Is everyone's postal service as bad as our's?

In recent months there has been a rash of wrong deliveries and one family cannot get the post office to deliver their mail at all. No explanation, just no deliveries. They don't live on some unscalable mountain top, but on an ordinary street within walking distance of the Mackenzie Point post office. They finally got a box and can get mail there. Another friend who lives far enough away to be under a different management was getting other people's mail and not his own. He caught up with the mailman, who didn't speak English. His problem is semi resolved, but not fixed.

I had the same problem, getting neighbor's mail and not my own, both at home and the shop. One time I found a package tied up with rubber bands stuck through my mail slot with mail for several of the business in our little row so I became an assistant mailman making deliveries. I managed to get the manager of my home office on the phone, who informed me that my house was vacant.

I used to ship things I sold on EBAY by USPS but the last time around they lost several packages.

Any business that has customers waiting will lock the door and take care of the customers. The post office in Brentwood, where I live, closes the windows and you can come back tomorrow.

I don't see how they can stay in business.

Bill

9100 said:

I don't see how they can stay in business.

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Two reasons:

- Their primary business is the fabrication of excuses. Few choose to even ATTEMPT to compete. No one has managed to drop their quality far enough down to compete and remain at-large, rather than find themselves locked-up in a nuthouse.

- Junk advertisers don't want to pay FEDEX and UPS rates.

Some years ago, whilst delivering mail regularly, no interruptions, USPS sent my VA driving license back to DMV as undeliverable on the grounds that my house was "unoccupied".

Twice.

Bank, insurance, CC statements, utility bills, taxes, other junk mail - all-else "as normal" the whole time.

Plus, as I am retired, I'd actually walk to the kerb and meet the postman about once every 2 weeks and exchange pleasantries, else wave to him much more often, whenever I was out in the front garden as his vehicle came up the hill. HE knew I was here!

The excuses for that "unoccupied" thing - they generated THREE, (guess I got my money's worth, anyway?) - were worth a steak dinner, so I'll save that story 'til someone offers-up!

USPS staff need not apply. Can't be trusted for delivering.

9100 said:

In recent months there has been a rash of wrong deliveries and one family cannot get the post office to deliver their mail at all. No explanation, just no deliveries. They don't live on some unscalable mountain top, but on an ordinary street within walking distance of the Mackenzie Point post office. They finally got a box and can get mail there. Another friend who lives far enough away to be under a different management was getting other people's mail and not his own. He caught up with the mailman, who didn't speak English. His problem is semi resolved, but not fixed.

I had the same problem, getting neighbor's mail and not my own, both at home and the shop. One time I found a package tied up with rubber bands stuck through my mail slot with mail for several of the business in our little row so I became an assistant mailman making deliveries. I managed to get the manager of my home office on the phone, who informed me that my house was vacant.

I used to ship things I sold on EBAY by USPS but the last time around they lost several packages.

Any business that has customers waiting will lock the door and take care of the customers. The post office in Brentwood, where I live, closes the windows and you can come back tomorrow.

I don't see how they can stay in business.

Bill

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Actually All the other postal services around the world are far worse.

We American's have the BEST postal delivery system in the world.

Sometimes individual memebers fail, but that is not the defect.

And I have had a few "fights" over the indiffenrence shown by some postal service employees. And send in letters of appreciation on the performance of others.

The few delivery persons that put mail in my box are GREAT. Helpful and care! Some of the office staff in town? Meh! not so much.

;-)
A

WTF is with the first letter of any reply being disjointed from the rest of the text?

CalG said:

ctually All the other postal services around the world are far worse.
We American's have the BEST postal delivery system in the world.

Click to expand...

?? Yah gotta be DAFT to believe THAT!

MOST developed countries move their equivalant of "first class" mail faster and better. Most even move their cheapest postcards faster, too.

Got a USPS postcard from my Godson posted when he was in NYC. Took over a month to make the 200-odd miles to Metro DC. French system wudda delivered that same week.

Already by the 1950's Parisians could drop a letter into the postbox on the public motorbus they rode to work, expect it to reach another address in Paris that same afternoon. The buses boxes were being "harvested" all day at their terminals, PO sorted them, immediately went out for delivery if within Paris Metro.

Mail delivery in Europe has always been better and faster than the USA in general..

But... they have the advantage of far higher-density and shorter distances, (UK is more densely populated than China is.)

MIND.. only a handful of countries are similar SIZE or larger as the USA, and only a few have the added challenge of sparser population density over longer spans of territory.

Those who have a harder job include Russian Federation, Australia, Canada, Brazil, much of China (not the major cities - they are FAST).

