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Many people are upset with the USPS and that is understandable. But, put the blame where it lies.

Below is a link that describes the top position in the Post Office. That position was filled during the LAST administration, not the current one. The President, who ever it is, has very little LEGAL control over the Board.

Most of the problems I have had with USPS deliveries and mysteriously long trips have been under this guys watch. A one man wrecking crew, in my opinion.

You might also look into why the USPS HAS to fund the workers retirement plan IN FULL, while no other Agency has that requirement. That alone contributes mightily to the financial problems at USPS.

I have to agree that most of the problems have been since 2015 for me. I use to could depend on the service to do their job but it has gotten to doing this job so poorly that I insist on vendors using UPS whenever possible.

I use to buy plates [sheets] of commemorative stamps for my collection but had to give that up when the local office didn't have them or even order them for me.

Right now Congress is looking into making the postal retiree to join Medicare when they retire. I just hope they tax them just like they do us to pay for Medicare or it will kill Medicare.

Our mail delivery is terrible some days it doesnt even run. I dont know what the problem is if they are short on help or just not showing up for work.

Like everything else
ACCOUNTANTS with MBA's who think that management is the same no matter what you manage
Then you get pork barreling with a lot of government departments where over paid executive positions become the "right" of loyal party members .
Then there is the idea that is the technology is right then 1/2 trained monkeys can do the job while swinging from the trees by one arm (private delivery services have the same problem )
Then there is political interfearence so every week you get pointed in a different direction
And of course check to see just how much money DHL , Fedex , TNT slip into the pockets of the parties to ensure the USPS runs badly .

We just sacked the head of our postal service because she gave some top executives Cartier watches as a bonus for doing a deal that was worth over $ 5,000,000 /year
The same government has no problems with rewarding it's own senior executive service hundreds of thousands as a reward for doing a deal to buy submarines from the French or aircraft from the Americans ( the first one crashed on take off on route to OZ and 3 more have gone down since then ) .

If people had the slightest idea of just how difficult it is to get anything from A to B at a reasonable cost then the would appreciate just how good the postal service is.
Where everything got stuffed up is when the international postal conference was due for renewal, the afore mentioned over paid & pig ignorant executives & MA morons from the large shippers ( principally the USA & UK ) wanted the new deal to go substantially more in their favour , but the smaller countries would not sign up.
So now all the country to country postal agreements have to be done on a 1 to 1 basis , which is good for the afore mentions morons cause they get to go to France, Tahiti, Switzerland etc on a government paid holiday ( sorry trade delegation ) to hammer out a contract .
So as of 2010 ( or there abouts ) international parcel post become a wild west frontier.
The upshot of this is all of the very profitable bulk country to country loads are being done by private companies and only the very expensive depot to door is being done by the post office.
Add to that all of the pretend delivery services ( ebay & Amazon ) where goods from overseas are bulked from China to the USA to a private contractor who then puts them in a local delivery package and drops them off to the post office for local ( unprofitable ) delivery to your door .
The USPS ( or Aust Post for that matter ) have no control nor any warning about what is happening as they would have had under the old agreements so Win Fin Ding gets a container with 500,000 items bought on line from China / Vietnam etc .
he slips them into a new bag, or just puts a bigger label over the previous one and dumps then at the local postal sorting depot which of course swamps them
And in the USA there is probably 100,000 Win Fin Dings all doing the same thing every day usually from a rail head where the containers go directly off the ships.

The entire postal system was not set up to do this so it is a case of having to force the square peg through a round hole that is too small on the run .

Anyway I am helping to reduce the load on our postal mail system. I no longer ship via USPS, I send nearly no mail via USPS, and I have requested several vendors not to use the USPS when shipping my company packages. It like the way I dealt with A&I when they started sending emails that were having problems shipping orders as they were so overworked. I simply reroute orders after June 1, 2021 to other vendors that weren't so overworked. So it cost them $3,000 in sales but that is not my problem. Then one other vendor that couldn't get off their backsides to make a change and they lost sales for nearly 7 months last year. I just used one that did work to get things done.

It also doesn't help that our postal system eats their small customers alive on shipping charges while giving large shippers cut throat rates. It like when I mail a letter it is $0.58 for the first ounce but my vendor sends me a letter is it only $0.425. Or like I send a package it is like $7 within the states but when I get a package from China it is $1.50. If we all played on a level playing field would help.

It's past time we rebuild the USPS. We no longer need all of the services we had in the past but rather we need new ones. With the advent of email, on-line banking, internet shopping, remote learning, paperless billing, and Google, we no longer need daily delivery of mail service. The USPS now handles more packages than in the past and less 1st class mail. We need to rethink daily delivery. And Saturday delivery is likely a thing of the past. We can learn to adjust to a more efficient system that will still work for everybody. Not complaining at all about out current system as I have had no problem with it in the last 20 years but I know of others that have a gripe. My local system has been great an day route carrier is excellent. I would not blame the top guy as others have in the past. He walked into a archaic system surrounded by political games. It's a new world.

StarTech said:

It also doesn't help that our postal system eats their small customers alive on shipping charges while giving large shippers cut throat rates. It like when I mail a letter it is $0.58 for the first ounce but my vendor sends me a letter is it only $0.425. Or like I send a package it is like $7 within the states but when I get a package from China it is $1.50. If we all played on a level playing field would help.

