Don't trust Post Office with Flat Rate Shipping

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<p>How was it useless?</p>

<p>Did you purchase insurance AND delivery confirmation? You can’t track insured mail online.</p>

<p>Read FURTHER upthread (post#30)</p>

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<p>I’m really not surprised about that. Parcel post can take very long. And since you shipped a very large item, sometimes tracking isn’t real time.</p>

<p>Tracking was NONEXISTENT. And the PO was very unhelpful.</p>

<p>I think the USPS gets a bad rap just because of sheer quantity of items shipped. Everyone sends/receives mail and is bound to encounter a problem. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s a more important mailing than others. </p>

<p>If you’ve had experience with postal systems in other parts of the world, ours is by far one of the best and cheapest. When we have sent gifts to relatives in Italy over the years, we learned that they had to go registered mail if using the postal system because otherwise the packages never arrived–which often cost more than item being shipped. And of course, mailing to less developed parts of the world is even more haphazard.</p>

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<p>So the tracking number never showed the bike being delivered?</p>

<p>Just because a letter carrier scans a mailed item delivered at an address at a specific time, date, and address doesn’t mean she delivered it to the right address. The letter carrier might have put the item in the wrong mail box blocks away from right address. The USPS does make mistakes sometimes with deliveries.</p>

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<p>Exactly. It’s happened to me with USPS, FedEx, and UPS. Everybody makes mistakes. If you have something very important to ship, send it with signature confirmation.</p>

<p>Who are you responding to, Lizard?</p>

<p>In the off chance you are responding to my post (not sure that you are, so apologies if not) , the package that they lost, for a month, was a BICYCLE. It was not put in the wrong box. And the correct address was written all over the box.</p>

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<p>The point is that they found the bicycle. Things happen.</p>

<p>Haven’t read entire thread, but I send packages priority mail all the time and have only had one issue. (with an empty box no less - sent to son so he had a box to ship something home in! LOL). Make a claim with the post office.</p>

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<p>Wouldn’t it have been cheaper for your son to buy his own box?</p>

<p>You made a claim for a lost empty box? haha</p>

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Give me a break. They didn’t “find” anything. The people I talked to were clueless, gave me phone #s to the lost package dept that had a VM that said it didnt take messages and to call the local office again (that was useless) and basically they did NOTHING. They even gave me a hard time when I began the process of filing the claim for the lost item (at 30 days) and didn’t know their own procedures. Thank heavens it did the show up, out of the blue, over A MONTH later, but not due to anyone “finding” anything. I see no point in discussing this with you further as you are not personally familiar with anything I experienced and are coming across as wanting to argue about a situation you have no personal experience with. Thanks, but no thanks. You werent there. You did not talk to the staff. You did not see the additional tracking we purchased or how awful the staff were when we first shipped these items (have told the story before. Not going to repeat it) and when we encountered problems with trying to locate/track the item. So enough already. Please just stop. By the way, the bicycle was professionally packed by a bike shop. We made the fool mistake (my sons request) to send it via USPS. Never again.</p>

<p>You really can’t trust anyone to deliver a package unless you deliver it yourself (and sometimes, I’M not so reliable, lol). Stuff happens…I’ve only had one package from the post office not get delivered. It was around Christmas time and I sent something for my sister’s husband that never made it to him. Actually, I think someone swiped it–she lived in one of those places that have a common mailbox for packages.</p>

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<p>And you know this because?? </p>

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<p>How was the staff awful to you?</p>

<p>Almost as awful as this interchange :slight_smile: NO MAS.</p>

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<p>This is awful because?? Just asking you very, very simple questions.</p>

<p>Fixed rate priority boxes are FREE at every post office. Why would you need to mail one to your son? He could have just picked one up at his local PO.</p>

<p>USPS priority mail tracking is not reliable. I sent IDOC using priority mail with tracking but the tracking system could not tell the package was delivered. I called USPS and they said they could not do anything about it. They said certified express mail is better for tracking.</p>

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<p>How many times have you used delivery confirmation? I have used it 1000’s of times and have had two or three problems.</p>