I have been waiting 15 days for some tan cinelli wrap to be delivered, from an ebay auction. The tracking info showed delivery on the 18th, then the 19th, then the 20th. It is still showing a delivery estimate of the 20th, and it is 5 days past that now. It's not their fault, they shipped in a timely manner. The USPS is a mess right now, so think twice before using them. What used to be dependable is anything but.,,,,,BD

This is not my first run in with these delays either. I FINALLY got a set of tires I ordered, that were shipped in a timely manner as well. something like 12 days or more? Once they get the package and your money, they don't seem to care what happens afterwards.


Expect more shipping delays from USPS starting next year | abc13.com

hmm. is this just a texas thing?

love the usps. i always get my shipments on time, the tracking works great, they never say anything when i bring my bike inside (even while standing in the line), and they're pleasant people to talk with.

only once in the last several years did i not receive a package, and i think the seller was just lying to me.

I doubt it will be just a TX thing for long, even if it is right now.,,,,BD


Have you tried shipping something since the first of the year? This has happened twice to me since then... From two different shippers.

Yep, unless you go Priority, it will take forever. All packages used to go on the same truck, but now non-Priority packages are culled and sit "until the truck fills up". At some of the sorting facility this can take weeks.

btw, The link from the OP is over a year old. Service has been consistently bad for over a year.

USPS Priority is the best. My items I ship always arrive fast and vice versa. First class and Media mail can take a bit longer and seem to get stalled along the way. But Priority is usually pretty close to same amount to ship in most cases or a dollar or two more. In my opinion, UPS is the one to avoid. Expensive and rough on packages. I do not recommend..period. I used to be into very high end audio and I have seen horrors I will never forget with UPS. Like the driver bouncing a what was minty Quad II tube amplifier off the steps of the truck and acting like it was nothing. And then not covering it even though it was insured and dented because of the incident. If you do your own packaging, their insurance is a fraud as they never cover anything they don't pack at their UPS shipping centers. I'm serious. The company is a joke... I could go on and on how dishonest and treasonous they are. Some of you may know what I mean by treasonous but I'll leave it at that.

Express and Priority always get loaded on the trailers first and if there is room, they put some Parcel Select on board. The post office is not very efficient in space usage. They use rolling cages that have a rod that pushes down into a hole in the floor to secure them in the trailer for packages. They are only about 5 feet tall. Not much fits in a trailer compared to a fully cubed Fed Ex or UPS trailer. Everything stays in that cage to destination, that is why you get less damage from USPS over other carriers.

yes, three ebay purchases in the past week, and i received all on or before the estimated delivery. all tracking worked perfect.

another item hasn't arrived, but isn't yet due.

i'm rebuilding an '80s gitane. gonna look sweet with its new (from ebay) campy bling.

Not bike related, but I shipped a package via FedEx from PA to AZ at Christmas time. UPS wanted to charge me $103. FedEx charged me $55 and it got there sooner than it would have via UPS.

Yes, UPS are crooks in all instances. Never..ever..use. I hope they go bankrupt because they provide the worst service at the highest cost. I've had so many damaged packages from them that I gave up long ago and refuse to deal with anyone who won't ship Fedex. Which I found to be the best option out there still for bigger stuff. I was shipping close to 50 packages a year and receiving as many when I was buying and selling high end audio. So it was not just a freak instance that my conclusions are drawn from.

this.

ups ground really sucks.

my fav for whole bikes is greyhound.

It's where you are, if near a hub, the stuff flies . USPS parcel post, 10lbs of bologna Hbg, Pa a hub, to Mission, Tx. shipped Wed. after Thanksgiving . Delivered Sunday @ 10AM on the border .

USPS priority mail works well for me. I ship a lot of stuff out and mainly use usps priority mail. I get a lot of stuff from Amazon through all three carriers. I have not had any issues with any of the carriers. USPS is probably the best right now with packages from Amazon as they are delivering 7 days a week.

This.

All the ingredients for bad service are there, as it's always an accumulation of things.

1-a public sector union that was paying to elect the same people they negotiated with.
2-a lack of accountability, built up over time, due to increasing subsidies they thought would last forever
3-pension obligations, negotiated with the people they paid to elect.
4-the loss of that subsidizing partner, i.e. the politicians they put in office are gone.
5-a rapidly retiring workforce, earnestly demanding the pensions they paid for with campaign contributions (and other tactics)
6-competition from privately run organizations that are accountable to a bottom line.
7-a system geared towards non-parcel delivery, i.e. letters.