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Every business gives larger customers a discount
I get 12% off the Stens normal wholesale price , I get 10% off my Allmowers orders etc etc
Down here if you buy mailers in 100 packs they are 1/2 the price of the single item, if you buy them in 1000 lots they are 1/3 the price.
Not only is this fairly standard retail / wholesale practice it also reflects the real costs .
Walk into a post office, stand in the que , hand over your letter watch them weight & scale it then ring up a 58¢ sale and the post office has lost $ 3 on the sale and that is before the letter has been processed & delivered.
Just like buying corn flakes, the single serve pack is 4times the price per serve than the 20 serve pack
The cost of ordering shipping displaying & selling them is almost the same .
It is the same story except the corn flakes are now the delivery of the letter.
Corn flakes have the manufacturing costs up front, delivery has the manufacturing cost post sale .

Then in theory two 100 stamp rolls should not cost $116.00.

But it doesn't matter as I limit my mailings anyway that way the post office wont be losing on dealing with me nor do I waste money on useless advertising. I think I mail one letter in the last six months and that was to the IRS Monday.

bkeller500 said:

It's past time we rebuild the USPS. We no longer need all of the services we had in the past but rather we need new ones. With the advent of email, on-line banking, internet shopping, remote learning, paperless billing, and Google, we no longer need daily delivery of mail service. The USPS now handles more packages than in the past and less 1st class mail. We need to rethink daily delivery. And Saturday delivery is likely a thing of the past. We can learn to adjust to a more efficient system that will still work for everybody. Not complaining at all about out current system as I have had no problem with it in the last 20 years but I know of others that have a gripe. My local system has been great an day route carrier is excellent. I would not blame the top guy as others have in the past. He walked into a archaic system surrounded by political games. It's a new world.

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We have just done that overhaul down here, or at least started to do it
Letters are now 1 to 5 day delivery ( and that costs $ 2 Aust ) .
Urgent letters are 1 to 2 days but only to selected destinations and they start at $ 5
Letter runs have gotten bigger and now the delivery drivers are required to deliver all parcels under 500g as well as letters.
Drivers who no longer have runs are diverted into parcels and parcel runs have gotten smaller to reflect larger volumes & heavier weights.
New heavy weight parcel routes have been created.

What people forget is USPS 9 Aust post ) are massive oranizations and like supper tankers changing course is slow, difficult and very expensive process.
The letter sorting machine ( which we invented by the way ) sots millions and can take 15 to 30 people to run
But now days the volume of letters going through them the value of the stamp on the letters is less than the wages or the people running the machines .
Then here are things like local sub sorting depots.
Down here the PO rents a small space in a lot of big buildings to sort the letters into floors & offices.
These spaces are now too small so they are renting parking spaces and fitting out trucks to local sort .
Push bikes for suburban delivery are now too small so have to be replaced by small vans like those tiny 3 wheel vans of the 1920's till WWII.

All of this is costing hundreds of millions to do & some one has to pay for it .

StarTech said:

Then in theory two 100 stamp rolls should not cost $116.00.

But it doesn't matter as I limit my mailings anyway that way the post office wont be losing on dealing with me nor do I waste money on useless advertising. I think I mail one letter in the last six months and that was to the IRS Monday.

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100 stamp rolls are a lot cheaper than single stamp purchases or 10 / 20 stamp packs but don't know how much they cost as I only do bulk mailings ones every 4 years.
Those go to a mailing agent who charges me about 2/3 of the PO price .
Remember his mail is franked so the Postage is prepaid when he refills the credit on the machine & the PO does not have to print & distribute the stamps as well.
Then of course his mail is delivered to a mail depot presorted into post codes ( zip to you ) so again is cheaper for the PO.
The very first freight company I contracted to would re-mail around 2 tons of mail a week.
Eventually they made a pre-sort deal so we delivered to the local sorting depot and that scored them a 20% discount ( we got 20% more added to the machine when we refilled it )
Fedex installed the first automatic parcel sorting machine in Aust .
It cost 1.5 million and was considered to be a white elephant in 1984
By 1994 it was working over capacity 24/7 and they were looking to build one 4 times the size
Now they have a massive warehouse complex with a dozen machines each one handleing parcels of different standard sizes .
As I say repeatidly unless you are inside the transport industry most can not comprehend the volumes & complexity .

The good thing about the PO is they employ drivers on hourly rates, so the PO driver pulls up at the gate, gets out walks over to the padlock & chain , looks at it sees the slip link, opens the gte then goes & gets the parcels
The private service drivers are paid per item delivered and a lesser rate for non delivery but when you add the return fee, it woks out more.
So they slow down, look at the gate from 20' away see the chain, hit the "locked gate " key on their scanner then drive away

bertsmobile1 said:

100 stamp rolls are a lot cheaper than single stamp purchases or 10 / 20 stamp packs but don't know how much they cost as I only do bulk mailings ones every 4 years.
Those go to a mailing agent who charges me about 2/3 of the PO price .
Remember his mail is franked so the Postage is prepaid when he refills the credit on the machine & the PO does not have to print & distribute the stamps as well.
Then of course his mail is delivered to a mail depot presorted into post codes ( zip to you ) so again is cheaper for the PO.
The very first freight company I contracted to would re-mail around 2 tons of mail a week.
Eventually they made a pre-sort deal so we delivered to the local sorting depot and that scored them a 20% discount ( we got 20% more added to the machine when we refilled it )
Fedex installed the first automatic parcel sorting machine in Aust .
It cost 1.5 million and was considered to be a white elephant in 1984
By 1994 it was working over capacity 24/7 and they were looking to build one 4 times the size
Now they have a massive warehouse complex with a dozen machines each one handleing parcels of different standard sizes .
As I say repeatidly unless you are inside the transport industry most can not comprehend the volumes & complexity .

