of course, we were sorting all night, and a shift usually lasted anywhere from 6 1/2 to 8 or so hours. Rarely did we go as long as 8 hours. I was pretty much left alone, as I worked and didn’t socialize with the others. I didn’t really notice what pace the other workers were setting for themselves until one of the ‘veterans’ (a younger kid who’d been there a year or two) told me that I didn’t need to go so fast. From the words he used, I gathered that I was making the others look bad.
After a month of that, I was transferred to one of the mail-sorting machines. I liked this better, because it was me against the machine. It had two stations: feed the mail steadily into the machine so that it doesn’t run out of things to sort, and the other guy was responsible for making sure that none of the 60-someodd mail bins (all in one long row) didn’t fill up with sorted mail. I liked the ‘race’ of emptying the bins (well, not ALL the time) – during the first three weeks of this, I lost 17 pounds. The folks running the sorting machines were harder workers than the hand-sorting crew, but then that was almost dictated by trying to keep up with the machines and keep them running instead of sitting idle.
I moved on to another job after a little less than three months, but I thought I’d offer this little glimpse of my experience with the inner workings of getting mail from Point A to Point B. I’m sorry I couldn’t put forth any explanations for the inconsistencies we’ve all had to deal with.
I rarely post “me toos” but–me too.
The Decatur PO recently transferred out two supervisors who had apparently been hand-trained to harass union members, and the monthly rate of union grievances plummeted from 50-60 a month to about five.
I’ve had exactly the opposite experience. I love that they’re using USPS - UPS always seemed to disappear with my books for several days, sending them to exotic locations. (It started in Portland, why did it go to Nevada?) and then, the drivers refused to deliver them, and just left sticky notes (occasionally without ringing the bell first). And I’d then spend an hour going out of my way to UPS location to get the package 5 days after it could have been delivered.
With USPS, the book appears. Often earlier than Amazon promised it. It’s so nice!
An interesting…well, I guess so…thing happened the other week when I tried to send an express package to my family in southeastern Missouri. Apparently there’s no such thing as overnight delivery, I had to pay full Express price for 2 day delivery. Would Priority have taken 4 days? Who knows.
I will say I have seen friendly and seemingly competent customer service people at the post office. They do exist! And UPS has let me down several times, I will never use them again.
Sometimes Amazon uses UPS (I’m sure there are plenty of rants about them as well, though I’ve gotten lucky) for their free shipping. I got stuff from them in two days once, with free shipping.
When we lived in California my brother’s Nintendo Powers got stolen out of our mail constantly. I mean CONSTANTLY. Nintendo was great about it, sent all sorts of goodies as well as another copy to make up for it. Some post office employee’s kid was getting free magazines, which still pisses me off.
And my ire reached epic proportions this morning listening to Imus on the radio, who was raving about how quickly a DVD arrived that he had ordered from Amazon. ‘Boy aren’t those people great,’ and blah and blah and blah.