"Postal Carrier Problems" Topic

I'm curious, has anyone else noticed a tremendous increase in problems with postal carriers over the last couple of years?

Particularly with USPS, Canada, and UK Royal Mail, I've had a huge increase in shipping problems, both as the shipper and recipient particularly since January of 2015. The frequency went from about once every couple years prior to that, to about 2-4 per month now.

Proportionally USPS is still good on the huge majority shipments, but still, I now have monthly errors. Nearly half of my orders from the UK have problems (for example, I'm still haven't received either of my January orders from the UK), and exactly half of my shipments to Canada get lost for months before re-appearing.

Anyone else experience a sharp increase in shipping problems, or am I just that lucky?

Hmmm, hard to say, since my ordering and shipping is fairly rare.

I did have some items never leave the UK once. Took a month or two to get that sorted out, and a refund issue. Didn't want to chance it again, due to tighter Paypal terms back then for buyers, and making claims. Never reordered that stuff, sadly.

Also had stuff inbound from the UK to the USA take about 30 days for delivery, since apparently they wanted to inspect the plastic models a bit. Got a nice note from the inspectors apologizing for the delay.

I've heard of more dense resin and metal items being returned to the sender as being "too dense" to process. Seems to me they're talking about the inspectors, and not the materials, if you ask me.

Its largely down to homeland security – fear of terror etc , especially as the UK is seen as a hotbed of activity ( Richard Reid factor ) .

Haven't had any problems. My designer in the UK ships me the figures he designs and they arrive in the USA in about a week. Never had a problem.

Not that I've noticed. Of course now that I've made that statement…….

DM

Don…..you're doomed…

Figure orders from the UK to western Canada I find are inconsistent.
One shipment from from Front Rank disappeared for almost 3 months. I re-ordered, with Alex giving me a serious discount.
The re-order arrived in two weeks. The following day the original order arrived.
Now I had double the figures I needed.
Fortunately our group is large and I sold all the extra at full price, forwarding the money to Alex. Seemed the decent thing to do.

Additionally, other orders shipping times vary considerably, anything from 2 to 6 weeks.

Glad your luck has mostly been better, gives me some hope.

Canada has been weird in that virtually every other package arrives at the destination in 5-10 days, and every one in between takes ridiculously longer.

I order product for my business from then U.S. all the time.
I have found that Canada Customs CBSA, has a threshold of approx. $75.00 USD for customs duties, handling charges and taxes. Under that, it usually gets through no problems. Between $75.00 USD and $120.00 USD it is a hit and miss if they will charge additionally. Over $120.00 USD it will definitely be held and charged.

I know in the US more and more postal employees are being hired on as "temporary" so they don't have to give them insurance and pension. Then after they are there for a while and coming up on there time to be made permanent they let them go and hire new "temporary" employees.

Doesn't make for very good morale and I'm sure the number of people that care about what they are doing is going down.

USPS – never any problems.

Royal Mail – only problems are when they look at the package for customs. Add 1-3 weeks to delivery.

Canada Post – Worst mail system in the civilized world. Delivery seems to be very random. If the person lives in a metro area there are usually no issues but the farther out they get the more issues there are. Canada post takes 1-4 weeks with no consistency. I ship 5 same size packages to the same area and they all arrive at different times.

No changes for me with either domestic or international from the UK. Orders to the US have been delayed and taken up to 14 days but that isn't common, 5 days is about normal.

The past four years, my overseas ordering has lessened considerably, but in February, a parcel from the UK went missing. My first ever (one was attributed to a mistake on my part- a sign-in reverted to an old address, and I didn't notice when ordering).

I don't know how new this is but in the last 6 months or so I have received packages on Sunday from the USPS.

To be honest I have had no problems ordering from States, UK or Australia and having packages arrive in a timely fashion all the way to rural New Zealand.

For me, in Texas USA I generally find the following;

From the UK; 2 to 4 weeks depending on customs
From Australia; 10 days to 2 weeks
From Canada; four weeks minimum.

So far (knock on wood) nothing missing. Within the US 2-4 days. Unless of course someone decides to use "Smart Post" which is a mixture of either UPS or FedEx and USPS. If that's used then you double the shipping time (i.e. if USPS alone would get it here in 4 days "Smart Post" will take 8). I always ask about shipping method and if the only option is "Smart Post" I won't place the order.

From the UK; 2 to 4 weeks depending on customs
From Australia; 10 days to 2 weeks
From Canada; four weeks minimum.

The second and third are, logically, a bit of an inversion!

> I don't know how new this is but in the last 6 months or so I have received packages on Sunday from the USPS.

Amazon has a deal with them where USPS delivers items on Sunday for their 2 day shipping. Maybe they have it with others as well.

Beast Rampant , and yet that's my experience. Canada is by far the slowest.

Interesting story: Shipped a package to Belgium from USA. Somehow the postal code was mislabeled and it ended up in ….wait for it… BELARUS! Yep. Sure did. Good part is that the postal service in Belarus sent it to the correct address in Belgium. I was stunned to say the least.

I've had one package (from China) go missing in the past 4 years. USPS has been spot on all the time, the UPS/FedEx folks lag a bit behind.

I've had a huge number of problems with USPS since moving to my current location, but I cannot say if it is the fault of the USPS in general or the local office (who are utterly incompetent and have not once returned a phone call nor even called me back after I showed up in person in the several years I have lived here).

However, I can say I ask everyone who ships to me to avoid USPS and I do pay extra for FedEx or UPS if they are options.

In fact just this morning a package was listed as delivered by USPS to my home, but no package was here…

I have had TERRIBLE problems in the past year and am currently nursing along three separate complaints with USPS regarding missing/undelivered items from shippers overseas, sales via Amazon.UK, eBay, and indie sellers. (Texas resident here.) I finally rented a PO box at a different post office branch because our local USPS carrier was completely unreliable and nothing was ever done by my designated post office, even when I took my complaints to the US Postal Inspector's office and met in person with the branch office manager. There seems to be zero accountability at the US post office and it's a crapshoot if you live in a reliable, efficient area or luck into a competent carrier or not. Our neighborhood routinely gets fill-in carriers as well. My items never arrive, or neighbors bring them to me misdelivered, and I frequently receive mail addressed to neighbors.

But even with all important items now shipping direct to a different post office that I drive to several times a week to check for deliveries, things just flat never show up and usually an international package can't be traced, or can't be insured. I have had one package come from Holland, tracked to Customs in Chicago, and then vanish. I received another parcel months late in a crushed box and stamped, I kid you not, "MISSENT TO BERMUDA".

I am tearing my hair out on a daily basis keeping up with all this and emailing sellers to ask for replacements, refunds, or tracking assistance or having to make replacement orders. This is devouring hours of wasted time every week. I'd give up entirely if I simply didn't HAVE to go overseas to obtain many things unavailable domestically. But this factors into every buying decision now. To make things worse, many sellers now will not ship to the US, they tell me it isn't worth their bother to deal with so many lost orders.

PS: Oh, and the latest inbroglio -- the local USPS has taken 11 days to deliver a small padded mailer across town! (Sent media mail, but this is only 15 miles!)