The good thing about the PO is they employ drivers on hourly rates, so the PO driver pulls up at the gate, gets out walks over to the padlock & chain , looks at it sees the slip link, opens the gte then goes & gets the parcels
The private service drivers are paid per item delivered and a lesser rate for non delivery but when you add the return fee, it woks out more.
So they slow down, look at the gate from 20' away see the chain, hit the "locked gate " key on their scanner then drive away

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You seem to understand the USPS and shipping a great deal.....can we suggest that you take over and lead us out of the trouble we are in? Common sense is rare these days! Have a great day1

Did local freight for 30 years after manufacturing in Sidney ceased
We pioneered external management of mail rooms & by using the appropriate shipping methods could usually knock 50% to 80% off a companies freight costs .
So we used plain parcel post, priority parcel post , budget overnight prepaid, budget overnight post paid , budget casual returns ( could take a week ) and direct point to point .
I know I sound like a broken record on this but again it was the fault of cookie cutter MBA's applying cookie cutter business management .
One of the things they teach MBA graduates is non core departments should be abolished so the mail rooms got closed down & the receptionist ( had they not been sacked as well ) was responsible for despatching , I mean how hard can it be ? all you have to do is put a label on some thing and call some one to pick it up .
Remember managers have no concept on the problems involved with doing anything.
Things happen because they say they will happen. I call it the God complex and it is running rampant down here.
When eventually they notice that freight has gone from $ $100,000 / pa including the wages of the 2 staff to $ 300,000 /pa they pick up the phone to the biggest freight company in the country and negotiate a massive discount , then pay themselves a big bonus on the grounds of the new contract discounts .
The idea that they could be using 10 companies , each one specializing in their own niche is beyond their lack of imagination and besides that their professor taught them that it costs money to service an account so effiiency comes from having as few service suppliers as possible and prepaying for anything is a sin just short of murder.

One company we went into was spending over $ 500,000/pa because each department did their own despatching .
We made the mistake of knocking that down to $ 150,000 in our first year.
Downside was Mr MBA wanted to see the same reductions every year so after a couple of years when we could not meet his effiency targets they went back to the old system and in no time at all were back to spending way too much & last I hear the transport budget had blown out to over 1.5 mil ( accounts manager went to same gym as my missus ) .

Another place I worked closed down their mail room then got cranky when the managers & more important the accounts recievable department were not getting their mail for 1 to 2 days after it was delivered .
So we got them to change their address to a locked bag at the local PO so it was ready for pick up at 5 am
We picked it up at 6 delivered it at 7 ( could be anything up to 5 bags + parcels ) , the receptionist came in 1.5 hours earlier so the mail was sorted and each department could grab theirs as they arrived . Receptionist was over the moon because she not only got 7.5 hours extra pay a week but the early start meant she got a parking spot and of course was not spending all day trying to do 3 things at once while having every person calling her to see when they could get their mail .

Eventually the big companies realized there was a lot of money to be made by doing the same thing & crowded out the market with all sorts of BS discounts that MBA's fall for every time.

Prime example was one of our customers who did a lot of work for a fast food company & a cigarette company .
Both of these used one of these BS freight managers who do things like offer massive discounts, if they do all the work, including the pick ups from clients, so strait away that doubles the work because previously the sender would pay .
Because the transport company had a captive customer they gave them trash service but for our customer to use us to deliver to these two companies I had to supply him with an inflated price list so I could discount our prices to 10% lower than what was currently being paid , which by the way was just short of double our normal rate .

There is no accounting for lack of common sense in some companies.

Here since I am the chief cook and bottle washer I have control over whose service I use. Moving just six miles changed the way I got things delivered.

Overall USPS is a complete failure. Packages and mail is sent all over the place before it arrives, if it even arrives. Tracking on packages show them just in centers for days or being sent back to the point of origin several times.

UPS is half of the quality service I use to get but still way better than USPS. UPS is improving after five years but I still have around 5-10 different drivers. Still one day later on deliveries than before which is because I am on the edge of the local center service area. Fedex does fairly well when used. The rest of the carriers just don't service my area.

When my vendors started charging a convenience fee for using credit cards, I had to raise my prices to make up for the additional charges. That was until I got them switch me over to bank drafts which no fee was charge for. Now one get their payments within a couple days electronically while one other get theirs by paper check in two plus weeks. This ties up my line credit with them so I had reduce purchases as to stay within the credit limits. So order parts from other vendors that don't tack on an additional fee other the price quoted. Of course the fee is included in the quoted price but there is no surprise charges.

