U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

USPS is so great and I will miss it fiercely if it ever goes away

I'm really feeling the damage the Trump admin has done to the USPS. I still use the mail to send in payments for about 10 monthly bills, but two bills have failed to show up in the last couple of months and one payment (for ACA plan) failed to get there, requiring me to make a quick online payment on 12/31 to have coverage in 2021. I'm thinking about changing to all online payments but I hate that this seems to be part of the conservative plan for privatization. Break shit > say "see, shit is broke" > private sector takeover > profit!

We’re gonna need investigations into a lot of things. This should be one of them.

yep

Book that went out right before the holiday crush still hasn't been delivered.

Book that went out on the 21st of December still hasn't been delivered, and shows that it hasn't even reached a main sorting facility— just that "the label has been created."

A package filled with cookies and other things (sent by my long-suffering aunt every Xmas to everyone in the family) arrived a month late.

In the meantime, things I ordered a week ago are arriving on time, and so is tons of useless fucking junk mail.

I know the decimation of the post office under Trump has been dire, particularly during Covid, but the policy of slowly dealing with the backlog while keeping up with mail delivery isn't cutting it— there simple should be a two-month backlog of important mail sitting in post office sorting facilities while I'm getting offers for credit cards.

*there simply should NOT be a two-month backlog

It's insane, but I have to say I've seen things wildly inconsistent, in the most inconsistent ways. On December 27th, I dropped two packages to family members in the mail at the same post office. One to my dad and one to my sister, who both live in different small towns about an hour and a half away from me. Both sent First Class. My dad got his the next day. My sister got hers last week.

I've had some packages coming to me take over a month, but others come within a day or two. The inconsistency I've experienced is what is the most weird.

The policy in Philadelphia is now to slowly deal with the backlog while simultaneously continuing to deliver regular mail, so what's happening makes sense, but it is also MADDENING.

yup. first-in-first-out is broken. i sold a book to someone in utah and it got there in just 5 days. i have not received two DVDs from netflix (yes) i was supposed to get on january 2. but i still get bed bath and beyond coupons.

Even the junk mail I get is late— I got a postcard for some sale that ended long before the postcard was delivered.

also makes scamming easier. my bestie bought a switch from someone on Craigslist and after sending the money, the USPS tracking number showed as "label created, not yet in system", for the first two days, and it was hard for us to tell whether it was a legit problem or the slowness of USPS tracking updates, as I've seen them update much slower than usual.

unfortunately, it was a scam and she got ripped off of $200.

had to file IC3 crime report which probably will go nowhere as I am pretty sure seller was using a pseudonym

I sure as hell turned off mail order for my prescriptions

I ordered packages that both got sent out the beginning of this week and have both arrived before the estimated delivery date, so I don’t know what’s going on.

anything that gets sent to me via USPS via Amazon seems to show up on time. Bezos jumping the line

anything that gets sent to me via USPS via Amazon seems to show up on time. Bezos jumping the line

That answers it

It's going to take a long time to get this back to any reasonable working order, huh? In my experience, it is currently far worse than at any point in 2020 and seems to be going downhill with each passing week.

Latest twist I'm really enjoying is getting notified, daily, that something is out for delivery, only to have it continually get pushed back to (allegedly) the next day. Been riding this cycle every day since last Wednesday for one particular package, it's put on the truck for delivery every single day but for some reason just can't make it to my door.

our local mail deliverers are overworked and as such prone to mistakes. we constantly get stuff missdelivered, and unfortunately the last victim was my mother's water pills.

they put it in another neighbor's box and instead of bringing it to our door like every decent human being does, they returned it to sender.

Oh yeah, the amount of misdeliveries around here is skyrocketing. I've pretty much built in time every other day to redistribute mail to others and our neighborhood email group is just lousy with "anybody get my mail" and "I got so-and-so's mail" notes.

yeah we usually get knocks on the door from neighbors saying "I got your stuff", it's how we meet each other here.

I've still yet to receive a few things I ordered in December, yet items that I ordered three days ago show up no problem.

https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/usps-tracking-package-shipping-delays-philadelphia-december-20210116.html

same, I have three packages from Germany that appear to be trapped in customs, one was shipped on Oct. 15th.

So, yet another day this particular package was marked “out for delivery” but wasn’t delivered. Guessing this means it’s likely gone for good. I’d almost feel better if it had just been sitting in a distribution center without an update.

I know things are insanely slow, I totally get that. I've just never had a package show as "out for delivery" for a full week before. Basically wondering if I just need to chill longer, or if this is a case where I might want to contact the USPS sooner rather than later.

I'd just contact them. If it's a non-corporate seller, contact the seller directly after contacting the USPS and try to work something out.

If it's a corporate seller, demand a refund.

The only times I've ever been in the situation you describe, it's been an Amazon package (yes, excoriate me, hard to get to the store when one is on chemotherapy and one's partner works full time), and they refunded me immediately.

Thanks, I'll see if it comes today, if not I'll get in touch with them. If this were Amazon, I'd be less worried, just annoyed because this is a subscription based thing that is otherwise sold out now and I'm not sure I can even get a replacement.

