Slower snail mail

[deanodog]

Am I the only one who thinks that snail mail has got even slower. Seven days for a letter to get 800 miles. I had sent a postal M O and it took seven days and I was getting worried.
There is turmoil locally with the P O considering sending sorting out of state to centralize sorting which will mean jobs lost. Just worndering.

 

[OKFC05]

I have noticed that the mail I send to KY addresses gets delived in 2 days less time than mail sent from KY to OK.
What is with that?

 

[BarbC]

And they wonder why people use email, faxes, UPS, FedEx, electronic billing/payments, etc.

 

[JcMack]

There seems to be no rhyme or reason to mail delivery anymore. I pay my bills electronically. I got tired of paying 20 days in advance to make sure they got there. The $.02 stamp hike that was soon to be applied has been postponed. I figure they're getting ready for no mail on Saturday.

 

[smith17]

I have sold several stocks over the last 2-3 weeks and have packaged most in bubble mailers which were sent 1st class parcel. One got from TX to CA in 2 days, one went to CT in 3 days. I sent one to CO last Monday and don't think it has made it yet. One check sent to me from TN took a week, first class mail. Hard to figure.
Ed

 

[rimfired]

I don't know. It seems as soon as I mail my bills out new ones arrive almost immediately.

 

[Beemer-mark]

In the last 5 years I've lived in DE, OH and now NC. My daughter lives in San Fransisco. I ship a lot of packages across the country. It's rare for anything to take 4 days, almost everything is 3 days. Priority mail, bought on line, is easier and cheaper than shipping thru UPS or FedEx.

Maybe you should talk to your local PO?

 

[zercool]

My luck has been generally good with the USPS. Anything in New England is two days, most of New York is next-day.

I actually have better luck with USPS than with common carrier ... and I have the joy of a small-town post office. No line, the postmaster knows me by sight and never asks for ID for a package... a (junk mail) letter came in addressed to my wife, by her maiden name, at the wrong PO box ... and he got it to us. I really can't complain about that kind of service.

 

[HAWKEYE10]

I find that when it's important for it to get there fast it goes slow. Go figure. Don

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

I think we're all a bit spoiled. Think about it. 44 cents and you send a letter across the country. Still a good deal in my book

 

[Steave]

It's funny, sometimes the mail gets things there in what seems like an acceptable time, 2-3 days, and other times it is over a week. I recently had someone mail something to me via Priority Mail from Ft. Worth, TX, which is about 30 miles from Dallas, it took 10 days to get here.

 

[Marksman]

Mail service seems inconsistant, no rhyme or reason for delays. My pet peeve though is the amount of time the clerks in the post office spend with unprepared, uninformed people. Folks that show up with packages not ready to ship should be sent to the back of the line. But no, the clerk uses post office suppllies to wrap the package while eveyone in line is cooling their heels. These jerks treat the post office as though it is a wrapping service, and you wonder why the cost of a stamp keeps going up. Go figure, duh.

 

[LVSteve]

I suspect they have consolidated a lot of their hubs. So, if you send a letter from a place well away from a hub to a location with a similar issue, it just takes longer.

Another thing I just thought of: does the USPS use commercial flights to move mail or do they have their own fleet? With fewer flights due to the economy, maybe stuff sits longer waiting for a plane.

I have also found that the rotation of the Earth is a factor. I used to deal with folk in Washington DC a lot, and their letters always got here in three days. Mine always took six or seven and sometimes more. I was suspicious at first that stuff sat in their company mailroom, but further checks revealed that it always took longer to get stuff East than receive. Just like with TV schedules, the West Coast gets the shaft again.

 

[Chef]

My recent experience has been "customers" that don't speak English taking lots of time to buy that Money Order to send home. Our local PO staff doesn't hablo so it sometimes is comical, but hardly ever worth the wait. ~Chef

 

[ohiobuckeye]

No USPS complaints here. Mail is fast and packages are just as fast, if not faster, than UPS or Fedex....and a helluva lot cheaper.

 

[cowart]

It's funny, sometimes the mail gets things there in what seems like an acceptable time, 2-3 days, and other times it is over a week.

How and when you (and your correspondent) mail something can have a big effect on how long it takes. If I mail something from my house, it doesn't get picked up until late in the day, and misses that day's last pickup cycle at the hub, and doesn't get handled until the day after that, adding 2 days to the transit time. For maximum speed, mail from the hub, and do so before the end of the day's last pickup cycle.

Example: on Monday, I drove to the hub (3 miles away) and mailed a Netflix movie at about 4:00pm. The last pickup there is 6:00pm on the inside slots, 5:00pm on the outside boxes. On Tuesday, Netflix sent me an email at 5:28am saying that the movie had arrived. Also on Tuesday, they sent me an email at 3:22pm saying that the next movie had been mailed, and would arrive on Wednesday.

 

[ImprovedModel56Fan]

About the same, except in-state may be faster than in the past. Still my favorite for packages. However, a newspaper from NYC is usually slow, occasionally fast, and occasionally damaged or missing.

A recent slow-and-cheap package from MA on Wednesday got to AL on Saturday.