Add Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia on the "islands" challenge and meagre transport and economic resources. Add India just because...

Now we have over a HUNDRED more countries, and yes, some are badly served.

But one dasn't compare US mail service to sub-saharan Africa. Yah compare to the top ten or twenty economic players.

I have found different offices are different. Some are pretty bad, some are okay, some are really good. Just hunt around the area until you find one that is more copacetic.

Same here, btw. Some places are fast and easy, others are jerks. That's life.

My business is in walking distance from the postal office, but they don't deliver mail over there. I have to rent a PO Box...[emoji19]

riabma77 said:

My business is in walking distance from the postal office, but they don't deliver mail over there. I have to rent a PO Box...[emoji19]

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Yazz.. there was a puffed-up "survey" some years ago that ranked the USA tops on speed of delivery. How can that be? Because so few dare use USPS unless paying for the premium service of Express Priority Mail to get TRACKING! Or even CAN use USPS! Much lower ranking for service availability, y'see!

Our service is mostly excellent. Our mail is delivered to a bunch of boxes at the beginning of the road. Our mailman is a terrific guy and will call if there's a package too large to fit so I can avoid a trip down to the post office. He's tracked down packages that have gone astray -- provided his cell number just in case. His regular backup is also excellent. Both great young men, married with young kids, and (sometimes literally) going the extra mile.

Where things get flaky is with new people on a route. They're overwhelmed, sometimes pretty much hopeless. Maybe not too much different than someone hired into a shop the first week? We'll get the wrong mail sometimes as well -- and it's usually because of a new person on the route. That was the case when the previous (very good) carrier (Karen) retired and it was a month or two before the new guys (Matt and Cesar) came on board. Good news is that neighbors know each other and pretty much sort it out.

At the post office itself, the clerks range from one guy who is outstanding (super fast, informative, friendly) to mostly get the job done more or less pleasantly types. There's one royal robotic pain of a woman just waiting to retire. Had our post mistress more discretion in hiring and firing, she might have "retired" this one a decade or two ago.

Post office has to deal with a lot of crap these days -- Ebay sellers running scams for example. Day after a holiday, trucks filled to the ceiling with packages to deliver. Millions of them seemingly packed by morons; say, glass objects thrown into a box with no padding. Plus those of us aiming to fill flat rate Priority Boxes with steel plate.

In most businesses, public or private, employee performance and job satisfaction is pretty much correlated with the quality of their immediate supervisor. Could be yours isn't so good?? Ours seems good. Not great, but good enough the the more self motivated are terrific on the job. No doubt there are some lousy supervisors out there, as well.

Comparisons? Our UPS gal is efficient and competent, but overall I prefer both the price and service of Priority Mail. The Fex Ex Ground guys are a sort of kamikaze squad speeding through the neighborhood and crashing packages on to the front entrance. I've recently bought (and had delivered) over a hundred used microscopes for a kids' science program. My experience is that the survival of contents is mostly a function of packing, that the USPS and UPS are on par, and the only absolute negligence I saw was a temporary UPS guy, apparently behind schedule, throwing a microscope 20 feet on to our front entrance. Even the Fed Ex Ground guys aren't that bad. USPS tracking is also now much improved. Amazon delivers super fast and seems to use a mix of about 80% USPS and 20% UPS to our area.

I've said this before, but will add it again. In an age when half a dozen countries hope to be able to bring down every bit of our Internet-connected infrastructure, it's not a bad idea to have a backup system where a real person visits most every business and home in the country on a regular basis. Doesn't even have to be a bad actor to render our grid or communications crippled - these are more fragile to both acts of god and acts of sabotage than we'd like to admit.

It would be a throwback, but a postal system can continue banking, commerce, communications, distribute medicine -- all sorts of functions we might regret not having at hand in an emergency or catastrophe.

Ive had a few go-around with USPS here too. I have one customer that we ship parts to once or twice a week. At first everything was ok, then one box showed up damaged. A couple shipments later, another damaged shipment. We figured we were just not doing a good job of packaging, so we started double boxing, and taping the daylights out of them. As we improved our packaging techniques, they upped their destructive capabilities. It didn’t take long before we had to have a conversation with our customer about finding another shipper.

thermite said:

?? Yah gotta be DAFT to believe THAT!

MOST developed countries move their equivalant of "first class" mail faster and better. Most even move their cheapest postcards faster, too.

Got a USPS postcard from my Godson posted when he was in NYC. Took over a month to make the 200-odd miles to Metro DC. French system wudda delivered that same week.

