USPS and Their Bogus "Delivered" Status

[rp2813]

 I've been expecting delivery of two ebay purchases since this past Friday.  On Friday, the tracking information changed and the delivery date was pushed out to Monday.  I started checking for the packages on Monday afternoon and finally gave up after 11 PM.  We get our mail very late here, so at this point 11 PM isn't out of the question.  And btw, we got no slot mail at all on Monday.  Coincidence?  I don't think so.

 

This morning I received two e-mails from ebay advising that the packages had been delivered, one at 4:06 PM on Monday and the other at 10:50 PM!  Why would the carrier make two trips nearly seven hours apart instead of one?  This is not the first time the USPS has claimed an item had been delivered when it actually hadn't.  When I inquired about this before, I was told that even though the USPS tracking site indicates something has been delivered, it may not have been.  

 

What is up with that?  Has anyone else experienced this?  I don't think porch pirates are involved.  Our porch is recessed behind the lamp, so anything delivered after dark (and in some cases, in broad daylight) is hard to spot since there are a couple of good architectural hiding places that delivery people will sometimes use.  If I try to report the items as stolen, I'll only get an advisory about how they may not have actually been delivered yet.  I don't want to report them as stolen; I just want the USPS to be truthful with their delivery status information.

 

If anyone here works for the USPS, can you share the logic behind their false claims about deliveries?  If anyone here has managed to reach the USPS in a situation like this, can you share the process?

 

This is ridiculous, and I have a dead car waiting for a replacement part.

 

[DADoES]

 
I signed-up for USPS Informed Delivery a few months ago.  Have had one or a couple cases of a letter included in the daily notice but delivered a day later.  One instance of a letter (legitimate but not crucial) not delivering at all.  I tagged it as "missing" and have never heard anything in response.  Had a small package in one case deliver a day earlier than tracking advised.

 

[iowabear]

USPS Informed Delivery

Same experience here, a couple of delayed letters and one that didn't make it.

 

The one that didn't make it was $5 off $15 purchase at Target (store remodeling celebration.)  I assume it was sent to everyone in the nearby area since it was addressed to "neighbor."  As good as $5 cash for anybody who shops at Target.  I didn't bother reporting it missing, I probably should have.

 

[rp2813]

I'm going to contact my congresswoman Zoe Lofgren about this.  She's been there long enough to have some clout.

 

[twintubdexter]

<span style="font-size: 14pt; color: #008000;">I tried to sign up for informed delivery several times and just gave up. I have lived in California my entire life, in this house since 2001, no other names connected to where I live. The post office says there's no one by my name at my address or in California. I was instructed to go to the post office and straighten things out. They were kind enough to inform me they have a line for disabled persons. Forget it. I like being surprised anyway...</span>

 

<span style="font-size: 14pt; color: #008000;">Regardless, I do like USPS and the people at the post office.</span>

[this post was last edited: 2/5/2019-18:00]

 

[jerrod6]

I have had this happen when part of the delivery was being done by FED EX or UPS. In this case, the delivery was market delivered and it was, but only to the Postoffice. It took another day for the article to be delivered by USPS.

 

[lorainfurniture]

It’s to save face

They will mark it delivered even if not delivered. If it’s priority, on the third day it’s getting marked delivered whether you get it or not.

It’s rampant during the holiday season.

 

[rp2813]

Well, the holidays are over, so they have no excuse.

 

I do think it has to do with carriers being reprimanded for not delivering packages, so they input false information on the tracking system.  What I don't get is why ebay hasn't applied pressure to the USPS since many of their sellers use the USPS for shipping.

 

These two items I'm expecting were shipped entirely through the USPS and only USPS tracking numbers were generated for both of them.  I've had the experience in the past where only the last leg of the shipping was handled by USPS and the package wasn't delivered on time by the USPS, but that is not the case with my current situation.

 

From now on, I'm going to try Amazon first instead of ebay.   They deliver on time and you have the option of having the package delivered to one of their lockers instead of worrying about porch piracy.

 

[launderess]

Yes, have experienced this a few times in past

Contact your local carrier's post office and speak with a manager. Here in NYC the office that handles parcel delivery (anything too large for normal route carrier to handle) is different, but never the less reach out and get things sorted.

This and or go to your local post office directly and speak with someone in authority. Their system will show internally all tracking information and hopefully will shed some light.

More and more USPS seems to be relying/hiring temporary or whatever "provisional" employees who either aren't familiar with things, and or just are new. Either way things can get muddled.

Our major beef is with USPS so called "free collection" of parcels. They never show up yet one receives an email saying "your scheduled collection was completed at ****". It darn well was not as have been sitting here all day waiting....

 

[rp2813]

I tried calling the Post Office that delivers mail for our neighborhood.  I got a call tree that went in circles so I said "representative," after which I was told there would be a one hour wait.  I doubt that even if I had chosen to wait for so ridiculously long, a representative from my local P.O. would have been on the other end of the line.

