Chris Hayes does report on USPS mail delivery being slowed down on 7-27 show (must see TV)
Looks like we’re starting to get more widespread awareness that something’s going on at the USPS and delays could be getting worse rather than better. Chris Hayes did a full segment about this on “All-In” on MSNBC tonight (Monday 7/27) that is well worth hunting down on YouTube. Hopefully they will also excerpt it to the MSNBC site.
The purpose of this post is not to get into any of the political aspects like how it could be trying to sow skepticism about mail-in balloting, etc., but rather to point out that the problems are real and growing, might be in part deliberate (Hayes’s guest certainly believed so, pointing to the new postmaster general and a memo to slow down the mail), and could lead to piles of INRs for sellers here (regardless of politics) where Amazon just automatically suggests after 2 weeks or so the item may be lost (it’s not) and buyers start sending e-mails wanting refunds for items that eventually do get delivered but way too slowly.
Hayes’s guest, a union leader, said she thought it was sabotage what the postmaster general was doing, which is to direct employees in the memo to leave piles of mail for the next day if they can’t get to it, rather than doing what it takes to clear the backlog. It’s supposed to be a “cost saving” measure.
My own recent experience seems to bear this out, with increasing numbers of packages delayed for days on end at distribution centers like Atlanta and Greensboro. I try and communicate with buyers what’s going on (based on USPS tracking, not Amazon’s often-unhelpful filtered version), but some are bound to become Impatient Iggys (or even Karens).
The segment also included a seller of items running into the same problems and delays and saying maybe 10-15% of their items were taking weeks.
So awareness of the problem is building and becoming more widespread, yet Amazon seems to be still treating it like we had a Covid blip but that’s over and things are back to where they were a year ago. (I had an Amazon-fulfilled package that was supposed to get to me by 8 p.m. tonight on a USPS handoff not make it, BTW).
The Hayes segment showed it wasn’t just happening to me. He also promised to stay after the story of deliberately slowed mail.
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Well, another day, another pile of “where’s my stuff” messages with some wanting refunds. I’ve had to look at a LOT of tracking histories this past month. One thing I’m noticing very recently is delays not only at the OUTBOUND side, but also things being held for a week or more at the DESTINATION distribution center. From about mid-April or so through now they could delay up to 2 weeks or so at a place like Atlanta in trying to get it out onto a plane or truck but once it scanned at the destination distribution center it was close to delivery. Now, though, it could spend a week at the destination distribution center before going on the truck to the delivery post office.
Something’s going on.
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It’s an absolute disgrace what is happening to USPS. It seems every carrier, large and small and from within USPS, through the PMG, wants USPS to fail. Our carrier finally decided to call it quits and took an unpaid medical leave. So sad…
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I checked the Endicia report for the last 30 days and it looks like swiss cheese in terms of items sent out 14 or more days ago not having delivery dates yet. Some batches have lower percentages than others but the percentages still undelivered are really getting to be unacceptable. (33-50% on some dates, all 14+ days into the past).
With items piling up at distribution centers it would get harder and harder to catch up and they’d fall ever-further behind. I think we may be starting to see that.
The postal workers are right to complain and fight back, as the postmaster appears to be trying to sabotage the whole operation.
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He may be overplaying his hand. So many things from 14+ days ago are not moving at all now. How many things can pile up in distribution centers and how much damage can he do to all manner of e-commerce before the grass roots takes notice? Even previous government shutdowns didn’t include the USPS. He deserves to be hauled before Congress pretty quickly, and I’m not sure even the Jim Jordans there want to be in a position to have to defend what he’s doing.
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UPDATE: Chris Hayes did a follow-up segment tonight 7/29 and MSNBC posted it to YouTube.
All-In 7/29 USPS report on YouTube
It’s only 2:13 and well worth watching. They cover the angle about mail-in balloting and the upcoming election, but they also have some info on the problem in general, like a comment from a former USPS employee about how leaving work undone every day just causes the pile to grow and them never to catch up - which is my worst fear about some of my items that are stuck at distribution centers for many days now.
What about priority mail items and other INSURED mail…are they going to get an avalanche of claims at the 30-day mark?
Hayes pointed out that the USPS has a 91% approval rating among the general public. I would add that I’ve long noticed the towns in sparsely populated areas have long been overrepresented among orders (as they don’t have as many b&ms within driving distance). That cuts across red/blue lines.
Moderator edit(Ale_Amazon): Removed external URL.
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From USPS website down off and on, ever ending cycles of package delays, it has been mind numbing.
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Things have really deteriorated in the last month or so, I’ve noticed. I haven’t had time to count it up from the Endicia reports, but there are still lots of items not yet delivered from 14+ days ago (nearly all are first class), which explains the messages and a growing threat to account health, I’m assuming (as a few just file A-Zs out of the blue that are summarily granted).
I don’t see how it can go on indefinitely with an increasing number of stakeholders (including Amazon itself) affected and piles and piles of mail at distribution centers. One move I’m considering is pulling all advertising on Amazon, which will slow down sales but might at this point just be cutting losses. Other carriers (with their own issues, just not as bad) would be another thing, but with low-value items there’s not much rooms to raise shipping costs if that’s what it comes to.
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Hmm. Perhaps this helps explain why it took from Friday, July 24 (postmark date), to Wednesday, July 29, for a basic letter with a regular First Class stamp to be delivered to me when it was sent by someone IN THE SAME ZIP CODE as I am. Sender is just 22 blocks north of me. Envelope addressed correctly and legibly. Our local processing center (whose postmark is on envelope) is just a few miles away and used to have stuff like this turned around in 1 mail day, MAYBE 2 at max.
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I’ve noticed this too. Had a [luckily, repeat] customer’s order that took 2 days Priority two months ago take nearly 2 weeks. To get from Northeast Ohio to Chicago. It made it out of my DC and RDC that same night (shout out to USPS in Cleveland and Akron for being /!) and then it got scanned in somewhere in IL that next morning…and then nothing.
Had a larger (USPS Priority Box 7) order that was destined for Greensboro that’s NC, insert city name, SC RDC just flat out disappear for two weeks. Cx was thankfully patient and didn’t even ask about it.
Have really only been relying on USPS lately for Florida (surprisingly enough?), Texas (also surprisingly enough), California (…seriously, what?) and DMV.
UPS Ground for anywhere else in the Northeast/Midwest. FedEx Paks for anywhere West that isn’t CA.
Priority used to be my go to for IL/IN with guaranteed 2 day service. Now it takes 1-2 weeks. I suck it up and pay for FDXG (when I can make it to a pickup location that I know is handled by a different contractor than the one that handles my route because they suck) or FDXE, because I don’t want to deal with UPS CACH losing my stuff for two weeks either. Had an incoming order of 4 identical parcels. One each delivered on Friday, Monday, Tuesday (that one went back and forth between IL/OH, gg UPS) and one lost entirely.
Oh, and First Class Package is still as unpredictable as ever lmao. 2 days (!!!) to Texas - after they became Wuhan, USA. 5 days to travel a few counties over in Ohio!
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Before covid and before the overtime curtailment, service was dropping through major distribution centers making it very difficult to attribute causality with specific actions.
Nothing is getting better, things are getting worse and this country seems to lack the will to come together and solve any problem.
