Shipping through the USPS

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RAT ROD AL

MOPAR ARCHAEOLOGIST - one parts hoard at a time!
FABO Gold Member
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I have been shipping alot of parts through them and have had a few mishaps,One to canada took the scenic route through Germany but finally showed up, One got smashed( shipped ground with no insurance ) so I had to eat that one. One went M I A (priority mail) so I filed a claim one line expecting them to tell me they wouldn't cover it . But got a check in the mail today. Amazing. Moral to the story is Ship priority if possible.
 
I have never shipped anything, period, so my experience is on the receiving end. I have yet to not receive anything I have ordered/bought that has been shipped by USPS. However, their 'tracking' leaves much to be desired. That's because information is always late being logged into the system. Item is usually here before it is listed as received.
 
I have shipped a lot of stuff thru the mail and it is by far the most reliable method. But they have some strange policies. If you insure a item and they lose it, they refund the item and the shipping. If on the other hand a item gets destroyed by them they will only refund the item and not the shipping? I know I've had both happen to me. Another thing, they like to deny a claim right off, appeal the decision and stand your ground, they will refund you. Shipped a grill to a member here that was destroyed. Eventually I got a refund.
 
I have shipped quite a bit with USPS Priority mail. Never had a problem, it provides a tracking number, is very fast, and it provides insurance.
 
We use USPS priority mail extensively at my work with great reliability. I wouldn't hesitate shipping via USPS priority mail.
 
Priority flat rate aint that much better. shipped a Canon SLR camera, they lost it (may have been taken off porch as he said he never got it), got $63 back as that's all priority flat rate is insured for ($50) by default. Broke even as it sold for $50. 2 months later Shipped a Banks Turbo hot side, lost it and that was with tracking! It left St. Louis and never reached the first hop on way to small town. WTH? It either never made if off the St. Louis dock (my opinion) or it got lost in the hand off which seems unlikely as the mail is in "train cars" on the trucks and they just pull them out, seperate the local cars and put the forwarding mail cars back on. I got $50 back on that too. Insurance is cheap, if its worth over $50, get it.
 
If you have something that you absolutely want to make sure it gets to where its going via USPS, then ship it registered mail.
Yes, it costs more, but there is 100% accountability from your hands to the receiver. Every person who touches a "red" has to sign for it and accept it. If it's lost, the USPS knows exactly who to ask about it. It doesn't flow with the normal mail stream and truly does get special handling.
But, you're going to pay for it.
 
If you have something that you absolutely want to make sure it gets to where its going via USPS, then ship it registered mail.
Yes, it costs more, but there is 100% accountability from your hands to the receiver. Every person who touches a "red" has to sign for it and accept it. If it's lost, the USPS knows exactly who to ask about it. It doesn't flow with the normal mail stream and truly does get special handling.
But, you're going to pay for it.

I always use usps , it is too handy for me to use anything else. Their rates are getting high enough causing some buyers to cancel out. I always ship the cheapest way, and put ins. on things that are valuable, buyer pays the shipping anyway. Never had a problem .
 
I use it as much as possible, but this week has been a real screw up. The itme I ordered first stated that I would not get it until the 17th of July. I accept that, so I check the status and see that it has arrived at the San Francisco sorting facility. So......what do they do, send it to Palo Alto of course. Stupid Morons, you would expect it to go to my post office which is on the way back to San Francisco, No............ they sent it back to SF so now if I am lucky it will be a delivery attempt on Monday AND need a signature. Good Job USPS... NOT!
 
When you realize how many millions of packages and letters get mailed every year, you get a little more appreciation for what the USPS does. They have a pretty good track record all things considered
 
I use it as much as possible, but this week has been a real screw up. The itme I ordered first stated that I would not get it until the 17th of July. I accept that, so I check the status and see that it has arrived at the San Francisco sorting facility. So......what do they do, send it to Palo Alto of course. Stupid Morons, you would expect it to go to my post office which is on the way back to San Francisco, No............ they sent it back to SF so now if I am lucky it will be a delivery attempt on Monday AND need a signature. Good Job USPS... NOT!

They made it up to you by getting my most recent order here earlier than they said.:D
Seriously though, if I were to mail myself a letter it would have to make the trip 90 miles to Phoenix for sorting and then the 90 back to be delivered.
Got to sort it somewhere I guess.
 
Here's a dumb story for you. I used to work at UPS. I was maintaining 2 drag cars, and ordering a lot of car parts. One day my UPS delivery driver stopped by to deliver my parts and told me he also had a package for my wife but couldn't let me have it, he had to drop it at the post office and they would deliver it the next day.
 
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I have been shipping alot of parts through them and have had a few mishaps,One to canada took the scenic route through Germany but finally showed up, One got smashed( shipped ground with no insurance ) so I had to eat that one. One went M I A (priority mail) so I filed a claim one line expecting them to tell me they wouldn't cover it . But got a check in the mail today. Amazing. Moral to the story is Ship priority if possible.

And get insurance to cover it in case something happens on the way....
 
This "partner" shipping, doesn't make any sense to me. Leaves the vendor in Texas, by UPS. They deliver it to the post office, about 25 miles from me. Then post office delivers it to my mail box, in Florida. Takes 5 days. If an item ships UPS from Texas to me, it takes 3-4 days. If USPS it takes 2-3 days. Go figure.
 
