Tän ordered something on eBay from a vendor who was right in the same metropolitan area. How long can it take for the U.S. Postal Service to transport a package fifteen miles? Eleven days, evidently. Which wouldn’t be so bad if the seller hadn’t used Priority Mail: you know, that service which is supposed to take two or three days to get things across the country, not just across town. [More]
U.S. Postal Service Sends My Priority Mail Package 1,688 Miles Out Of Its Way
By January 23, 2013
Court: GameFly Is Right — Netflix Shouldn’t Be Getting Special Treatment From The USPS
By January 11, 2013
GameFly has once again scored a win in its years-long crusade to prove that the U.S. Postal Service is treating Netflix like the popular girl while it had to pay out the nose for similar treatment. A federal appeals court ruled today that Netflix had an unfair advantage because it didn’t have to pay a penny to have its envelopes sorted by hand instead of machine, while GameFly was subject to hefty surcharges for the same treatment. [More]
Hundreds Of FedEx Packages Missing After Driver Kicks Them Out Of His Truck
By December 17, 2012
If you live in the area of Papillion, Nebraska, and you’ve been waiting on a FedEx package for a couple weeks now, you’re not alone, after a driver for the delivery service decided to simply dump hundreds of parcels in the road. [More]
Insider Explains Why FedEx SmartPost Is So Terrible
By November 21, 2012
The overwhelming crappiness of FedEx Smartpost as a shipping method is a frequent topic around here. But why is it so terrible? We could have guessed that a partnership between ostensible rivals FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service might not work so well, but one reader with inside knowledge about why it’s so terrible reached out and shared their knowledge with us. The basic reason? The labels are terrible, and confuse the equipment. [More]
FedEx SmartPost Package Takes A Week To Tour Southern California, Tantalizingly Near My House
By November 13, 2012
Tim’s new shirt from Teefury didn’t have to go very far. It just had to make a short trip across the Los Angeles hypermetroplex. But somehow the eventual delivery service that is FedEx SmartPost couldn’t get the package to go in a straight line, which meant that it took a meandering route around the area. Really, they could have put the shirt in a cardboard tube and rolled it to Tim faster. [More]
My eBay Package Took An Exciting Vacation In Memphis
By October 29, 2012
Reader Chris won an eBay auction, and the seller just happened to live about a mile away from him. He asked if he could stop by to pick it up, but the seller mailed it instead. So the package went to the town’s post office, then right back out to Chris’s house, right? Wrong. They sent it more than 1,300 miles total, to Memphis, TN and back. [More]
USPS Reaches The Limit Of $15 Billion Borrowed From Treasury, Is All Like, “Now What?”
By October 17, 2012
We feel kind of bad for the U.S. Postal Service these days. Here it is, this important part of American life that has provided a service we relied on heavily for hundreds of years before the Internet, and here it is limping along broke and basically friendless. And now it’s borrowed all the money it’s allowed to, $15 billion, from the only place it’s allowed to borrow from, the U.S. Treasury. Sigh. [More]
Stock Up On Forever Stamps Right Now: USPS Increasing Stamp Prices By A Penny In 2013
By October 12, 2012
In the midst of continuing struggles to fork over billions in defaulted payments, the United States Postal Service is tightening purse strings and generally doing anything it can to ride this budget problem out. An upcoming retrenchment will hit customers right where it hurts the most next year — the wallet. Stamps for letters will go up a penny to $0.46 starting Jan. 27, while postcard stamps will increase a cent to $0.33. [More]
U.S. Postal Service Re-Enacts Seinfeld Episode, Delivers All June Mail On October 1
By October 5, 2012
Jason didn’t say whether his mail carrier’s name happens to be Newman, but he was pretty surprised to receive most of his mail from June on October 1st. That’s understandable. Usually you’d expect to receive that stuff at least by the end of July. If it were just ad flyers, he wouldn’t be annoyed, but the giant bundle of misdirected mail contained important things like bills. Good thing he wasn’t expecting any checks. [More]
USPS Defaults On Another $5.6 Billion Payment But Assures Customers It’ll Be Business As Usual
By October 1, 2012
The United States Postal Service warned this would happen and it did — it defaulted on another $5.6 billion payment to its future retiree benefits account. It’s the second default by the agency in two months, and the USPS says it’s because Congress failed to act. Despite those woes, the USPS assures customers that business will go on as usual. [More]
How Is FedEx SmartPost So Freaking Slow?
By July 28, 2011
J. likes ordering from Woot, but hates FedEx SmartPost, the company’s shipping method of choice. Describing it as “some sort of misbegotten bastard child of FedEx and the US Postal Service,” J. calculates that it would actually be faster to travel from Woot HQ in Texas to his home on Brooklyn by bicycle. Which would be helpful if he weren’t ordering inanimate objects. [More]
USPS Cares About Your Mail When It Doesn’t Really Count
By April 1, 2010
Lana is a little frustrated with the U.S. Postal Service right now. She writes that she received an odd envelope in the mail from USPS–the tear-off advertising sheet from the front of a Netflix envelope addressed to her. An overly conscientious postal employee took the flyer, carefully placed it in a damaged item envelope, and mailed it back to Lana. [More]
