I guess I understand not wanting to go into a busy USPS office, but around here there’s never more than 1 or 2 other folks when I go in. Usually it’s just me. I walk in, have the clerk weigh the package, be honest about what it is, then pay whatever the postage may be.
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What they say is first class is 3-7 days expected, priority is 3 days expected and priority is 1-2 days guaranteed. You give a window of time because it typically gets there on time. What is happening right now is you have covid which is making less workers and you had people mailing for the Holidays. Before that you had the election. During Christmas time I was getting over 100 packages in a small manual office that was getting 0 most days and up to 80 on a Monday. Last Monday was 121 packages, over 500 pieces of mail and 27 inches of flats and I was doing that all myself. During the election I regularly had around 40 inches of advertisements and all the advertisements were as skinny as a paper.
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It depends highly on your office and who is in front of you. Like I said if it is a manual office there is not many but if it is in a big city you can be waiting awhile. I am a manual office have also had a person come in and ship 60 boxes media mail. It took me more than a hour to mail all his boxes and over 2 hours to scan all of his boxes in.
There is absolutely nothing in the rules or law that says I can’t send an item over 10oz from my mailbox as long as it has proper postage and it fits in the box. I have been selling items on Ebay and shipping all kinds of items for 20 years. I have asked my postman about it and agents at the counter.
Not sure what your point is here? That you had to work? I know nothing about big city USPS offices, but have been around plenty of small-mid town offices over the years. Do they have to work excessively for periods of time throughout the year? Absolutely. Do they also have unbelievably slow periods of time where they are looking for something to do to look like they’re busy? Yep
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I don’t work in a big town office. Also I have been working at USPS since July and I have not been able to take any breaks or to “look busy”. I work in a solo office that processes 4-15 passports a day and delivers a bunch of packages and mail. My point was there is people who go into solo offices like mine and ship 59 packages and it becomes a problem because no one else can ship for the rest of the day. Also that is assuming I have time for you to begin with if you do that. Like I am saying most of the times I am a solo office processing 1 hour to 4 hours worth of passports so I don’t actually have time to ship 59 packages. I am also saying those who ship 59 packages in a manual (solo office) are kind of inconsiderate because no one else can ship during that time.
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Congrats…but a person can’t really base what the job looks like on 5 months of service during a pandemic.
Work is difficult. That’s why we get paid to do it.
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People who want to mail packages at the post office are inconsiderate?
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I’ve mailed way over 1,000 packages via USPS the last 5 yrs and am very pleased with their service. IME it is faster, cheaper, and less prone to errors than UPS. I only sent one package by UPS this yr and that at the customers request. It was sent west Texas to AZ and 15 days later showed up in Lake Tahoe, CA. My customer had to drive there to get his plant. Five yrs ago I started with UPS and gradually switched to USPS. Only one lost package in five yrs with USPS and very few customer complaints. And that includes 500 packages this yr during all the chaos.
UPS build a new facility in our town about two yrs ago. The receiving area for retail customers is pathetic. It’s about 8ft by 10ft, 1/4 the size of the old facility. They don’t intend to serve everyone. So of course they are more efficient and profitable than USPS.
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I wasn’t expecting so many great ideas on how to send scions without visiting the post office. Thank you and don’t hesitate to add more. In my opinion none of us would willingly want to get covid. I do ask as the originator and not in any official capacity of this topic to be respectful of each others post. Once the line is crossed it is hard to put it back into the box.
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I’ve shipped similar numbers of packages and have had about a thirty either damaged or lost in the last 5 years. I do NOT ship USPS anywhere in the Northeast above New York. I am shipping live plants in white boxes that are stamped priority, fragile, and “this side up”. To put it mildly, I look at USPS as rolling dice. For right now, I advise not shipping anything if you can possibly wait. I currently have 2 inbound packages stuck in transit and one outbound package that has been stuck since November 30th. Five months ago, I had in international inbound package that took 7 weeks. I expected delays, but right now the train is off the rails!
