Some information I just acquired this calender year from my local post office. I've been sending custom guitars out via the USPS because of some problems I had with the other shippers concerning insurance. I need two to three thousand dollars insurance on an instrument and the other shippers wouldn't comply. so...I've sent stuff with the USPS for ten years now. Figured it must be safer, and I've had no problems to this point. HOWEVER - the last shipment I made I made a comment about it going out that day and the postal clerk said that UPS had been there early so it wouldn't go out until the next day. I said to her, "What's UPS got to do with it?"
she informed me that all parcels end up going via UPS by a contract with the government! Heck, if it wasn't for the insurance thing, I'd send stuff by Fedex from now on.
You might want to look into this at your local city to see if it's universal, but we're having some deception here in my area.
That is totally wrong, as a matter of fact it's the other way around if the destination is any number of smaller rural addresses. UPS and FEDEX just don't ship to many of those areas. See what a pain it is to fedex or ups to an APO and you'll see what I mean. Honestly though the USPS is no longer really geared towards Really big shipments, most of that work has been absorbed by UPS. For big packages, the USPS is still the least expensive but it will take longer to arrive unless you wish to expedite and pay for priority mail service, even then that price is less than FEDEX.
As with most post offices especially the smaller satellite offices, once the last truck of the day leaves for the distribution center, thats it for the day. The USPS is slated to get be hit with some big budget cuts (Figures the Govt. has no issues with slashing essential Services) so in your case they may have had to give up the tractor trailer to bring stuff to the main distribution office and they had to outsource. The way it's going many of us will be lucky if our local PO isn't closed entirely.
With shipping you get what you pay for, if you don't want to have your package bumped back in line you have to pay for it, that holds true for all carriers. My last tower hobby order took a week to get to me with the standard UPS shipping rate. It went out the door on a tuesday evening and got to me the following tuesday according to the tracking info.
Priority mail would have gotten to me in 3 days at the same cost.
There is only so much you can fit on those little mail trucks.
Topic: My Aplogies For The Delay (Read 1311 times)