There's a reason that the USPS web site won't let you choose a deliver service below Priority, they know what works. eBay and PayPal and stamps.com may allow you to choose a more appropriate or cheaper service, but the Postal Service prefers you use Priority or higher. This is their competitive product with UPS and Fed Ex. I used to load freight, and if it didn't have a time factor, we'd have definitely let freight sit until that trailer filled up. The more times you touch freight, the more it costs you to move it, and eventually, too many "touches" will have you carrying it at a loss. This is one reason the USPS cannot compete with Fed Ex and UPS for customers like Land's End, LL Bean, etc. They don't have the system in place for it.

It took 50-75 years to build the system that now works inadequately, if we want to define it as such. Me, I look at the bell curve, and based on volume, the Postal Service vs. the bell curve is very, very good. The system, though, is dependent upon junk mail to survive, financially, and they'll need to change a lot when that dries up. Right now, they are overstaffed compared to UPS for handling parcels, way overstaffed. They will also lose 40% of their workers in the next 10 years, and don't plan to fill those jobs, but the pension obligations will remain, so the same or more revenue has to be produced by 40% fewer people, moving more packages in a more efficient manner.

In my area, a ton of delivery is rural, an American staple. When my route carrier had cancer, there was no substitute. The other carriers had to do their routes, then pick up her route. She passed away, and we had a steady carrier for a while, and now she's sick, too, so we're back to the same thing. Some days, we don't get mail at all (very infrequent, but perhaps once a month). Some days, we get neighbor's mail and vice versa (about twice a month). Most days, the mail can come between 2 pm and 8 pm. I don't complain. Some communities, across the US, have no more small-town delivery, and anyone who wants mail needs to get a PO Box or not get mail.

I have had my issues. I sent a mortgage payment via Priority Mail, and it never did show delivered. I followed up with the Postal Service, and they never found out where it went or when it got there. No one ever followed up. It wasn't limited to the USPS, though, the mortgage company said they'd look into it, never got back to me, but I saw it posted the day after it was "out for delivery."

On the other hand, I mailed my son some cash in an envelope, to his college dorm address. He never got it. I didn't use tracking or anything, but my local Postmaster said "let's do this again," and I mailed another card, addressed the same way, just a stamp. They tracked it to the loading dock where university employees, not postal employees, picked it up. They did not arrest the person right away, but let it be known that they had a suspect. A bunch of mail was "returned" to the post office in the university town the next day, including my son's cash.

An earlier post about "cube" is correct. The key to making money on any kind of freight is cube and load average. "Cube" is the percent of the trailer that's filled, and that's only achieved by stacking freight in every nook and cranny. Empty space on a trailer is lost revenue. "Load Average" is weight per trailer. Simply put, the heavier, the better, because in the long run, you're using about the same gas and labor to move more tonnage, which, even in the Postal Service, is money. If your equipment does not allow you to fill that trailer, you are wasting money. The USPS system does not allow high cube rates on freight. UPS would not last 6 months using USPS equipment, rules, and procedures, and their union payroll and pension obligations are just as heavy.

The kind of change needed at USPS is happening, as they've brought in people who had to work in the systems that were accountable to the bottom line. These people are still handcuffed by obligations that were already present. They're having to "back into" a system that works, instead of having it from scratch, like Fed Ex. It will take 20 more years, at a minimum, for the USPS to be profitable and have a system like UPS or Fed Ex, and it's 50/50 there will be any package delivery at all. The internet has severely cut into their "pure mail," so junk mail, negotiated at rock-bottom prices, is having to make up the revenue.

The Postal employees I've dealt with all my life have been pretty cool over all, and I hope the best for them, but many are discouraged, uncertain about their future. My postmaster, who is a minority, told me all his new hires are based on diversity, not test scores, interviews, etc, so he's got to take what comes and hope it's good. It appears it's working pretty well, but he says the system also makes it very hard to fire anyone who is not performing, so instead of even trying to get rid of someone, they put up with the performance. This is US government-wide, by the way, called the Merit Protection System.