One vendor offers free shipping at $200 but eats you alive below that. That why I having to charge Canadian retail prices on their products just to cover the shipping to my US customers. I working on replacing them so I can reduce my prices back to normal. Purchases from them went from over $3000+ per year to only $430 last year. Now they are threatening to cut me off because of their failures. Now of course when I do place an order I make it like 200.02 just to get their goat even if I have to order a throw away item. No point of paying around $45 on a $192 order when I can order a junk item, throw in the trash, and still save a lot overall.

Common sense vanishes the seconds ego appear fishing for bonuses .
I am cranky because USPS no longer posts to Australia because as previously mentioned every country on the plane has to make bi-lateral agreements & obviously the head of Aust Post is just as pig headed & arrogant as the head of USPS.
Same with stuff I buy from China , Vietnam, & Hong Kong.
all the vendors want me to use one of the fancy dancy private companies but China post gets things to me in 10 to 15 days usually for 20% of the price.
The USPS used to be 14 days for orders from Jacks. UPS & Fedex both get the goods to their Australian depots in 5 to 10 days, and there they sit for anything up to another month while they try to sting me for anything up to $ 200 customs clearance & quarrintine fees .
And of course they use the "best track & trace technology in the world " so of course they pay on a piece rate so badly only the desperate take up the delivery contracts so my order could get delivered any where or not at all because I am in a suburb that straddles the border between city & regional zones so the "best technology" will not let the driver scan in the packages if the driver is out of his delivery zone .
The post office driver over rides the system and makes the delivery because he can speak, read & write english so leaned how to use the magic box and is -paid by the hour notby the delivery .
The Fedex, DHL, UPS , OCS drives just get confused then I get an email telling me I have to drive to their depots & pick it up because I have an undeliverable address .
Now I ring the credit card company & get the order payment reversed because of non-delivery , then Jacks ring me and usually the next day the "undeliverable" parcels arrive .
Australians are pretty laid back as far as deliveries are concerned
The Stens orders take 3 days to turn up , RGS I pick up , it is 1/2 hour away & I do the supermarket shopping on the way back then call into the butchers, poultry farm ( eggs & meat ) and a couple of farm stalls as well so it is a deductable trip.

I like the USPS. Most friendly people driving those little trucks. Gladly handing your mail to you when you are at your mailbox. Offering some well earned chit-chat. Always brightens my day..... ?

Just wait till they figure out how to tax emails, LOL. Then text messages will be next.

You know like they did on internet purchases out of state? Now this one fired me up. My package doesn't even go by or even pull in to any building in MY state, at all. No person in my state, other than my USPS folks touch my package. But yet my state gets sales tax on that internet purchase. My state did nothing to earn it.

Bert Basically you and I have learn which carriers provides to us the best service for whatever we ordering. Now each carrier would like us to do everything through them but in real life it is just not possible.

Slomo, the sales tax on end users I do see being needed as most business transactions that are business to business are tax exempt provided you have a business license for resale. This exemption just makes sure the end user is not double taxed. End users are just trying to abuse the system by not paying their fair share of the taxes. Here when I get taxed on an order I just pass it along as part of the retail price and add the additional sales tax to bill so the customer is actually the tax twice. Even my business pays sales tax on items we use in house like office supplies.

I actually do pay taxes on my email through the internet monthly bill. But don't think that USPS hasn't tried to get emails charged like regular mail here in the US even they are not even providing the service.

Technically if a business bought a product at retail price and paid the sales tax and they resell the item the only sales tax that needs to be collected is on any markup over the price oaid. Total PITA but i have done that on expensive parts i have to source retail for a customer's machune. I pass the cost along to the customer but i only charge sales tax on my markup.

Yes it is pain to do it that way. Extra record keeping to justify the written on the sales tax reports since it is a small amount usually. I simply don't keep a separate file just for sales tax paid on purchases. I have been lucky that 99.9% percent of my purchases are exempt.

But it is one reason I no longer buy thru Walmart website as they refused to honor my state's exemption certificate. I just get the local stores to honor it. A bigger pain as I has get them to order the items and for me to pickup them up.

from the beginning Dejoy's mission and purpose for being in the job is to destroy the usps as it was - he comes from private logistics background and has successfully driven customers to those other companies. by slowing the usps, the customers (all of us) get disgruntled and look for some kind of change and I am sure, in my mind, that his ultimate goal is to try to privatized the UPSP which will be as disastrous as private prisons that have neither saved money nor been as safe and efficient as a well run govt (not for profit) is. rant over

I get tired of excuses for the Postal Service. Bottom line is that when you do not have to earn a profit to stay in business, you're going to suck.

joea99 said:

Many people are upset with the USPS and that is understandable. But, put the blame where it lies.

Below is a link that describes the top position in the Post Office. That position was filled during the LAST administration, not the current one. The President, who ever it is, has very little LEGAL control over the Board.

Most of the problems I have had with USPS deliveries and mysteriously long trips have been under this guys watch. A one man wrecking crew, in my opinion.

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I never noticed any problems until after Jan 21 2020. Postage skyrocketed along with gas, groceries and mower parts. Sellers are using the cheapest service they can to ship. That means its slower. Post office has had financial problems for decades but the service has never been better. Postal service aint amazon dude. You may want to bring up topics you know a little more about rather than a sneaky political bash like this.