Any chance this year of Biden/Congress repealing that stupid law passed in 2009?

That would be nice, for sure.

Reading that article table shared makes me wonder how they are going to be able to dig out of this hole. I mean, it's not like the pandemic is over and people still aren't mailing/ordering things at record levels. Surely the holiday bump has died down, but it seems to me like the backlog isn't going anywhere while new stuff continues to pile on top.

instead of the dumbass Space Force, they should make the Postal Service the fifth branch of the US military, thereby forever removing any need for any fiscal responsibility on their part for all time

Space Mail

that's my superhero name

Case in point: book ordered right before Christmas is still in a warehouse somewhere, it seems.

Today I received two chapbooks from a friend that were mailed from Albany, CA, on Monday.

"sorry sir, your package was accidentally jettisoned with our waste from the shuttle it was on. we're trying to locate it now and hoping it doesn't come in contact with our waste first"

I thankfully haven't had the kind of issues y'all are reporting but I have spent the past week watching a package bounce between a succession of FL postal facilities for some reason (nb, I am in IL). Will report back if it ever achieves a velocity sufficient to escape the state.

Oh right, there was another package last week that made its way across the entire country in one day and then sat at my local PO for four days.

I come from postman stock so I am rooting for their success against nigh-insurmountable odds. At minimum rooting for DeJoy to get sucked into a sorting machine ASAP.

Oh, I mean I am rooting for postal workers and the postal service. I know who to blame here, and it isn't my mailman or the lovely women who run the local post office location.

So I finally called the local post office since it also didn't show up today... apparently the label got wet, rendering the address "unreadable" and it was returned to sender. So I guess I have to pay triple or quadruple on the secondhand market now. Dammit.

I had to order a part for out shower, basically a 95" long piece of plastic. That's really long, so I was shocked it could be mailed at all, but I still did not expect it to arrive literally bent in half, the long mailing tube torn and bent in half as well, with a bunch of USPS "damaged" tape wrapped around it. Um, OK. So I processed the return and printed out a pre-fab UPS sticker, stuck the postage sticker over the old sticker, and brought it to the UPS store. The guy behind the counter's jawed just kind of dropped and he made a funny noise. "We can send it," he said, "but we can't guarantee it will get there in one piece." "It already arrived at my house in two pieces," I told him. "That's why I'm returning it!"

And that's my most recent tale of the mail.

can't you contact the label and have them re-mail it?

Definitely going to try, but I don't know that there are any copies remaining to send. And I just have zero faith that my copy will even make it back to them before July, considering the absolute mess that the USPS right now.

i'm def not doing mail order for meds anymore unless it's CVSs home delivery thing

Yeah, I would strongly recommend paying for alternative shipping methods for the foreseeable future, if it's an option and you can afford it.

sorry, I meant re-mail the actual copy that was returned, when they get it.

Yeah, I would hope so. I've emailed them to let them know the situation, but I have little faith in a good outcome.

In my head I hear the FunkyFour Plus One More shout “it’s DeJoy” instead of “it’s the joint”.

dah-dah-dah-dah-dah QUIT, DeJOY!

it's all about that mail
in yo sack
(it's DeJoy)

why the fuck has he not been fired yet

Maybe this is already covered, but as I understand it only the Board of Governors can fire him and there are currently three vacancies on the board, which will presumably filled by Biden appointees. I'm guessing they are waiting until the new appointees come to take any serious action.

There are four vacancies on the board at present.

Postmaster general’s new plan for USPS is said to include slower mail and higher prices

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is preparing to put all first-class mail onto a single delivery track, according to two people briefed on his strategic plan for the U.S. Postal Service, a move that would mean slower and more costly delivery for both consumers and commercial mailers.

DeJoy, with the backing of the agency’s bipartisan but Trump-appointed governing board, has discussed plans to eliminate a tier of first-class mail — letters, bills and other envelope-sized correspondence sent to a local address — designated for delivery in two days. Instead, all first-class mail would be lumped into the same three- to five-day window, the current benchmark for nonlocal mail.

That class of mail is already struggling; only 38 percent was delivered on time at the end of 2020, the Postal Service reported in federal court. Customers have reported bills being held up, and holiday cards and packages still in transit. Pharmacies and prescription benefits managers have told patients to request medication refills early to leave additional time for mail delays. The agency has not disclosed on-time scores yet in 2021.

The new service standards are part of a strategic plan that DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major Republican donor, is set to roll out in the coming days. While the change is not expected to have a significant impact on local service, the people said, they have commercial mailers, including banks, insurers, retailers and publications, worried they may aggravate existing slowdowns for nonlocal mail.

The plan also prevents first-class mail from being shipped by airplane, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations, forcing all of it into trucks and a relay of distribution depots.

The operational shifts would coincide with a push for significantly higher postage rates — which DeJoy has said was “imminent” — after the agency lost $9.2 billion in 2020 due to steep, pandemic-related declines in mail volume. It also has $188.4 billion in liabilities, the bulk of which is tied to pension and retiree health care obligations. Leaders have long sought to raise new revenue and, in 2021, are expected to pursue the first big postage rate increase in more than a decade, which could add up to a 9 percent jump compounded annually.