General Forum

In the last 3 months, I have had 3 incidents that has really made me p***** about the USPS.  I know some of you have relatives who work for them but the overall quality of service is getting to be frustrating.  

In mid-December, I had a small packet trade with someone across the border. My package was delivered to his door in a reasonable amount of time. The return package has travelled who knows how many miles and was eventually found in Atlanta. Their reason was that the package was undeliverable with the address that was on it. After many more days of it being located and the addresses being confirmed, it has finally found its way back to the originator in a plastic bag.  His description,

"The mangled remains of the package I sent you, have shown up back to me in a white bag. It looks like it fell off the truck. The front is all scratched up and cut up then taped up even my return address sticker is half pealed off a little paper and glue is all that is there. Top is all torn open, some cards are no longer in the packs. "

How does such carelessness happen and then they try to hide it by sending it to Atlanta to their disposal warehouse? Had not the individual kept at them to find it, we would never have known what happened.  Question now is, will USPS charge him the postage once more to send it to me repackaged? It is obvious that the damage to the original package was their doing.

Just after Xmas, I had mailed out a PWE trade to California.  Over 8 weeks later, it finally arrived at destination.  This one had remained in (I believe) Dallas for most of the transit time as it showed having arrived there before the New Year.

And now the latest. Someone sent me a PIF in 2 PWE. I would assume they were dropped in the mail the same day with the same address and everything. I received one of the PWE last Friday. I have yet to see the other. How can this make sense to anyone with even a bit of sense?

I know some will speak up for the USPS and say, "Do you know how many packages and PWE are handled each and every day?  The fact that the odd one gets lost is not a surprise."  I don't buy that.  Three instances involving one individual in 3 months is ridiculous. Their performance has really hit an all time low!

P.S. If anyone has a contact with USPS and knows how an individual can resend a returned package due to USPS carelessness in handling it, free of charge, please post here.  There is no justification in the individual having to pay a second time to send the package. USPS should have offered this upfront.

Newman...

I completely agree. I'm afraid to use USPS. Even with tracking, they lose things constantly. I realize they deal with millions of piece of mail every day, but that's no consolation or excuse to those whose mail gets lost. I wish there was some sort of competition so USPS isn't the only mailing option for bubble mailers or PWE. It doesn't help that they don't seem to put much effort or care into helping to find these lost pieces either.

On the 2 PWE part, it just happened to me last month. I dropped 2 large PWEs in the mail at the same exact time for a destination up north. He got one in reatively short order, but it was almost a week before he saw the second one. 

yeh they handle alot, millions of packages a day, its hard, stressful- but you know what? if a consumer pays for a service, no matter what that may be- they should recieve that service. This isn't a "you get what you pay for" type of deal. Of course when a company handles 100,000 transactions in a day, i'm sure 1 or 2 squeeks by- no one company has a perfect track record, but they should strive to get there. I think people in general are just over exhausted and disgrunteled all the time because they are having to work extra time just to pay to bills so the care and quality isn't put into the job like some do. 

What do you expect to happen by trying to cheat the system? We KNOW cards get caught and mangled in pwe. Yet you whine when that happens because you refuse to pay less than a dollar to ship them properly. 

It's entirely, 100% your fault for the damage. Ship them properly and there wouldn't be a problem. You'd have to pay a few cents more, but so what? Would you rather pay 55 cents more or have to go through the cost and trouble of replacing a package? 

You can't expect to ship something the wrong way and then expect it to arrive undamaged. 

Billy,

None of the PWEs have been damaged from my end.  It is a package that was damaged. And it has taken 3 months and several inquiries by the sender to finally have it sent back. The issue shave all been with USPS (not saying that Canada Post is perfect).

The postage I put on my PWE is what Canada Post charges for international mail to the States.  Please do not accuse me of doing otherwise.  What I avoid are the employees who believe their interpretation of their own rules are right so as to charge more than is required.

And yes, I do take offense to your accusation!

Wrong Billy. totally off-base. There's no cheating. Take the personal issue out of this. It's not aimed at anyone in your family.

Also, You're not footing the postage bill so you have no say on how someone else sends packages.

A suggestion, maybe don't read rants against USPS.

Reread what I wrote. Cheating the system means that you are not paying for the proper level of services you require. You're doing the cheapest thing possible instead of doing it the right way, and expecting the service to be perfect even though we all know that cards get caught in the sorting machines' rollers.

No, Billy. You're verbiage is accusatory. You reread what you wrote.