I shipped an old (but still valuable) camera off to have something modified - the post office destroyed the box and damaged the camera.
I had insured it. There is no way to talk to someone to say "hey, let's get a repair estimate and see what it's going to take to fix this".
So I filled out the form and asked for the amount it was insured for.
Had to take the packaging and damaged camera to the post office...in Decatur, GA (I'm in Phoenix).
Had to pay someone's time on the other end to go to the post office...they've had my camera since mid April.
They rejected my claim - I hadn't provided sufficient proof of value.

I called - they told me I had to appeal in writing - no way to get a decision maker on the phone.
I appealed the decision and sent more information substantiating my claim.
They denied the appeal - insufficient proof of value.

Sent in a second appeal - I sent exactly what they said would be sufficient proof of value, and said, "either ship it to this camera repair place for a repair estimate, or pay me".
Second appeal denied - 'insufficient proof of value'.
They've had $1500 worth of camera gear for 3 months now.
They get 30 more days to respond every time I send them anything.
Nobody capable of having an adult conversation can be reached by phone
I jump through all the hoops, and they just keep denying the claim.
Your only hope seems to be having a receipt for having purchased it recently (even though they say a statement of value by a reputable dealer will work - denied twice).

FedEx for me from now on.
And I hope Amazon runs the USPS into insolvency
 
I have been shipping alot of parts through them and have had a few mishaps,One to canada took the scenic route through Germany but finally showed up, One got smashed( shipped ground with no insurance ) so I had to eat that one. One went M I A (priority mail) so I filed a claim one line expecting them to tell me they wouldn't cover it . But got a check in the mail today. Amazing. Moral to the story is Ship priority if possible.
Retired from that toilet. Once the USPS made the deal with FedEx there was no difference in speed between Priority and Ground. Everything got loaded into the same FedEx pod at the USPS and got moved by FedEx airplanes. Don't know if it is still the same.
About your smashed box. When my wife initially got injured while working at the USPS she ended up doing parcel repairs. Damn near every box she repaired was due to the sender not stuffing the box FULL with packing material. You leave any open air space in the box it may become crush space. Very little, if anything, gets handled by hand anymore. The APPS machine has a hydraulic arm that swings out to kick your package off the conveyor belt. Leave enough open air space and here is the first place it can crushed. Your package may be the first to fall into the empty BMC...the internal container in this image....
bmc.jpg
the next thing to fall into it could weigh 69.9 pounds..needless to say what will happen if your package has any open air space and it is in the drop zone.
See lot of people bitching about crap getting wrecked "by the USPS". The USPS does its customers a very large dis-service by not educating them. No open air space. Tape the flaps of letters shut etc. I used to run the AFCS. The machine that cancels the stamps. On average I cancelled 30k letters an hour....which gives the machine a very little time to read and decide which bin to put your letter in. The answer? Use printed labels. If the machine can't read your sloppy *** hand writing your letter goes to the reject bin. Which means it gets ran again....and again....and again.....until it is a tattered mess. Then it goes to repairs...which sometimes sit for a while...
 
Someone had to bring this thread back out, I just had another tail light get busted in shipping.
gotta look for one to get to the buyer.
 
I do a decent amount of shipping - USPS it is easy, convenient and works very well. Items usually arrive early - yes every now and again it takes the long way. UPS - I am not so happy with. If an item arrives to fast, they will sit on it - very rarely early delivery- late delivery yes, but early no.

USPS for me
 
Same in Australia shipping is good until it gets to Australian post they ship a WA parcel to NSW 4,000 Km away then road freight it to WA
which takes 7 days.
When i queried them their excuse was there is not always a direct flight to WA so they ship it to the West coast although the time it takes to them to road freight to WA a direct flight has become available sounds like penny pinching
Had a few damaged items but was always refunded through Paypal.
 
Sometimes i think Hawaii is the worst for shipping!
FedEx & UPS cost way to damn much ! But get here quickly.
USPS , ground , economy or First class takes 3 weeks at least . But i have had it take 3 months to get here !
Now on other hand , Priority can get here in 3 to 5 working days. To me its worth the extra money not to have to wait so long to receive my items.
Now, Damage is another issue . Most airports here have no cover for arrivals, So if raining your packages get soaked. Also they are very rough with them so things get broken. Maybe @ 60% of my Ins. claims have been paid. Lost out on the rest .
 
USPS will tell you flat out no to shipping firearms...don't know about anymore but if you dug deep into the DMM (Domestic Mail Manual) you used to find otherwise. I was up clearing the belt one day for the Window Service Clerks when the Military dropped off a case with 6 fully assembled M-16's, with only the firing pin removed. The firing pins were in another small separate package. The case they were using basically just supported/separated the weapons. You could easily see what they were. The Window Service boss was throwing a fit over this. I went and got the supervisor of the area that they were going thru (they were going registered and had to go thru the "Red Room".) Mike dug into the DMM and showed the Window Service boss exactly where it was in the DMM about shipping weapons. This woman came unglued, apparently she was anti gun. SO for the next few weeks I was sticking target pasties up on damn near everything in the Window Services area. For some odd reason she was relocated to another area....:rofl::rofl::rofl:....and even more odd was target pasties started appearing there as well....:lol::lol::lol::lol:
 
I bought a pair of Edelbrock heads from a FABO member a while back. I followed them via the tracking number until the day they were to arrive. I got home that day & there was a USPS notice on my door telling me I had two packages at the Post Office. I took the notice to pick them up & asked why they weren't delivered to my house. The answer was, " The carrier said they were too heavy for them to take from the truck & put on my porch". The attendant brought them out, I put one on each shoulder & walked out. Edelbrock aluminum heads are NOT that heavy, I think the carrier was lazy in this case.
 
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