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I wanted to add that in general from shipping water samples and various items for work, FedEx seems to have more expensive rates and is less reliable and less organized than UPS on average. I’m sure there are situations where UPS might lack comparatively, but that has been my experience. I’ll also add that if you can find a way to get their “business rates” that a Joe Bloe off the street can’t access, FedEx may be a very viable option. USPS is usually the most affordable of the three but as mentioned by others I’m hesitant to use their service for time sensitive items currently. Once UPS and FedEx stop throwing everyone’s additional Amazon orders at the post office after the holidays it will probably get much better.
The “off the regular path” surcharge UPS adds to people living in more rural areas is pretty galling too. If you support privatization of the postal service and live in a rural area then get ready to drive to pickup or drop off mail (or pay a lot).
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i think shipping issues are more regional. here in the n.east U.S.P.S struggles with bigger boxes and UPS does a better job. U.S. P.S. is cheaper with small packages and they rarely get lost or have damage. im in a fairly rural area and the small post office rarely has a line. i just wait in my truck until it empties out and then go in. during the beginning of this thing i shipped about 30 packages thru the post office, of seed potatoes to people on here that couldnt get any. all arrived in good shape considering.
What kind of boxes are you shipping in? I’m shipping in Uline 200 lb test and on the most expensive plants ship them double boxed. Most in 4x4x24 single box. Not one complaint of a damaged box or plant this yr. I’m sure there were damaged boxes but not enough to get back to me.
I’m surprised at the boxes USPS provides or sells. They are too thin and weak.
I’d use even stronger Uline boxes if they came in the sizes I need. But based on results that would probably be overkill. The plants I ship are tough and have solid rootballs.
Not to move towards bureaucracy talk, but if USPS SHOULD be charging extra for their services because specific areas are harder to reach, maybe they need to evolve to deal with that as an organization, or they should just charge more for their service (which is valuable), instead of the collective taxpayer base picking up the tab. I know they raise rates to try and keep up with rising labor costs etc, but maybe to be solvent they need to further increase prices. UPS and FedEx charge more for their services than USPS for a reason. They don’t have taxpayers to pick up their slack, but they do have shareholders who expect a return on their investments, thus they innovate and find ways to improve efficiencies and cut costs while still providing good living wages and benefits for their employees.
Congress sets postal rates. The post office badly needs to raise prices for package delivery but can’t.
I ship in heavy duty 12"x12"x12" boxes with a heavy divider between slots. The boxes usually get through in great shape, but they have been drop kicked so many times the plants inside the box are beat to pieces. Note that I use heavy duty white boxes because I found too many times USPS would leave a package on someone’s porch in direct sun. A brown cardboard box can easily hit 150 degrees inside in these conditions. Just to reiterate, the box rarely gets damaged.
This still does not explain the two packages I shipped last year that were not delivered to the correct address or one package that was delivered after 7 days instead of the normal 2 or 3.
I don’t totally disagree, but there are a lot of pressures on people to move from rural to urban or semi-urban areas. Which in turn leads to things like consolidation of farm land. And expecting private industry to serve all parties in a way similar to how USPS currently operates without government/taxpayer support is hopeful.
A fully privatized postal service might look like the internet service industry. And I can drive 20 minutes and find plenty of homes that have no high speed internet access.
I had plenty of late shipments this summer. But every plant arriving in less than 15 days survived. I replaced free of charge the one plant that the customer said was beyond saving. Fig plants can take a beating and survive if they have a solid rootball. Mine do. It’s the plants that weren’t ready to be shipped that I’ve received in poor shape. If there’s loose soil floating around in the box they’re in trouble.
First the reason Amazon UPS and FEDEX can operate is they abuse the USPS by having packages delivered in rural areas. Second congress needs to approve a rate increase like someone else mentioned. This is unlikely to happen because it is not in the best interest to have shipping prices increase so there is heavy lobbying against it. Third USPS does not take taxpayer money anymore and has not since the 19 hundreds. The USPS is expected to maintain in this weird state of affairs where it is supposed to be a government service but also act that a business and make a profit. The two ways don’t work. Either it needs to act like a service like you thought it was or it needs to be able to have the authority to act like a business and at that point package and mail rates will climb so high people will not like the situation of USPS acting like a business. As a result it would likely be a better situation to move it in the service direction. USPS tried to get money back from a bill back in 2019 but it was shot down by Trump while the airlines got something 25 million dollars to give to shareholders. Finally the USPS was actually in the green until the GOP made USPS fund benefits years into the future.
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