Company cons my spouse

Parent Cafe
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<p>Deb922,
Just wanted to tell you to check with your carrier before you feel bad about making her get out of car to pick up packages you are mailing. My son mails a lot and does pickup requests for the carrier to pick up packages he is mailing from our doorstep. I thought it was trouble for the carrier as well, but one day he mentioned to hubby about son not mailing much lately. Apparently there is some kind of performance bonus or something and he WAnTED son to request pickups (rather than taking it to post office himself) because it would help,his numbers. Who knew?</p>

<p>As for the OP, $106 is crazy, but if the packages were valuable and it was important they arrive, then so be it. Sometimes it is easiest to order the gifts sent direct from the seller if you can buy them online.</p>

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<p>I’ve used one of the local pack-it stores when had items that needed special care in wrapping. That was many years ago. Boy, did i overpay. By now, with the worm away so many years, I have bubble wrap and all possible size boxes. I have become good with wrapping. I have wrapping paper and popcorn and can shred newspaper. Still, for the inexperienced or rushed, an extra $10 isn’t so bad.</p>

<p>The employees at my 2 local p.o.s are nice; they have been there for years.</p>

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<p>I don’t think USPS employees get a bonus for packages - from what I’ve been told, they have periodic mail counts, and while their route may stay the same, they can increase or decrease the number of hours they get paid based upon the mail count. And of course they are losing business to all the other package services so it affects the weekly pay check of every carrier.</p>

<p>I used flat rate shipping to send some small, heavy items at a cost of $11. I asked the clerk to tell me what it would have cost if I’d used regular shipping, and I saved $12 - essentially paying half price. As with all things, which method is cheaper depends on the size, weight and where you are sending. We still have a local PO so it’s convenient for me. In the 20 years we have lived here, mail carriers have three times been the person to discover an elderly person had fallen at home - some laid there for more than 24 hours - all were treated and fine. When I read about cuts to postal delivery, I don’t think people realize there’s something nice and a bit of security involved in having someone come up to your house or see if your mail has been picked up. </p>

<p>Back to the OP - I confess it creeped me out, a husband portraying his wife as a victim here. Unless he married a child bride and then maybe I’m more creeped out - to early in the a.m. to tell. We all make mistakes, buy the store brand on a day when the name brand was on sale for a lot less. You learn by it, or not, as it’s probably too trivial to bother over, and move on.</p>

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<p>Update on my earlier post (#29). My USPS package took 9 days to travel the first 125 miles, but then only three days to go the next 1200 miles and was delivered today. Yay for the US Postal Service!</p>

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<p>I am extremely frugal when it comes to shipping. Many years ago when my brother lived in Asia, I used to find local online merchants who would ship or deliver locally, that’s how I found Amazon Japan. I got to know many local department stores. I would rarely buy anything online unless I get free shipping.</p>

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<p>I sympathize with you OP. However, I don’t understand this rush holiday shipping. It’s not as if Christmas day is a variable date. To cut holiday shipping costs and avoid unnecessary aggravation, I suggest that one should try to take some time during the Thanksgiving weekend and the Cyber Monday week to do your online holiday shopping and take advantage of the free shipping and enough lead time before the night of Dec. 24th.</p>

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<p>* I suggest that one should try to take some time during the Thanksgiving weekend and the Cyber Monday week to do your online holiday shopping and take advantage of the free shipping and enough lead time before the night of Dec. 24th.*</p>

<p>What, and take the element of chance out of the holidays?:wink: I suppose you do your taxes before April 15th too!
:smiley:
( I just ordered a bunch of stuff from REI last night- It was free shipping & guaranteed to be delivered by the 24th. I had it delivered to my oldest’s house in Or., just in case - bonus, no tax!)</p>

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<p>Emerald, yup I’m guilty of being prompt for the Apr 15 deadline too although sometimes I barely make it because I have to wait for K1s from an MLP that has a propensity to release the statement around the first week of April.</p>

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<p>Thank you all who gave me a green square. This is a bit addictive. At first, I didn’t even notice that they were there.</p>

<p>Krillies - I am the opposite. I wait until the last minute. That’s how I learned US postal service delievers on Saturday and the xmas eve. Those extra days saved me a lot of money.</p>

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<p>With standard ground shipping the dates UPS and others gives are estimated arrival dates, when you go to buy things online they list delivery dates as a range of dates. This week is one of the heaviest shipping times of the year, and ground delivery is given the lowest priority.The UPS website for ground represents what happens most of the year, not now…the logistics of ground shipping is they get shipped and moved when higher priority things are taken care of, one of the reasons they charge more for x day shipping is it is guaranteed and it does cost them more to do that (in effect, ground shipping takes priority when there is nothing else ahead of it). When you pay for next day or 2nd day or 3rd day shipping, that is guaranteed, and as a result they have to do all kinds of things for that to happen.</p>

<p>A direct analogy would be to go back to WWII, it could take a troop train a week or more to get someplace that a normal passenger train would take 3 days to get to, in large part because troop trains were the lowest priority, they would be the ones put on sidings to let other priority trains getting through, they would be the last to be refueled and rewatered,…</p>

<p>Keep in mind that a lot of online retailers are offering delivery by Christmas and free upgraded shipping, and they are using UPS and Fedex and such as well, and because of their corporate business they get priority, too, so there is probably a ton of traffic that has to get through by December 25th, and that backs up freight.</p>

<p>I agree with other posters, my experience has been if you have a week to get something there, priority mail is a bargain, and it in my experience gets there on average 3 days or so…</p>

<p>And for the OP, suppose the clerk told your wife “oh, sure, website says it will get there by the 25th” and then it didn’t get there until Friday, would you be back on here ranting because the clerk told her that? It could be if she shipped it ground it would have gotten there by Christmas, but given the load that is out there this week, it is highly unlikely it would have gotten there. You wife wanted them to get there by Christmas and paid for the service and was willing to pay the price. She might have done better with the post office (FedEx is pretty expensive as well), but the piece of mind of getting it there on time guaranteed made her feel better, and that is worth something, too.</p>