 

As for ebay, it sounds like they've done the same as AT&T U-verse and opened up a call center in Manila with everybody reading from scripts.  I guess one way to look at this is that since the whole off-shoring thing began with India, the next stop would be Hawaii or the west coast of the U.S. where employees might not be so readily fashioned into total robots that simply mirror everything you say to them.

[this post was last edited: 2/5/2019-17:39]

 

[good-shepherd]

there's no one by my name at my address or in California

Hmm, think I saw a Twilight Zone episode like that, didn't end well as I recall.

 

[kate1]

I’m a mail carrier and I don’t have a good explanation besides poor customer service. My postmaster and supervisors would never tolerate scanning a parcel as delivered if it wasn’t (or ignoring a parcel pick up). I work in a very small office though and it’s probably easier to keep on top of things and do things properly. It can be extraordinarily difficult too when you’re short staffed and have carriers doing multiple routes, some they may not be at all familiar with, which is an everyday occurrence in big offices. Even I’ve had days where I was out until 11 pm because someone called in sick and I was the only one there to do both routes. The informed delivery isn’t nearly as accurate as it’s being sold as being, most of my customers who have signed up say it’s usually a day or two off. The pictures of your mail are snapped leaving the distribution center, which is 300 miles away from my post office, and all kinds of things can happen on the trek to its destination. Trays can be jostled and things end up out of order, trays can be dropped, etc... also, I hate to say this, but time is weighed more heavily than accuracy and you’re supposed to have only about a second at a mailbox so mistakes do happen. Besides its imperfections, the postal service delivers mail to every address in the country for the same price and the vast majority of it makes it on time and to the correct person (even if you move, which UPS and FedEx do not do) and that’s pretty awesome, in my opinion.

 

[rp2813]

Thanks for your report from "the inside," Kate.

 

Since I live in a town with a population over 1,000,000 (and I use the term "town" intentionally/derogatively), I'm pretty sure it's easy for overworked carriers to get away with indicating something has been delivered when it in fact has not.  The P.O. where my mail comes from was the main one for many years, so it's quite a large facility.  That only serves to exacerbate this chronic issue with falsifying delivery status.

 

We haven't had any consistency with carriers since moving to our new house last May, nor did we at our previous house where we had lived for ten years. 

 

I'm reasonably confident that both packages will show up tonight after dark.  I'll be on the lookout for the carrier with the coal miner's light to approach our front porch, which has been an all too familiar sight this winter.

 

[DADoES]

 
Today's Informed Delivery Daily Digest advises "A mailpiece for which we do not currently have an image is included in today's mail."

Yeah .. no ... nothing there.

 

[rp2813]

As expected, both packages arrived tonight, a little after 7 PM.

 

I have a feeling that this has a lot to do with Amazon's deliveries receiving top priority from the USPS.  The rest of the traffic takes a seat at the back of the bus.

 

[wayupnorth]

My informed delivery is usually right there today, but my poor carrier getting it here, not her fault waiting and waiting for the mail to get back here, after they closed the nearby sorting/distribution center and now every piece has to go almost to NH and then back here 2-300 miles. She said some days it is 11 pm when she goes home finally. She loves my Max and leaves him doggie cookies every day in the box. Couldnt ask for more from my USPS carrier.

 

[daveamkrayoguy]

I'm probably one of the minority stating that when my item is delivered, it is delivered as in seeing right on my door step, perhaps long before I go to my eMail on a frequent online record or CD purchase, hence I believe in truth in the system, and so far, to me, no bogus...

But consequently, I have had items sent, but never arrived, I've gotten refunded (although along came that duplicate copy of what I'd ordered at least once beforehand finally arriving after I'd gotten the substitution and even refund on what I'd ordered before...

-- Dave

 

[mrsalvo]

I still use the post office but very leery of their service. Received a bill from my dentist in the next town over, about 10 miles away, I put a check in the mail and it took 10 working days to get it delivered. 10 working days!!! Had it been a large check I would have placed a stop payment on the check. Moral of story: when I get something in that's got to go out, have to get it in the mail ASAP. Also mailed a wedding gift recently and it arrived with the box open, torn, after paying $30.00 to mail it.

Barry

 

[joe_in_philly]

I have not had the problem of USPS packages being scanned before they were delivered. Our local postal carrier is pretty good, as he scans as he delivers. So often I get a delivery text and then a moment later hear the mail go through the mail slot.

The carrier (who has no vehicle and walks from house to house) will deliver small, light packages. A different delivery person with a truck will deliver larger packages at a different time during the day.

Where I am in South Philly, FedEx is the worst. I often get scans that packages have been delivered hours before they arrive. And because package theft is a problem here, I don’t know if it really was stolen, or just not delivered.

Our UPS driver is great as well. We rarely have problems with UPS, although during the holiday season when there were extra drivers, a couple packages we wanted diverted to a nearby pick up location ended up getting delivered to the house.