I've had problems with USPS shipments being held up in Texas in the past, but otherwise pretty much trouble free.

Good luck with both Priority & First Class w/ tracking.

UPS is terrible ...and the UPS "Sure Post" where they transfer final delivery to USPS is even worse.

I will never use UPS to ship a frame or bike. I think they toss bike boxes into a cage of gorillas before loading them onto the truck.

I like bike flights & FedEx....Recently shipped a bike to Australia via BF & Fedex.... Arrived in 5 days in perfect condition.

If anything had to move through or near that blizzard, be prepared to wait a little bit more.

My cycling UPS friend says "never ship anything via UPS that can't be dropped, as packaged, for 10 feet."
That is a great rule of thumb for all shippers, as I've seen bikes damaged by UPS, Fed Ex. DHL, and USPS.

He is full of wisdom, like:
"Fragile means try not to drop it, that's all."
"No freight carrier wants to ship a bike."
"Never ship anything that can't be thrown or caught like a football."
"Every 70-lb package is another disability claim."

When I worked loading freight, believe me, a bike box would have been stuffed on top. One, it's too light to load freight on top of, and filling the trailer is paramount (pun intended). Two, it takes up space for its weight, and even freight handlers know this is not profitable, so it gets shoved into any leftover space. Once in a great while, we'd see it as it was, fragile, and put it on the back of the trailer. Of course, it had to be handled 3-4 more times until it got delivered, and no guarantee that would happen down the line.

I forced many a fender, quarter panel, and hood into any nook or cranny they'd fit into, and figured "the body shop will fix it." Then I went to the insurance side, and realized no one is paying the body shop to fix that damaged panel, and the shop can't wait for another one, shipped by the same gorilla. I felt bad, knowing that it's likely still happening, and now I know why body panel sellers prefer to get truckload freight and then deliver it themselves, purely due to damages in transit.

Shipping via USPS is usually fine for me, but it's a pain when something goes wrong. With UPS or FedEx, I can get someone to take some kind of action within a few days if a package goes missing. Maybe it's not the action I'm hoping for, but there's some sort of recourse. With the USPS, if I remember correctly, packages aren't considered officially "lost" until 30 days passes. You can file a claim, but you're stuck in limbo for a month while hoping the package will turn up.

Funny this thread popping up, I've been waiting for a way overdue USPS package that's finally today showing as in my local Post Office for sorting. I had really started thinking it was lost or something happened to it. Maybe the weather was part of the problem though it sounds like our packages were shipped long before any actual storms, lol.

If you don't like the postal service, then use something else.
Kwitchyerbellyachin'!

They all screw up once in a while. I've had problems with them all. Most of the time though everything is OK. As for pensions and decent pay, that seems like a reasonable cost of doing business that all companies and government agencies should provide for.

This time of year shipping in general is a mess. USPS is great in some locations and awful in others.

Regarding the "money troubles" USPS has had, they were actually doing great before a Congress (which wanted the business to go to their friends in private industry) required the funding of entitlements so far down the line that the recipients of them were not even born yet. No private company would be able to survive this. USPS was intentionally torpedoed by fans of "small government."

Excuse me, but I couldn't really choose the method of shipping on something shipped by an ebay seller. I assumedthey would at least use priority for something that would fit in a flat rate box. It had a long tracking number that began with 94, so I assumed it was shipped that way.,,,,BD

Response to the quityerbellyachin.

Robbie,

This sounds more like an anti-union rant than a reasoned comment. Just had to say so.

I believe this is a large part of it. My USPS is terrible, I can't wait to move if for no other reason than maybe my packages will get delivered more predictably. I'm in the middle of trying to sort out the second lost package in less than a year. More often I'll have packages marked "out for delivery" for 3-5 days before they actually show up. I've had three packages in the past year delivered to various neighbors, including one delivered to a neighbor who was away on vacation for two weeks. I spent way too much time trying to sort that one out with the seller since it was marked "Delivered" in tracking. ARgggh, don't get me started with USPS!

I think after 15 days from payment, that I have a right to complain no matter what shipping service was used.. I could have driven there and back twice, or maybe three times since then. But anyway, still not here today, and still showing scheduled delivery for January 20th. In the progress, it shows picked up from it's first stop after leaving the city it originated from.,,,,BD

Maybe the truck disappearance will be on the X-Files tonight.