Malaysia seems fairly high but its dreadful here. Postcards come every two weeks and its reliable only in the sense that it delivers postcards in a month’s time.
At least its cheap for local mail and international postcards
Malaysia seems fairly high but its dreadful here. Postcards come every two weeks and its reliable only in the sense that it delivers postcards in a month’s time.
At least its cheap for local mail and international postcards
Switzerland is high though service is deteriorating. Smoothly and probably not noticed by many but becoming more obvious. Especially on Saturdays cards often do not get delivered anymore though they should. I wouldn’t mind but after a pretty high increase of stamp prices last year one starts asking question about quality.
Postal services are not very good in Finland these days and are getting worse all the time. Finns don’t trust it generally speaking, in the same way as in the past, so we prefer to send things electronically.
Prices go up but quality goes down. Officially, mail is delivered 2-3 times a week, but it doesn’t always happen in some areas. The area where I live often suffers from a lack of postal workers (I have received information about this), so sometimes it takes longer than normal to receive mail.
Mail travels slowly even within Finland, it may take more than two weeks for the card to reach a neighboring city.
I think the quality is very different in different parts of Finland.
In bigger cities it can be hard to get the workers, as the salary is not good (like some workers need to get benefits on top of the salary).
For me, even in one of the biggest cities, I’m mostly happy. All mail and swaps I do within Finland, arrive in a week. From northern Finland mail sent to me arrives most quickly. I think 99 per cent sent on Friday, is here on Monday or Tuesday, depending on which is the delivery day.
I would rate 8 or 9.
I do miss the real post offices though, and having mail delivered from Monday to Friday, but it the lesser delivery days makes it not need to raise the postage even more, I’m very ok with that.
Extra thank I would give, how often I get old mail, even to address where I lived 10 years ago.
I don’t pay any extra from this, and lately someone sent me my old swap, with too little postage, it was still found it’s mine, and I got asked if I care to pay the missing amount + some on top of that.
In short, we have a flunkie running the USPS. In the Corporate world, such a person would have been canned years ago. But no…he still runs things. Under his oversight, his wacky ideas to improve the USPS has had the opposite effect. The only thing that is reliable is stamp price increases every 6 months now.
I find USPS wildly uneven. It’s like the poem about a little girl: “When she’s good, she’s very good, but when she is bad, she is horrid.” Domestic cards can take anywhere from two (business) days to two weeks. My post office engages in the nasty trick of some Out for Delivery mail not loaded on the truck, so to clear that they scan it as Delivered in the post office building before the end of the day instead.
The employees themselves are mostly very nice, trying to do their best. In the 2.5 years I’ve lived here, I’ve had three or four items that were for a neighbor, and the same vice-versa. Delivery time is usually late afternoon, so am envious of folks in countries where theirs seems to arrive in the morning. Earliest I’ve noticed has been a few times around 1 PM (13.00), while 6 PM or so (18.00) has happened a few times.
It seems to take about a week for incoming international mail to get to me once the plane lands in USA. Our sorting machines, unfortunately, do a lot of damage!
Compared to the postal services in most other countries, the USPS is a superstar. That said, the service is inferior to what it was before the shutdown. Even before the shutdown, it was worse than it was twenty years before that. One amazing thing I noticed is that the countries with the best service are also the ones with the lowest rates (with some exceptions).
The map shows the United States Post Office with high marks, but post COVID, service has become terribly spotty. I live in a small apartment in a city and very much feel like a second class postal citizen. I have heard the USPS is very short staffed, and can grudgingly accept the problems that causes. They seem to have no difficulty delivering my bills, and sales flyers begging me to spend more money. And, as mentioned elsewhere, they raise rates regularly. Perhaps the problem is more that I am remain in my heart a letter person and the world has shifted to digital messaging. I utilize the media, but receiving a text is not as satisfying as getting a letter or postcard. We have a small post office in our neighborhood, and I enjoy walking there to drop off letters and packages. I chat with Charles, who is behind the service desk, till the others in the line become annoyed at my taking too long to transact “business.” It is not business to mail letters! I suppose, my relationship with the Post Office is a love/hate type like with many other organizations (and people).
It depend on how close the mail distribution center is located and how “active” in terms of receiving mails.
I’m lucky that my mailbox receive mails everyday except weekend and when the weather is too hot or raining.
Domestic mail is quite terrible. The card I sent back to myself took 10 days to reach me.
Long time ago, it used to be 2 days or at most 3 days delivery. When I sent a letter, it arrives within two or three days later and within peninsular Malaysia. It used to be so efficient. But now, at least one week is regular traveling time.
Oversea delivery is efficient (agreed with 7-8) but domestic delivery is inefficient (3-4).
