USPS FINALLY arrived 6 weeks later

rockfla

rockfla

Well-known member
Okay
I know from my previous post all the 411 BUT I thought I would share the "metrics" of the this box and USPS. This is THE most traveled box in history


It traversed the continental United States 7 times. According to maps on my phone from Whitter CA to me here in FLA is 2400 so its has traveled a minimum of 16,800 miles not including the trips up to North Carolina and Tennessee from here It has been to 5 states...California, Arizona, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina. 4 out of the 5 multiple times. It has 70 scan entries from the USPS handling it. It has been to 5 local Postal Distribution centers here in Jacksonville FL. one of them 4 times, one of them 3 times. It took 6 weeks to get from door step to door step. AND as you can see, labeled pretty clearly with address & phone number AND the one "other" label on the box, clearly "X'd" through the addresses. The sender "resent" me a replacement during all of this and it took 3 days to get the replacement!!!!
 

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I've used the USPS for many years and have learned a package sent regular mail can have problems. I use the USPS provided priority flat rate boxes for lots of the parts I ship. I send them Priority Mail which is a fixed rate for each size box. It's usually 3-4 days from Nebraska to the east or west coast. Strangely it can take longer to go from here in the eastern end of the state to the west end than to go to CA. I did have one a few years ago that went between 2 post offices in Pomona CA.for over a month.
 
Robert, I'd actually spoken to the postmaster in my local office just last week in regard to the "new & improved" service the USPS is now offering.
I have had a number of pieces go "missing" in the past two months. Both simple letters as well as packages.
To my surprise, she quickly pointed out that yes indeed, the service is getting poorer and poorer. As an example, she told me their office (in Kenosha, WI.) had just that morning received a package to an address in Alaska.
If the USPS new business model is to raise process and offer continuingly worse service, then they are on track.
 
Mike
Here at my office, it is "routine" for Us to call our customers (99% local) for "Past Due" invoices and just yesterday called one for a past due invoice from June and the check was mailed on July 11th....Locally.....its now Aug 14th, still NO check in the mail!!!!! I had another one mail a check to me last year about Thanksgiving time and it arrived February of 2024, his office is 14 miles from me!!!!
 
Yeah I might have you beat on that. I had a package sent from PA to AR go to NY then Canada to England back to Canada. Do a tour of Canada then NY and on to AZ then to AR total time was 3 months
 
In fairness, your photos suggest the sender is at least as much to blame as USPS, if not way more. It isn't humans reading the addresses, its machines (scanners). The postal code, the second-most important part of the address is obscured by wrinkles in the packaging because it is written too close to the edge of the package and writing a pone number on the same line as a postal code is a surefire route to scanner uncertainty. Worse yet, all those bar codes haven't been blacked out completely. No wonder that package went round and round.


All in all, I'd lay 95% of the blame on the sender and only 5% on USPS.


My advice is to not buy from idiots.
 
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I think David's explanation makes all the sense in the world.

We live in a computer and scanner world. If someone writes a phone number where the scanner would look for the zip code, then it's the dumb human's fault.
 
I have a similar problem, but not near yours. An Ebay purchase is floating back and forth between Islip Long Island and New Paltz NY. The USPS in Highland NY can't seem to liberate it when it's upstate. I ordered it a month ago from a place in the Carolinas.
Like you, this has happened before to me when bar-codes get smeared. The address is clear, but the electronic reader only sees the code and ships it off to BFE!!
Good luck in the future. JP
 
DavidG said:
In fairness, your photos suggest the sender is at least as much to blame as USPS, if not way more. It isn't humans reading the addresses, its machines (scanners). The postal code, the second-most important part of the address is obscured by wrinkles in the packaging because it is written too close to the edge of the package and writing a pone number on the same line as a postal code is a surefire route to scanner uncertainty. Worse yet, all those bar codes haven't been blacked out completely. No wonder that package went round and round.


