Marked Delivered & Does Not Arrive Until 2 Days Later
So I am seeing an huge increase in the number of packages that are being marked delivered when the customer has acually not recieved them. I use a 3rd party shipping program to ship via USPS. I had over 14 customers contact me this week, 4 were from this morning. The packages typically do arrive 1 - 2 days later. As you can imagine, I have a number of upset customers. I always send out a new package or refund the order but this is getting rather costly. Is anyone else having the same experience? I hear USPS will be penalized when orders are delivered late. Is this the case? This is strange because the orders are being marked delivered days before they are due.
I would love to use Amazon for shipping, but it seems to be rather difficult to do it in bulk. Is there anyway to have Amazon print the order invoice on the same page as the label?
12 replies
Seller_MHcH0dquJpKBx
I’ve had five in the past 3 weeks. As in your case, they usually show up within the next 4 mail deliveries and are rarely theft-after-deliveries (that being the worst-case possibility). The buyer typically panics and gets upset, but I’ve actually developed a form letter because I had gotten tired of writing the same things to try to calm them down.
Like you I also use the third party shipping and have been doing so happily since 2003. Amazon USED to accept label-record readouts indicating the address as adequate proof of sending to that address, and it’s a bit offensive to longtime sellers to be getting an implicit message that they’re no longer trusted that the current policy sends.
The current policy reminds me of the Microsoft case (remember back in the 90s when the USDOJ went up against Microsoft for requiring sellers like Dell to carry Internet Explorer as a condition for pre-loading Windows? The charge was that they were anti-competitively using a dominant product that sellers had to have (Windows) as a cudgel for forcing other types of products on the vendors and therefore the customers (IE).
Hmmm…wouldn’t be any parallels here, would there? The third-party PC postage vendors would be in a position similar to Netscape and I’m surprised if they’re not hopping mad, as they could have customers leaving and saying they liked the service, but couldn’t keep automatically “losing” Amazon cases because of not being with Amazon’s own favored service.
(This isn’t an issue on that big four-letter “auction” site, BTW).
Seller_Qu9WFWyHpoXS3
I don’t know if this is what is happening in your area - but my postal carrier told me that my local post office routinely marks items as either delivered or “attempted to deliver but no one home” when they are overwhelmed. The packages never leave the post office, an employee just comes along and scans them. This way the local P.O. don’t get a ding on their delivery metrics. Like what you are seeing, the packages usually show up a day or two later.
Seller_9XSaMU2AR8oDK
Add to that, the USPS/Amazon deal means AMZ labels take priority over all other packages.
Seller_CW0P5hgbsiqWX
Yes, that happens. The letter carrier just wanted to get the item scanned so it shows he did his job. They leave it on the truck and deliver it another day. They just don’t know that anybody recognizes what they did.
Seller_JW7Fj3QsJr8aj
Just had it happen yesterday with an item I ordered from Amazon myself. USPS showed “delivered” at 4:52 PM. It wasn’t.
It was scanned as delivered (again) and actually delivered today at 2:30 PM. It doesn’t help that whenever USPS scans a package as delivered, the Amazon app throws up a delivery notification on your smartphone/tablet/whatever. I’m sure this causes a lot of customers who wouldn’t otherwise be babysitting tracking info to make contact.
FYI, when you go to the Amazon customer-facing help pages and select the “find a missing package that shows delivered,” it suggests waiting 36 hours for a supposedly delivered package to arrive. Which, to me, says that Amazon is aware of how often this happens and that they aren’t terribly concerned about it.
Also had one that I ordered about a month ago that got a “business closed” scan to a residential address on a Saturday around noon. It was delivered Monday. Luckily for me, most things I order are not very time-sensitive, but it’s still annoying. I never had these types of issues until my (excellent) regular mail carrier retired in mid-2017.
Seller_IZ5lvEic6oGAx
In many cases, it’s just a carrier that doesn’t want to finish the route that day, but doesn’t want it counted against their job performance. I had one marked “no access” once for that reason - showed up the next day with exactly the same “access”.
Seller_ujScHTwvcsrwf
are you refunding before the delivery window has been breached? I would have the customer wait if there was still time in the delivery window.
Seller_djTuXBGvnEJ3Y
Yes, I am experiencing more non receipt cases as of late. And also, over the years, I have seen numerous cases of packages delivered a day or two AFTER the package was scanned “delivered”. Usually the package was still in the mail truck and the mail carrier must not have seen it in the sea of packages.
Seller_6uER0LOmGqVVu
Thanks for all your feedback!!! I am going to come up with a standard letter that asks the buyer to wait another 36 hours. Amazon does same thing. Someone also mentioned this on this thread. So far, so good. However, this issue has been happening to me daily so we will have to see. I tried speaking with USPS, but I bet you can guess how well that went.
To be fair, let’s not forget that some of our postal friends are under just as much pressure as we are. I drop off mail to the business department at the post office and those guys are always understaffed and overworked. If it is indeed true they have their own performance metrics, well, I feel their pain.
