A few times a week mail is delivered. Rural area. Mondays are consistently delivered. Other than that it is a guessing game. A lot of neighbors mail delivered to us.
Yes, USPS service has decidedly gone downhill since Covid. Weâve had items lost in the mail, long delays in getting packages and one of our local Post Officeâs has âtemporarilyâ closed.
If we need an item to get somewhere thatâs reasonably important, then we use FedEx.
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Our mailman is exceptional. He will drive all the way down our private drive and leave the packages nearly stacked by the front door if the mail canât fit in the mailbox. Other delivery people leave things god knows where. Had to post a sign telling FedEx not to chuck packages in the neighborsâ bushes or leave them on top of the mailbox at the entry to said drive.
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OMG!! I was going to start this very thread. Last Friday (2/21) my husband mailed a package to our daughter priority mail. We live in a small town in northern Mississippi. Our mail is sent from here to Memphis to get processed. My daughter received it today. I was so happy that it arrived safely.
This daughter lives in the Jacksonville, Fl. area. She had a package sent to her from Ponte Vedra on the 21st. She still doesnât have it. She could have walked there and walked home faster than what it is taking this package.
When I say that all of our mail is processed in Memphis, ALL of the mail is processed there. If I would mail a birthday card to my next door neighbor, it would still go to Memphis. The whole thing is crazy. I find that the postal clerks at the post office are a bit more cranky than they used to be. They use to be great. I think that it started long before Covid.
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I used to be able to scan pre-printed and postage paid labels at the kiosk and avoid being in the line but the last bunch of times I tried, I just got error messages so now I stand in line, even though the labels are on the packages and postage was already paid. I just want a receipt that they were mailed.
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Our regular mail is pretty good. We have had the same mailman for MANY years (could be 15), and he drives up our long driveway if we have something big to be delivered.
Sometimes when we have other deliveries, they are thrown in the bushes in our mailbox, or left outside our garage in the pouring rain.
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One of my packages from Nordstrom never seemed to be shipped. They have credited my account.
But I have couple of packages sent priority mail and they are stuck in some sort of limbo. Not moving fast at all and going from sorting facility to sorting facility.
Itâs all so odd that I just donât think this is a coincidence but a planned event.
The good news is that the birthday card I sent my son got to him in time. So maybe letters are moving but a slow down in packages?
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FedEx and UPS seem to be much less reliable delivering to residential addresses than to business addresses that are presumably their main markets.
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Our local post office is good and our regular mailman is great. The issue, sometimes, is getting items to them for delivery.
I suspect that some items just get stuck in one of the regional hubs and go round and round. I do get almost everything in the time frame I expect it, but a few items ordered online have taken several weeks to get to me and seem to disappear in the meantime.
I donât rely on the mail for bills or anything important - that is all handled online - but there are a few times I have to send or receive something. I hold my breath and hope, but I also think so many people and businesses have low expectations of the post office that many are understanding.
I am also seeing a lot of hang ups in sorting facilities for packages, especially international packages that are delivered through USPS. We receive a lot of packages from the UK and itâs usually very quick to get to us once it lands in the US but there have been weird delays lately once it clears customs and gets to sorting facilities. A package sent at the end of January took over a month to reach us and tracking showed it came to the US and passed through customs only to sit for weeks at a sorting facility and then be sent BACK to the UK. It was then sent back to the US and finally made it to us. Right now Iâm tracking another package from the UK and it has been at a sorting center for two days so farâŠ
Unfortunately probably Memphis is your nearest processing facility. Many people do not realize that mail should go through machines to be sorted.
Do you have a tracking ID? Why do you need receipt it was accepted? You have receipt that you generated label. Tracking will be available in the system.
Packages and post cards go through different types of sorting machines.
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I read on a Facebook forum that Iâm a part of that USPS recently changed how it sorts packages, having them go through large facilities. And so in a way to reduce costs, packages are taking longer to deliver.
Packages need to go through huge facilities with machines that maybe as long as football field. These machines are expensive. USPS stopped to airlift packages a while ago (only Priority mail and Express Mail processed separately.) USPS was built years ago to send letters/First class mail not packages.
Since 2020, I have had two packages - one inbound and one outbound - check into a USPS facility and disappear. As one was a purchase and the other a return, the vendor handled both. Overall, things seems to get where theyâre going relatively quickly.
We have always received our neighborsâ mail, and recently, more of it. Itâs usually the next folks on the route (not our road) but sometimes someone on a different road with our house #. Iâd guess the carrier is at fault in the first case and local sorting in the latter.
I have to imagine that with more people buying online, and with expectations of quick delivery being the norm, all these delivery services are really stressed.
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