USPS again
- Thread starter jimbo1096
- Start date
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So, did you ask for a refund on the shipping cost for their failure to perform as contracted?
Just kidding they will tell you they don't guarantee delivery time frames.
Just kidding they will tell you they don't guarantee delivery time frames.
USPS has its problems. A friend tried to ship me a scope. It had the correct address which was a USPS Post Office Box inside a USPS station. They decided there was no such place and delivered it to the wrong town. Then they shipped it to another state. The shipper has waited four months for it to be returned. They have delivered boxes to me with the end cut off and the contents removed. No word mentioned. Just blank stares. Filing with the Postal Inspectors leads to nothing. So, it seems to be hit or miss and with guns it cold be a miss too often. Oh, and then there was the time I ordered six brand new 55 gallon steel drums with lids. For grain storage. The seller sent them USPS. The local mail route driver had a fit with that one!
Blackmore
Blackhawk
The staff in my small town post office are friendly, helpful and all around great. I think the regional sorting centers are black holes that mail disappears into for days before it emerges. The one in Nashua, NH is notorious.
For parts, etc. I've started using UPS SmartPost rather than Ground Advantage. Cost is about the same. That way the package travels to the local post office for final delivery entirely via UPS - avoiding the USPS sorting centers,
Any gun I've bought and had to be shipped to me was through FedEx. Never a problem.
I've generally preferred USPS (UPS breaks my stuff ;^), but lately, things seem to be going downhill. Last month, I won a $1 auction on GunBroker - I mailed payment 8/23, and it took the USPS folks 16 days to get that envelope from Wyoming to Texas. The seller mailed my $1 part right away, but USPS tracking is showing the package orbitting down in Texas, moving in circles from the seller's location to Houston, and back again!
(EDIT: Finally received the above package 9/28, and the delay was NOT the fault of the USPS - the seller had shipped my part in a used box that had been mailed TO him, without removing all of the old USPS bar codes. The USPS scanners apparently kept reading the OLD bar codes, and routed the package accordingly, back to the sender. If you reuse packaging, MAKE SURE there are no bar codes showing!! )
About the same time, I bought a bunch of cast bullets from a seller in Arizona, and instead of sending it north (as mentioned, I'm in Wyoming), the USPS folks in Phoenix also sent that box to Houston, where it's apparently been sitting without moving for several days (so much for "Priority Mail" ;^). Looks like there might be one of those "black holes" that @Blackmore mentioned, down there in Houston, sucking in packages from all over the country!
(EDIT: Finally received the above package 9/28, and the delay was NOT the fault of the USPS - the seller had shipped my part in a used box that had been mailed TO him, without removing all of the old USPS bar codes. The USPS scanners apparently kept reading the OLD bar codes, and routed the package accordingly, back to the sender. If you reuse packaging, MAKE SURE there are no bar codes showing!! )
About the same time, I bought a bunch of cast bullets from a seller in Arizona, and instead of sending it north (as mentioned, I'm in Wyoming), the USPS folks in Phoenix also sent that box to Houston, where it's apparently been sitting without moving for several days (so much for "Priority Mail" ;^). Looks like there might be one of those "black holes" that @Blackmore mentioned, down there in Houston, sucking in packages from all over the country!
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The problems I had were likely at the sorting center. Our Post Mistresses over the 25 years here have been great. Always women from here. We have had problem with hard to explain delays in mail getting here. Years ago I wrote this short blurb on why:
Why the US Mail is so slow in reaching Costilla
Out-of-state US Mail arrives at Albuquerque, about 300 miles south of the village of Costilla in northern Taos County. It is then loaded on to a pack mule train and walked by fat, drunken, old men north up the Old Spanish trail through Santa Fe and the Espanola Valley where they encounter Comanchero bandits (now known as "Gangbangers"!). Then, they pass through the winding, stony, steep gorge cut by the Rio Grande all the way to Taos. The final forty miles is driven by an even older and slower gentleman driving a 1936 Ford truck. He has not changed the motor oil in his flathead V-8 engine since just after the end of WWII, when they celebrated the end of fuel rationing. Eventually, the mail arrives at our little post office in the village of Costilla. The Post Mistress leaves it on the loading dock until she has swept out the pigeon droppings and changed the office cat's litter box. By then it is time for her first lunch break. I may see the letter by that afternoon, or I might have to wait until next morning depending upon how many visitors to the Post Office are trying to sell eggs, homemade tamales, or just need to shoot-the-bull for a half hour or so. If the item is a parcel, it might be used to hold open the front door and is soon forgotten as most doorstops are little considered.
Bob Wright
Hawkeye
I mailed out acknowledgements to all who attended my sister's visitation and funeral. I posted these by going into the station and mailing them inside at the letter drop. One recipient told me he received and empty envelope that had been slit open.
Bob Wright
Bob Wright