Already by the 1950's Parisians could drop a letter into the postbox on the public motorbus they rode to work, expect it to reach another address in Paris that same afternoon. The buses boxes were being "harvested" all day at their terminals, PO sorted them, immediately went out for delivery if within Paris Metro.

Mail delivery in Europe has always been better and faster than the USA in general..

But... they have the advantage of far higher-density and shorter distances, (UK is more densely populated than China is.)

MIND.. only a handful of countries are similar SIZE or larger as the USA, and only a few have the added challenge of sparser population density over longer spans of territory.

Those who have a harder job include Russian Federation, Australia, Canada, Brazil, much of China (not the major cities - they are FAST).

Add Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia on the "islands" challenge and meagre transport and economic resources. Add India just because...

Now we have over a HUNDRED more countries, and yes, some are badly served.

But one dasn't compare US mail service to sub-saharan Africa. Yah compare to the top ten or twenty economic players.

Click to expand...

Bill

Check the postal rates. Some times you get what you pay for.

And "take a chill pill", abstract rants and raves only point in one direction.

9100 said:

In recent months there has been a rash of wrong deliveries and one family cannot get the post office to deliver their mail at all. No explanation, just no deliveries. They don't live on some unscalable mountain top, but on an ordinary street within walking distance of the Mackenzie Point post office. They finally got a box and can get mail there. Another friend who lives far enough away to be under a different management was getting other people's mail and not his own. He caught up with the mailman, who didn't speak English. His problem is semi resolved, but not fixed.

I had the same problem, getting neighbor's mail and not my own, both at home and the shop. One time I found a package tied up with rubber bands stuck through my mail slot with mail for several of the business in our little row so I became an assistant mailman making deliveries. I managed to get the manager of my home office on the phone, who informed me that my house was vacant.

I used to ship things I sold on EBAY by USPS but the last time around they lost several packages.

Any business that has customers waiting will lock the door and take care of the customers. The post office in Brentwood, where I live, closes the windows and you can come back tomorrow.

I don't see how they can stay in business.

Bill

Click to expand...

The short answer to your question "Is everyone's postal service as bad as our's? " then NO. Ours must be much worse.

The Danish national postal service merged with the Swedish and that's proving to be a disaster. If you want an ordinary letter delivered in 2 days then $6. For $1.50 then a week or longer isn't unusual. If I want to send something with tracking then not only does it cost $60 but takes me over an hour as I've got to drive into the city and there is only one place to go to.

This means I now use alternatives and they aren't that much more expensive plus they come to me. Normally within the EU I use GLS and outside the EU then Fedex.

It's not so much the employees of our national postal service but management. Incompetence is putting it mildly.

One of the things that is accelerating the "disaster" for the national postal service is that here sending ordinary mail is almost non existent. Email has overtaken. All communication from public services, unless for some reason you claim exemption, is by email. The most common reason for exemption is not owning or knowing how to use a computer.

Even something like wages. No one gets paid in cash here - at least not legally You have a job then you need a bank account to transfer your wages to. I very rarely have more than $10 in cash on me. Easiest with cards.

CalG said:

Bill

Check the postal rates. Some times you get what you pay for.

Click to expand...

As-in more of the US businesses and even individuals have found the need to use FEDEX or UPS if not USPS "PRIORITY" plans rather than regular first-class mail (which is NOT "cheap" BTW, just less expensive that "Priority")?

Yeeeessss.. The UPS and FEDEX outlets are all over the place, and they are busy, yah?. So are their fleets of vehicles.

That's a whole lot of actual USERS voting for better alternatives with their own actual MONEY.

I don't see that as the same sort of decision making reasoning as picking "designer" clothing or shoes as some sort of status symbol or display of affluence.

Genuine and sustained need and value for money, rather.

Hyperbole about "best" is one thing. Simple Chauvinism.

Everyone else is worse? Get real.

Two and three continent - briefly four - residences and/or business addresses has been OUR "norm" 1990 to present-day. Not tourism or sporadic business travel. Special handling for that.

I mean Day Jobs and all-year family life. We had as many as three professional forwarding agencies at a time in our budget to support all that for many years.

et tu?

You ever actually lived under some of these "worse country" Postal Service umbrellas for long enough to depend on it instead of Courier services? We have. We still do. They work rather well.

I almost had to "like" that, Gordon. I had expected to learn that mail was hand delivered by gorgeous girls, twice a day and at no charge, as part of the national happiness project . . .

PeteM said:

I almost had to "like" that, Gordon. I had expected to learn that mail was hand delivered by gorgeous girls, twice a day and at no charge, as part of the national happiness project . . .