I notice it in 2019 when the person on charge of post office throw out all the high speed sorting equipment in a junk pile. Then told employees to sort by hand can you see all that money rusting away now at a snail paste? Fed X got rid of him and Trump hired him now we are stuck with him can't even him.

Don't you have a lawn to worry about??? I have no idea what the mail has to do with this group.

We had minor issues over 25yrs at my last home where mail went to same house number but next street over so we had to switch our mail out all the time like on they did on that Cheers episode..lol
Now days USPS mail has clearly gotten worse though.
We moved to the country a few yrs back and our mail just disappears for one thing??
We have our mail setup to have a picture emailed everyday so we know exactly whats "supposed" to be delivered? Whats pictured dont always make it to us but other letters/boxes pictured with it are in the box? We get 97% or so?
Its not stolen out of the box we know that or they'd steal the packages too thats for sure.
Some mail just dont make it from our post office to my box?
Then theres the "No knock door deliveries" that are done today after we all know package theft is on the rise? Wth is that ignorant bs?
I can guarantee this decision only gives theives a lot more time to steal your chit. Thats all its doing so no question our mail system today costs senders and recipients both a lot more money. He is one ignorant p.o.s. running no make that "ruining" the show.

I think the USPS does a great job considering the volume they do. If I want to, I can mail a letter cross country for 58 cents, good deal I think. 75% of purchases from Amazon I get in two days, some things in one if I order before noon. I don't buy much from Ebay, what I do comes by Fed Ex. Usually a week. My mail lady is great, if I get a parcel to big for my box, she brings it to my door! I give her a card and a little bonus on Christmas.

And only package I've ever lost was a t-shirt coming from China, got a refund so I didn't really care.

Tommy Mckeown said:

Don't you have a lawn to worry about??? I have no idea what the mail has to do with this group.

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Well most here do their own repairs so we order parts for mower/tractors and many on here ship those parts so it is relivent to most here in the group.
I can understand its not for members who drop their units off to a shop everytime it needs a spark plug or air filter cleaned out and just get letters in their mail box. I get they dont see it being relivent.

Then you are one of the lucky ones. In my areas mail has been dump in the local creek a few times. About six packages last got lost in the system. As I said before I don't use the USPS any more than absolutely necessary due to their poor performance.

Tommy Mckeown said:

Don't you have a lawn to worry about??? I have no idea what the mail has to do with this group.

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Well some us have businesses that depends on parts deliveries to be on time.

Tommy Mckeown said:

Don't you have a lawn to worry about??? I have no idea what the mail has to do with this group.

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This is the Front Porch section, more or less, an Off Topic forum.

StarTech said:

Then you are one of the lucky ones. In my areas mail has been dump in the local creek a few times. About six packages last got lost in the system. As I said before I don't use the USPS any more than absolutely necessary due to their poor performance.

Well some us have businesses that depends on parts deliveries to be on time.

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I'm 16 days on waiting for a USPS package from Dallas Tx, to Conroe..... just says "Moving through the usps system"

Off topic but a funny USPS story.
I used to service the copiers and printers at a city post office. Before 911 i parked in the mail truck lot and walked in and went anywhere i needed to go. After 911 everthing changed. I had to park in the customer lot and had to be escorted everywhere. No big deal but they also had a new rule where only postal employees were allowed on the sorting floor. I serviced a printer on the sorting floor that printed off paperwork the contract mail carriers needed every day. Well, the printer went down and the man in charge of security would not let me on the sorting floor. OK. Your rules not mine. The postmaster was crapping bricks because the contract carries had not been able to deliver mail for 2 days. The security guy said he answered to someone besides the postmaster. Absolute cluster. I had an FBI clearance and a DoD top secret clearance and a top secret clearance from the NSA but i can't be on the post office sorting floor. Really? The security guy said to move the printer into another area but it is about the size and weight of a Smart Car. After a lot of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and undelivered mail they let me on the sorting floor. You just gotta love bureaucracy at its finest.

Wake up! DeJoy (or DeJerk as I refer to him) has sizable interests in competing carriers that want to force USPS out of existence so they can gobble up a bigger piece of the pie, will have less competition, and can raise prices even higher. Trump made him Postmaster Master General 1) as a political payback for Dejoy and his cronies contributing a chunk of change to Trump's presidential campaign, 2) in an effort to derail mail in voting because Trump believed it would benefit his re-election chances to screw up mail in voting and 3) DeJerk is doing everything he possibly can to destroy the Post Office from the inside out. So far, he's doing a bang up job of just that. Why the Postal Board of Governors hasn't kick him to the curb yet mystifies the mind.