All in all, I'd lay 95% of the blame on the sender and only 5% on USPS.


My advice is to not buy from idiots.
Click to expand...
Dave, I will agree with you for the most part. However, personal experience suggests that even well written envelopes seem to go awol all too often for my liking.
I'd sent out a package last month to an address in NJ. I printed the label directly off of the PO website. I am careful to lay it flat on the box and to leave a "window" open over the bar code.
That package went all over the USA for two weeks prior to finally arriving at the correct destination.

I do know that boxes must be rid of any and all non-relevant information these days. My guess is as you suggest, the machines get "confused".

And Robert, that "X" over the label is a joke. I am more than a bit surprised that the PO accepted that. I am in complete agreement with David that the guy that shipped it is well, less sharp than the corners of that box.
 
It's not just packages. Here it is the 14 of August and I handed a flat rate envelope with official USPS mailing label on it and a hand printed address on a #10 envelope to my mail carrier on July 31. She scanned in the flat rate envelope and put the #10 envelope in the mail.
The flat rate made it to New Jersey in 4 days -- so much for 3 day delivery service, but the hand printed #10 envelope has not made it to Illinois from MN.
 
last week i received two fathers day cards from my daughter dated june 16. strangely they had no postmarks or cancellation stamps on them.
 
DavidG said:
In fairness, your photos suggest the sender is at least as much to blame as USPS, if not way more. It isn't humans reading the addresses, its machines (scanners). The postal code, the second-most important part of the address is obscured by wrinkles in the packaging because it is written too close to the edge of the package and writing a pone number on the same line as a postal code is a surefire route to scanner uncertainty. Worse yet, all those bar codes haven't been blacked out completely. No wonder that package went round and round.


All in all, I'd lay 95% of the blame on the sender and only 5% on USPS.


My advice is to not buy from idiots.
Click to expand...
David
I agree with you, after receiving the package and seeing all "evidence"....My frustration comes from both my business and operation is "STILL analog" (for lack of a better description) in a "Digital" world and we have "adapted" to make the two worlds co-exist.....I guess I expect the same from USPS or at least at "some point" for that "human interaction" to take place......which it DID....just not as quickly as expected. Unfortunately on Ebay, by and large you cannot "pre-qualify" or Pre-judge your seller. Looking at all the data I posted, Its quite remarkable it did make it to the intended destination!!!!
 
Question - is the side with the label have the same delivery address as the side with the written address. If different, which is correct ? If not, perhaps the scanner got the addresses mixed up. An X is not is not going to cut it as far as blanking out the incorrect address. When using a previous used box, I make sure the old label is removed, especially the bar code so a scanner does not pick it up.
 
DavidG said:
In fairness, your photos suggest the sender is at least as much to blame as USPS, if not way more. It isn't humans reading the addresses, its machines (scanners). The postal code, the second-most important part of the address is obscured by wrinkles in the packaging because it is written too close to the edge of the package and writing a pone number on the same line as a postal code is a surefire route to scanner uncertainty. Worse yet, all those bar codes haven't been blacked out completely. No wonder that package went round and round.


All in all, I'd lay 95% of the blame on the sender and only 5% on USPS.


My advice is to not buy from idiots.
Click to expand...




Agreed. That labeling and lack of attention to the package did not help.

It was the first thing that I noticed.
 
It used to be people that looked at a parcel and placed it in the proper bin along it's route but that is not the case in the modern era. Machines do all the scanning and routing now days. If the machine can't read the parcel's address properly or it has a glitch in it's software then it is very interesting how it ever makes it to the proper address. Folks need to be aware of how to place addresses on parcels and how to properly prep that parcel to reduce the possibility of the machines misreading what is on the package. Bar-codes are the way most machines read things but there are also codes applied during inprocessing of parcels so any step can be flawed by machine printing gliches as well. It's a wonder how well the system still works at this stage in the game.
 
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