Thread: Don't ship important parts through the Post Office!

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I have recently had big delays in shipping or receiving parts through the Post Office.

One was a part that I bought on EBAY. The thing disappeared somewhere in New Jersey for 8 days before showing up on tracking again. I did eventually receive it, but that should have been a warning to me.

The next was a package I sent to a chromer in Tennessee. These were some custom and highly modified parts that I had spent about 4 days getting right.

It's a 14 hour round trip to drive and since Louisiana is such a hot spot for Covid19, some states are stopping visitors from here. Texas and Florida did for a while at least. I didn't want to take a chance on driving all day just to be turned around 30 miles from my destination.

My local UPS shipper has stopped taking packages because he has cut his open hours to about 3 a day due to lack of business from all the Corona shut downs. The Post Office was my second choice, but I had shipped another bunch of small parts to the same place and it took about 3 days to get there.

This package however, disappeared completely off of tracking for over 14 days! The local Post Office couldn't offer much help. They emailed someone internally, but got no response at all. It was insured, but that wasn't a lot of comfort. The money wasn't nearly as important as the time and work that went into the parts.

Then, wonder of wonders, it suddenly showed up yesterday on USPS tracking again and is out for delivery today! I had just about given up hope. I'll call the shop this afternoon and make sure it's ok. Fingers crossed it's not destroyed.

Lesson learned. No more shipping through USPS on important stuff for me! The 14 hour drive would have been a bargain.

The great post office UNION strikes again. A lot of things from ebay ship by usps and it's a crap shoot as to when it will be delivered. I've had guaranteed delivery, say by Friday, take until Wed. to get to me and the postage rates keep going up.

But on the other side, I ordered on eBay about ten days ago, shipped from NYC and was a bit shocked that they said "Item has shipped. Expect delivery between (Wednesday to Tuesday)" which was eight to fourteen days away, only to have it appear in my mail box on Saturday, four days point to point! I was pleasantly surprised! Shipping is a crapshoot these days, for sure.

heres another Ebay mess I sold an item on ebay gave them box size so they could do the USPS shipping cost. Item sold. but they only charged 1/2 what it cost. I lost $20 bucks because it wasn't the buyers fault. live and learn. I liked it better when I handled the shipping costs

Well the good news is I called the chromer and the package arrived and appears to be undamaged. That is a huge relief! This thing took 21 days to make a 7 hour trip! Apparently, USPS is having severe transportation issues. There is now a large banner on their website stating that. I have a feeling that my package was laying in a trailer somewhere that they had no one to deliver.

One of the parts was an original Healey part that I modified to fit my car. That part required dechroming to be modified. That alone took 3 weeks to get back before I could even start work on it. All the mods, fiddling and some small custom brackets took 3 or 4 days to do and I wasn't looking forward to doing it all over again.

Funny thing is that Fedex and UPS seem to be doing just fine. I have been ordering a lot of parts for my car lately and I have not noticed any big delays with them. Maybe 1 day, if that.

Now you've all got me concerned.
I posted a parcel to the States three weeks ago, haven't heard from the recipient yet, so I'm hoping it hasn't got lost in the system.

In my experience they are all the same. UPS delivers to me boxes from companies that aren't even in my town! So I swing by the UPS store and tell them what happened so they want to charge ME to put it into their system!! WTF!!

I walk out laughing and they are yelling for me to take "my" box. what fools! Fed-Ex for us is all contracted delivery, they have zero to do with Fed-Ex other than the trucks are lettered in fed-ex wrap. They have zero interest in getting things done other than fast. If the truck is empty by the end of the day all is well. Don't matter if the box/package is in the right location- my truck is empty!

USPS isn't fast.. but it seems like they try. And most of my mail is all junk now anyway. Do I seem ...jaded?.... hmmm

They're all swimmin' upstream. Saw an article a week or so ago that all home shipping is up 28% which has got these shippers scrambling for new employees to deal with all the folks ordering stuff instead of going to stores, or stores closed. Amazon Prime is/was quoting 7 day expected delivery dates rather than the normal 2. I've had packages on any of the three carriers that showed "out for delivery" and still not show till the next day because they just have too many stops. It seems to be getting better the past few days, and Amazon is shortening the expectation numbers, but when the world panics things get weirder than regularly.

I'm getting bitter about this whole shipping thing, I wish it wasn't so convenient. I hate like poison to order anything form Amazon, their too much of a monopoly. At least from Ebay there is a chance of it going thought a actual store. However the last couple things I have bought off of ebay from user names like Familystore1234 I get an Email that says payment made to #*&^ @!)?"<^ ( that's as close to Chinese writing my computer will do ) Then I get mad I padded someones pocket in China.

Hate to tell ya Seth, but there are a lot of sellers that use Amazon to fulfill their orders too. A business can be set up to "buy" from Amazon and have them handle everything an the business just keeps the gross profit difference between what Amazon charges them and what they charged the customer/ebay buyer. Modern commerce...…………..

I guess that's the way it is.