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LOL It does happen that a lovely blonde girl delivers but the days of regular postal employees is long gone. To their credit though those that deliver with the national postal service (both male and female) are friendly and smile. The alternatives postal services I use are so far always males

lxjoyes said:

Our company is manufacturer of mechanical cable.

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Our village seems to have a surplus of idiots

Most recent FedEx to us took nine days. EMS return took seven and cost 1/3 as much. Post office gets my vote.

CalG said:

Sometimes individual memebers fail, but that is not the defect.

And I have had a few "fights" over the indiffenrence shown by some postal service employees. And send in letters of appreciation on the performance of others.

The few delivery persons that put mail in my box are GREAT. Helpful and care! Some of the office staff in town? Meh! not so much.

Click to expand...

I have a long list of USPS complaints to air, all of which seem to be caused by ONE employee doing a shit job and not caring. That's all it takes for the whole system to break down momentarily.

A

WTF is with the first letter of any reply being disjointed from the rest of the text?

Click to expand...

I'm glad you posted that, It's been happening to me for over a year.

Gordon B. Clarke said:

The short answer to your question "Is everyone's postal service as bad as our's? " then NO. Ours must be much worse.

The Danish national postal service merged with the Swedish and that's proving to be a disaster.

Click to expand...

WTH?

I can only think of two ways for that to even go forward?

One is what Liechtenstein and Switzerland have had for ages. A "postal and monetary union", even though the governments are very different and otherwise unrelated.

The other is if both systems had already been privatized, and the contractors had merged.

Harder yet to understand what anyone expected to gain by it?

Vatican and Italy make sense. San Marino and Italy. Monaco and France. Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland. Gibralter and Spain. Campione D'Italia and Switzerland.

All situations wherein one entity is "landlocked" within another or has a land border in common with other-than their legal/political parent (Ireland, Gibralter, Campione). and yet, Campione is the only one that uses the adjacent entities postal system (and Banks - exclusively. By Law).

The rest remain "correspondents".

What is the Danish/Swedish rationale?

They are politically independent, language independent, largely separated geographically, even if not by huge distance, use different currency. I don't think either is even the first-place trading partner with the other, economically.

Hard to fathom any advantage on delivery or economic grounds.

It would make more sense if the USA and Canada had merged their postal systems. Loong common border, mostly common language (English/Spanish de facto, English/French de jure).

It could even make SOME sense Denmark/Germany. There's at least a "mostly" common border, and probably an even a closer economic linkage and postal traffic volume than with Sweden.

As it is, even the Hong Kong "SAR", China and Macau "SAR", China postal systems are not merged with PRC.

How did this "merger" ever gain traction with the public in either of Sweden or Danmark?

And if it is AFU? Why not UNdo it?

I work overseas for extended periods of time and can confirm this... there are many places in the middle east and Africa that will just keep whatever they mail to you. It's FedEx or bust.

Regards,

Luis

CalG said:

Bill

Check the postal rates. Some times you get what you pay for.

And "take a chill pill", abstract rants and raves only point in one direction.

Click to expand...

Bill,
You have obviously never lived in Germany. Our mail is usually delivered in 24 hrs. from anywhere to anywhere within country. Worst case is 3 days. I regularly order perishable specialty food shipped in cool packs like unsmoked bacon and mature cheddar cheese from a shop 400 KM away. It always arrives within a day and the cool pack is still frozen. This is the REGULAR mail Yes, Germany is smaller than the USA, but the kind of mail service in Germany is available no where else in the world. The USA isn't even close to the top in the first world.

Postal services began with coaches. Big step ahead with the railroad systems. European post was so good because of a well maintained railroad compound, no matter whether left or right track in use. US railroads development was slowed down in favour of cars and airplanes. Huge mistake

I have lived times when one could drop a letter (up to 20 mm thickness) with the post waggon of ordinary trains at station halts. They would sort it on the rolling train and dispatch sacks to the next fitting destinations. Common sense prevailed

What I’ve seen with sendings from the US to here is that they are moved in the opposite direction to what actually was logical, sometimes twice to TN from NY. There is a network of scheduled flights of course, but before the economic-ecological background complete nonsense. Computers are not necessary, it seems that they only overcomplicate something that can be done by real people. If the US post has decided to not train its employees, what wonder is it that so many mishaps occur? Scan data slip, bar codes badly printed, code stickers damaged, parcels crammed on push-out bands, all unnecessary faults. Why double the Zone Improvement Plan code and address with machine-only processable playthings?

More workers, higher prices, good service instead of automation, lower prices, and mediocre service. So simple