Scrubcadet10 said:

I'm 16 days on waiting for a USPS package from Dallas Tx, to Conroe..... just says "Moving through the usps system"

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Just had a package make it clear across the US to the next town over just 30 minutes away from me then took off & landed two states over. Tracking stopped there. 3 days later it magically shows up on my porch..lol

MowManMow said:

Just had a package make it clear across the US to the next town over just 30 minutes away from me then took off & landed two states over. Tracking stopped there. 3 days later it magically shows up on my porch..lol

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Most times when that happens it is a tracking error.
Stand by a supermarket checkout and note how amy times the scanner s misread a bar code & the operator has to pass the item through a dozen times before they give up & type in the code manually,
When track & trace was introduced I argued against it because I knew what would happen.
Customer service departments would be swamped with people confused because it looked like their delivery had passed them by .
Getting some thing to your door can go in a strait line , or zig zag across the country it all depends upon capacity & depot management
Some have no provision for storage so every thing that comes in each day has to go out .
Some depots have extra capacity & some don't
And of course if you have 150,000,000 items a day passing through a system that was never designed for that scale there will be problems.
Add to that every one remember the one that went hat wire.
No one remember the 300 that were delivered in good time & in good condition , just the one that went weird.
People have no idea about how the system works
They think that every depot consigns a truck to every other sorting depot directly every day and of course they all go overnight by truck even if that means the truck would have to have been doing 200mph all the way .
When Peter Ariens was here, he wanted to set us Stens deliveries so he could guarantee next day delivery anywhere in OZ.
He then realized to do that he would need to have 9 warehouses of which only 2 would break even .
I am sure many of you know cities where it takes close to a full day just to drive from one side to the other let alone stopping 200 times on the way through .

People from outside transport & distribution are always full of critism about how bad it is & how much better it could be
People from inside the industry look at it with awe & wonder that it actually works as good as it does.

Much like people from outside mower repair will tell you it only take 1/2 to service a mower so a 2 week back log is all because we are lazy, unskilled, untrained & disorganized

people seem to lack reading comprehension that this somewhat off an Off Topic forum section.

Tommy Mckeown said:

Don't you have a lawn to worry about??? I have no idea what the mail has to do with this group.

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Every part I buy for my tractor, zero turns, UTV come by mail.
I order them all online.
Can't remember the last time I went to a dealer for a part

Bert. What got me confused years ago here is that we have main sorting facility locally but all our mail and packages has to go 150 miles away to be sorted just to come back to same post office it originally left to be delivered. But considering how they throw mail and package in the sorting facilities it is a miracle anything to where it is going without going all over the place which at times it does.

The only thing for me to do is to use the carrier that provides me with best service and avoid those that don't. Just common business sense. If USPS improves then I will start using them again.

Today I got a package notice that shipped UPS Friday and should only be one day business day out but apparently UPS is taking Valentine's day off so it schedule to be here Tuesday.

And Bert I can agree those that don't do the work have no idea of what is needed to be done. It like me taking over half a day to repair a rusted out deck on a Toro ZTR today. The main problem was that one of the idler mounts broke out but as cleaned and welded other areas just keep popping up needing addition time to repair. I finally got 95% of the damage repaired but the rest is just not repairable. The customer thinks it could repaired within 30 minutes.

@StarTech Sounds like things are going for your about like this week has gone for me. Just put a $161 carb kit in a Command 30 hp earlier in the week and had it running like a well oiled machine, and had ran it Tuesday to move it around the shop and everything was fine. Go out 8 am Wednesday morning and start it and is now running on one cylinder. Further testing showed that one of the DSAI modules had failed, so then had to order and install a MDI conversion kit.

And just found out today that Lady that had written me a bad check back in September has plead no guilty and is requesting a jury trial for a $270 check. So will now get my money drug out even longer. But had already decided that I will never see my money because about this same time she was arrested for Home invasion with bodily injury and is facing 6-30 years if convicted in the next county over.

Got re-funded on my return I posted about, in a different (now Locked) thread.

How Track & Trace works, or rather does not work
Star who is now in Detroit wants to send Rivets who has semi retired to Long Beach Cal a package
So Star rings up Loss & Damage freight to ship it because they are the cheapest .
L & D are the cheapest because they have no trucks & just sub-contract everything out .
So now the job is in the computer Detroit to Long Beach economy 5 lbs which is tied to a con note number
Because there are a sqillion con notes and a lot of them are the same , that then get tied to a job number which is unique to L & D freight.
The L & D computer has the package , we will call it P1 at Stars workshop
Vic the van driver picks it up, but he is a subcontractor so his data terminal can not link to J & D's computer so T & T still shows it as being on Stars floor .
Vic presorts for all of the subcontracting he does so it goes in the South West bag to be delivered to a feeder truck that delivers to L & D's depot in Cincinniti
When he swaps jobs with the feeder , again it does not get scanned because the scanner has no facility to transferr the P1 to the feeder truck, just the S_W bag . The feeder drops it off it get scanned in so in a split second T & T has it going from Detroit to Cincinniti .
next the Cincinniti depot drops it into a crate so the computer moves the job number from their depot to the crate, and it keeps track of that crate, not the individual items in that crate till that crate is broken down for final delivery.
Now the crate gets loaded in to Tom the Truckies 20 ton truck and then the crate number is transferred to the truck.
So T & T will show your packages as being where Tom's truck is
Tom drives the truck down the road to Louisville where he unloads it on a transfer dock where the crate does not get scanned in
So T & T has it as "uploaded Cincinnitti depot current destination where ever Toms truck is
Next Tom goes to Ontario so T&T will show your package as being in Ontario , not on the floor Louisville because until the crate is scanned in again, T & T has it in the back of Toms truck.
The Louisville depot loads crate 1 into another subcontractors truck to go to L & D's Dallas distribution depot where it gets scanned in .
When this happens L&D's computer shifts your job number to the Dallas distribution center whereas for the past 3 days it has been reporting your parcel as being where ever Toms truck was .
The Dallas depot loads it onto a 40 pallet truck that is going to Monterry so cheap Mexican labour can do the fine sorting before it gets consolidated into a full rail cars worth of freight to Long Beach So again T & T will show your package as being where ever the train is .
AT Long Beach the rail car is broken down & the local delivery stuff is sent to the final distribution depot in LA
So if you look at the T &T history is appears that Stars package went almost all the way to Long Beach, then back up to Louisville then down to Monterry then back up to Long Beach then up to La then finally to Rivets who has died from old age waiting for it to arrive .
This happens because just about no one does the entire move themselves.
They all use contractors for some if not all of the depot to depot bit and in most cases the weird travels are not because your freight is bouncing all over the country like a a pin ball , it is because it is sitting on a dock waiting to be scanned in but the T & T computer always shows it as being where it was last scanned .