Other than the fact that the mail I send keeps arriving without postmarks, I can’t really complain about the Cyprus Post.
I can complain about my postman though who has no problem letting all the neighbourhood’s mail getting soaked in the rain while he goes from door to door holding it in his hand.
not good, it says most mail items should be delivered in Europe in 8 business days. that’s two weeks at most, well, if anything takes three weeks nowadays I consider it fast…
But things to me arrive fast, so who knows
I would give this a low rating - Lloyd
picture removed by moderator, because it shows among other things the backside of a card, what is not allowed according to the Community Guidelines
feel free to remove my note and to upload the image again, but without the backside of the card
The 9-10 score for Japan is correct, in my opinion.
Please understand that this is from the perspective of a foreigner living in Japan.
The 9-10 score is well deserved.
Sometimes the USPS is their own worst enemy. Many years ago, I used to drop off packages before work; the branch near work opened at 8:30 AM. Then the USPS Marketing bean counters decided to change that branch’s hours to 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM. Think about it. If you had a 9:00-5:00 job, the only time you could get to the post office was on your lunchtime.
After a few months of this fiasco, and driving most package business to United Parcel Service, they changed the hours back. Boneheads…
I think Peru’s rating is accurate, though I believe it has been improving little by little. In the past it was quite hard to find stamps at any post office, and you could only find them at the main post offices but the stamp/philately counter only worked at certain hours. Now they’re available at most post offices, but this change is quite recent. My outgoing mail reaches its destination almost all the time, same with incoming mail, although my mail is delivered once a week or once every two weeks. They tend to just collect my mail until they go by my house, so I receive a bundle of postcards instead of one or two everyday, I’m not a fan of it, but the postal service is always understaffed, so they do their best.
I think the rate has more to do with parcels and packages. My brother buys plenty of things online and they arrive most of the time, but the tracking tool on the postal service’s page is not very reliable. His things are delivered to his home address and he works from home, so he’s always there to receive them, but when this is not the case, it’s very annoying to go to the post office for pick up because many times the mailman hasn’t delivered the packages back to the office and you have to go back and forth just to check if your package is there. They’re improving their communication to fix these problems but there’s still work to do.
As @Macheng mentioned above, postal service in Japan is nearly always reliable all in all and very fast delivery especially from abroad to Japan. We are so very fortunate about all this in Japan.
I was rather surprised to see China is as high as in Japan ?? Is that really so ??
Edited to add :
Japan probably is the number one in the world as for the overall postal service. China probably is doing their best but still … the same high rate as in Japan ?? Is that really really so ?? What do you all think ?
Edited 10.28
Since I just picked up writing postcards as one of my hobbies last year, I will just say what I observed.
I think the UK being in the top rating is correct. We are certainly not the cheapest with internal postcards now costing 75p 2nd class or £1.25 1st class, international costing £2.20 (or sometimes £2.00 for economy) but I cannot complain on speed. I only ever use 2nd class for internal mail and outside of December it is rare for a letter or card to take more than about 3 days, and often cards get delivered within 24hours. Bare in mind too that most of my post is between me and my parents who live in the Home Counties and I live in Scotland so we’re the whole length of Britain apart! Amazing really. This is also from both rural and large town locations so no real variance. Don’t believe me? There is even an old episode of Top Gear where they race a letter from the south of England to the far north of Scotland and the letter won! It got there quicker than you can drive!
I remain deeply saddened about Royal Mail being privatised and hope one day it will be back in public hands, but that’s all a bit political and probably not best for this thread.
Overall, it is still good, though like all places there is variability, particularly in the service you get in a post office and the price is becoming ridiculous.
As it was mentioned twice in this topic:
Is there a specific reason, why a postal worker is a no-show on rainy days? Is it maybe rougher terrain, which cannot be walked/driven if it is soaking wet or is it something like “Well, I don´t feel like working , if it´s not sunny…”?
I´m just a bit curious as “my” postal worker was delivering mail by bike yesterday, seemingly unfazed by the heavy rainstorm, and amazingly even managed to deliver the mail bone dry.
In my experience, there are very few occasions when mail isn´t delivered here due to weather conditions.
But I do get the impressions, mail in general isn´t delivered on Mondays (for door-delivery) anymore in my region, which doen´t bother me. I use a PO box soley for Postcrossing and only being able to check it 2-3 times a week, so I wouldn´t notice “lazy-days” by postal workers anyway …
Hi !
French from France here. Even if French people always complain about post service (please note that we all don’t complain, but we only hear the angry people ) the postal service is very good here. Except in very small villages, the post man /woman delivers from Monday to Saturday. The delays are good too, we don’t have to complain about it. (Concerning the delays, I think Germany is well better
)