USPS now has a contract with amazon, where USPS delivers amazon packages. This has caused a massive slow down. My mail goes through the Charleston Sc distro but from what i understand Atlanta is taking a beating with the amazon packages as well.
I agree, I feel like my mail going out of Mobile AL just takes forever to get to its destination! I just mailed a card at the beginning of the month to Eutawville SC and it still hasnt arrived! Ive received cards from Germany faster than I can get cards to CA!
Yes! For some reason I have 4 USA postcrossing cards traveling and theyāre at 8 days or more. All my cards sent within the US take no longer than 5 days max! Not sure why itās taking forever. The only thing I can think of is maybe they closed post offices in those locations? Maybe those accounts are inactive? Idk if it would show that an account is inactive or not. I imagine it would.
My US to US postcards have been taking anywhere from 3-30 days on average since April. Especially east to west coast. Itās baffling.
The Boston Globe newspaper did a controlled experiment sending mail a) within the city, b) within the Boston area and c) elsewhere in the country. As with reports here, it didnāt make that much difference really. Some long-distance items arrived sooner than the local ones.
My most shocking arrival was a card from Nantucket island on a Saturday morning, followed by a Sunday and a Monday holiday - delivered in the DC suburbs on Tuesday!
A few years ago, my mother in Florida sent me a check in Seattle. When it failed to arrive after a couple of weeks, she sent a replacement. The latter took expected few days, no problem, with the first envelope also included as part of the same delivery.
Another thing to think about: handing the mail directly to the USPS staff person at the desk vs. putting it in the lobby slot inside or the box outside. Iāve had two occurrences of the USPS desk staff person taking my official cards and then the cards are never registered. Once here in Portland, and once in my former hometown city Seattle too. Now I only put my mail into the inside mail slot or the USPS box outside, and I no longer give it to the postal staff. Just another thing to consider.
Otherwise my mail is slower here, but overall Iāve found Portland mail slower and less reliable than it was in Seattle. Maybe the international mail gets routed through Seattle too, like most of the international passenger flights do.
Iāve joined for more than a month as of now and have only received one card My six sent cards all arrived fairly quickly. Am sure the holiday season is not helping with delivery speed ā¦
The USPS delivery person in my area seems super nice, so I didnāt want to ask too many questions to her.
Located in Dallas area.
If people in the U.S. are wondering why their mail delivery has seemingly become slower, you might want to ask Amazon.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/28/amazon-missed-mail-rural-towns/
I swap flat mail in envelopes and plain written/stamped postcards.
I canāt tell what might be missing or is just really slow to arrive. Sometimes mail is faster, though, like all the stars just happened to align.
Itās wild that domestic mail can take as long as international mail now. Iāve noticed domestic mail has become much slower/gone missing more often compared to years before.
If itās really mostly due to prioritizing packages, itās a shame. I donāt mind slowness, but because thereās never any official explanation, even locally, the inconsistency is frustrating.
FYI, others may find these links useful:
Enter your zip code and see average performance based on mail type:
Overall US performance info:
https://www.uspsoig.gov/our-work/service-performance
Thatās my frustration. Are they lost somehow, or itās just super slow? I wish I knew what the journey is for them. It shouldnāt take a month or more for a card to reach a town a 4 hour drive away. Itās bizarre!
International right now seems to be moving more quickly, which is great!
Today 1 will have 7 postcard to US expired.
A little good news, i got a hurray in 60 days to US today. (Safe from expired)
I have 2 postcards traveling within the US, both now for 50 days, so strangeā¦ sent mid December, I wonder if they got lost during the holidaysā¦ average within the US has been 8 days
Try not to despair, @kojep. My cards back and forth to the other side of the world from the US take 3 months sometimes.
This makes me glad I dumped my Prime membership at the beginning of this year. No more Amazon for me. Thanks for sharing this article, which has a lot of stuff about my home state!
All my bills arrive in record time.
My domestic cards are going faster lately.
One thing Iāve noticed has been that our foreign friends donāt seem to realize that their post office is fine with vertical cards, but upon USA arrival theyāre rejected (unreadable) by sorting machines, with far slower manual handling necessary for final delivery to us.
Important to note, though, that the USPS is in a huge budget deficit (thrust upon them by a partisan attack) and Amazon is likely the only thing saving it right now from needing to be privatized (which would kill rural delivery). Iām writing a book about this trend toward postal privatization globally right now! I think itās what DeJoy was directly trying to enact through a roundabout way that made it look like the usps failed instead of being torpedoed.
Im usa and didnt realize verticals could not be machine processed
cough Postal Accountability Act of 2006 cough
I noticed this week my sent cards within the US are arriving at a much better time rate.