And then there are miscans
I had a consignment from Hong kong marked as delivered 1/2 hour before the plane it was on touched down in OZ .
ANd then when my package was sorted, it could not be delivered because it had already been delivered
Starting to sound like a Monty Python sketch yet ?
And it s a 3 hour drive directly from the airport to here .

ILENGINE said:

@StarTech Sounds like things are going for your about like this week has gone for me. Just put a $161 carb kit in a Command 30 hp earlier in the week and had it running like a well oiled machine, and had ran it Tuesday to move it around the shop and everything was fine. Go out 8 am Wednesday morning and start it and is now running on one cylinder. Further testing showed that one of the DSAI modules had failed, so then had to order and install a MDI conversion kit.

And just found out today that Lady that had written me a bad check back in September has plead no guilty and is requesting a jury trial for a $270 check. So will now get my money drug out even longer. But had already decided that I will never see my money because about this same time she was arrested for Home invasion with bodily injury and is facing 6-30 years if convicted in the next county over.

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Yelp I had those weeks here. I just had a customer to want is Craftsman mower repair to come in two days later when the parts were arriving to cancel the repair work. Then when I returned the mower he thought I had it repaired. When I said no it not repair as you didn't want it repair he flew mad.

I actually had about three weeks of bad luck but things seems to working out now. And had similar thing to happen with an ignition coil. I got a mower running, shut it down as a thunderstorm was inbound. The next day it would not start. Somehow the lightning strike a 1/4 mile away fried the coil.

I have learned my lesson that I have to use small claims court to recover my money at times. It cost one customer over $300 to get out of a $100 repair job. Of course I haven't seen any repairs from her or her relatives but that is fine.

Bert. I think you just figured out my problem. They think I am in Detroit, MI when I am in Denver, CO.

StarTech said:

Yelp I had those weeks here. I just had a customer to want is Craftsman mower repair to come in two days later when the parts were arriving to cancel the repair work. Then when I returned the mower he thought I had it repaired. When I said no it not repair as you didn't want it repair he flew mad.

I actually had about three weeks of bad luck but things seems to working out now. And had similar thing to happen with an ignition coil. I got a mower running, shut it down as a thunderstorm was inbound. The next day it would not start. Somehow the lightning strike a 1/4 mile away fried the coil.

I have learned my lesson that I have to use small claims court to recover my money at times. It cost one customer over $300 to get out of a $100 repair job. Of course I haven't seen any repairs from her or her relatives but that is fine.

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I have also gone the small claims court avenue in the past. But with bad checks I turn those over to the state's attorneys office and they take care of the paperwork. No filing fees for me, and unless I have to testify no time running back to forth to court over a several month period while it works its way through the court system.

Last bad check I got was also for a $100. But in the case of bad checks through the criminal system. They end up with a misdemeanor criminal record and then have to pay restitution plus court cost. Which in the case of the $100 check, they had to pay restitution to me of $135 and $593 in court cost, so that $100 check cost them $728.

Bad checks is why I am mainly a cash only business. Only my well establish customers are allow to pay via checks. I have been lucky in that sense as I had only one bad check since that case and the business customer just forgot to make a deposit on time. She called me before got my notice and things were taken care of quickly. I no longer accept the old I pay in a few days after I receive my equipment back, most will no pay once they get the equipment back.

The way banks charge for bounced items makes rough on the bouncer but there are still those that do it until they go to jail for it. Sometimes I think some just like jailhouse food.

Bills don't come on time if at all, racking up late charges. After talking to the carrier, complaining to the post office I was told to send it registered mail, at an extra cost to me. I guess if it's being tracked, they have to do their job. I thought if I paid for stamps it was supposed to be delivered. Mail carriers change every month sometimes weekly. I have gotten mail for the next town over and delivered it myself. I have found checks for my address blowing on the lawn. Bills paid and put in the mailbox 200 feet from my house get lost 4 at a time, never to be seen again. My opinion is that they are dumping mail, they have gotten a Don't care, lazy, attitude while being paid to do their job. If you get paid no matter what happens, not a thing will change until they lose their job.

jjdc said:

Bills don't come on time if at all, racking up late charges. After talking to the carrier, complaining to the post office I was told to send it registered mail, at an extra cost to me. I guess if it's being tracked, they have to do their job. I thought if I paid for stamps it was supposed to be delivered. Mail carriers change every month sometimes weekly. I have gotten mail for the next town over and delivered it myself. I have found checks for my address blowing on the lawn. Bills paid and put in the mailbox 200 feet from my house get lost 4 at a time, never to be seen again. My opinion is that they are dumping mail, they have gotten a Don't care, lazy, attitude while being paid to do their job. If you get paid no matter what happens, not a thing will change until they lose their job.

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You can do like some of us. Have your billers to send bills via email and pay using your banks bill pay system. If I depended on the mail to get bills and payments on time to where they need to go I would be in arrears on everything lately. Even utility bill which use arrive on the 1st is now arriving after the due date of the 15th. Calling them to get on the email bill program this week as my neighbor gets his by email so I should be able to do the same.

Since it is a federal crime to interfere with the mail those dumping it needs to serve time for doing it but most they are relatives so they just get fired. Oh if in the mail system your letter might 50+ years to get delivered.

What once was a dependable service has gotten to be very unreliable. Just think all those live animals shipments where the animals have died because of their uncaring ways. Leaving them out in the sun to roast to death or in the cold to freeze to death is just not right.

joea99 said:

Many people are upset with the USPS and that is understandable. But, put the blame where it lies.

Below is a link that describes the top position in the Post Office. That position was filled during the LAST administration, not the current one. The President, who ever it is, has very little LEGAL control over the Board.

Most of the problems I have had with USPS deliveries and mysteriously long trips have been under this guys watch. A one man wrecking crew, in my opinion.

You might also look into why the USPS HAS to fund the workers retirement plan IN FULL, while no other Agency has that requirement. That alone contributes mightily to the financial problems at USPS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postmaster_General

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StarTech said:

Then in theory two 100 stamp rolls should not cost $116.00.

But it doesn't matter as I limit my mailings anyway that way the post office wont be losing on dealing with me nor do I waste money on useless advertising. I think I mail one letter in the last six months and that was to the IRS Monday.

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Mailing a letter gor $0.59 cents 8th

joea99 said:

Many people are upset with the USPS and that is understandable. But, put the blame where it lies.

Below is a link that describes the top position in the Post Office. That position was filled during the LAST administration, not the current one. The President, who ever it is, has very little LEGAL control over the Board.

Most of the problems I have had with USPS deliveries and mysteriously long trips have been under this guys watch. A one man wrecking crew, in my opinion.

You might also look into why the USPS HAS to fund the workers retirement plan IN FULL, while no other Agency has that requirement. That alone contributes mightily to the financial problems at USPS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postmaster_General

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The comment regarding U.S.P.S. retirement is outdated. Postal Service employees just like any other federal employee are under the Federal Employee Retirement Service [FERS]. Effective JAN 1st 1987, any new employees hired goes under FERS. In FERS, all employees pay for their Thrift savings plan [401k] as well as their "pension" [obtain 1%/year for each year worked]
https://www.opm.gov/retirement-services/fers-information/
During 2020, it was reported that less than 4% of the total Federal Government workforce was still on CSRS [the old retirement system that paid for a pension like other coporations did in the 1940s til the early 1980's]. For postal service ees that would be less than 2% of the workforce at best.
And to dispell another rumor, THERE ARE NO DISCOUNTS FOR POSTAL EMPLOYEES. No discounted stamps, no discounted shipping charges, etc. Employees pay the full freight that customers pay.

Here is an article on CNN about what going in Washington in reference to the USPS.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/14/politics/usps-reform-act-explainer/index.html

bertsmobile1 said:

Every business gives larger customers a discount
I get 12% off the Stens normal wholesale price , I get 10% off my Allmowers orders etc etc
Down here if you buy mailers in 100 packs they are 1/2 the price of the single item, if you buy them in 1000 lots they are 1/3 the price.
Not only is this fairly standard retail / wholesale practice it also reflects the real costs .
Walk into a post office, stand in the que , hand over your letter watch them weight & scale it then ring up a 58¢ sale and the post office has lost $ 3 on the sale and that is before the letter has been processed & delivered.
Just like buying corn flakes, the single serve pack is 4times the price per serve than the 20 serve pack
The cost of ordering shipping displaying & selling them is almost the same .
It is the same story except the corn flakes are now the delivery of the letter.
Corn flakes have the manufacturing costs up front, delivery has the manufacturing cost post sale .

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Ok, assuming everything you just said is true, can't they at least smile and say ""Thank You", or would that be adding additional services?

Bert, I’m still alive and kicking. I’m living on liquid nourishment if you buy.

LawnWizard said:

Ok, assuming everything you just said is true, can't they at least smile and say ""Thank You", or would that be adding additional services?

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Forced smiles & faked courtsey like you suffer at McDonalds is worse than being grumbled at.
One of the places I contracted for decided we could not say happy christmass just in case the person we were with was Hindu, Jewish, Muselum etc etc and they encouraged customers to complain if we did & revoked the contracts of any offenders.
Same with words commonly used by Aussies like mate , pal, sport, cobber, stang , it had to be sir or maddam & nothing else.

Working face to face with Joe Public is a problem at the best of times & judging from the comments here they probably get a lot of stick from unhappy customers.
US wages are by & large very low , no idea how counter staff are paid by the USPS , but Aust Post pays minimum basic wages to counter staff & living on that is not easy .
Have you ever tipped the counter staff when they go above & beyond to help you ?