I sent a Moparts member with whom I've dealt for decades a check using the good ol' USPS last week for some parts. The distance between us is about 500 miles and the letter still hasn't arrived 5 business days after putting it into the system. I don't ever recalling mail taking that long for such a short distance (unless it never arrived at all). Is the USPS really this slow these days? Thx

Yes it is Brad! I have sent USPS money orders about the same distance and it has taken up to a week! Crazy isn't it?

All instances are different. I've had stuff here in Jersey take two weeks to get to California. The same payment has taken three days. I once mailed a small package on a Wednesday afternoon from Saint Anthony Idaho to Marlton NJ. It was there Friday morning. Whereas I've mailed letter envelopes in the opposite direction take 7 days. Strange, no rhyme or reason.

Using the USPS is a crap shoot. I've had packages that sat in hubs for up to two weeks without movement. But I'll continue to use them. If I have a problem I can talk face to face with a real live person. Try that with FedEx.

A while back, they notified people with shipping accounts that they were making some changes and delivery times would slow down.
So far, that's been true about half the time, less so for Priority.
Package-size fees also increased.
Getting less for your money is the new black, you know...

In all honesty I personally have not have any issues for quite some time now. USPS has been good to me.

It has become painfully slooow.

I've had mail got lost for 2 months then just show up. Happens quite often. We have a rental property about 10 miles away....have had rent checks take well over a week(s) to get to us. They will be post marked correct then just get lost in the system.

It is going to get worse. Right now, if you were to mail your neighbor a letter, the letter goes through the closest major city, that has a machine that scans it for illegal chemicals, powder, etc. Your letter is then sent back to your local Post Office before it is sorted out to send to your neighbor. Right now there is one or two of those machines in each state. Moving forward, the Government wants to isolate those machines down to 3 for the entire country.

The USPS processes 420 million pieces of mail daily. Generationally 1st class mail does not seem like a growth area with younger generations. Where do people see 10 years from now bill paying will be? Snail mail or on line? All parcel mailing is quickly going up in price. It is a systemic change that is happening worldwide. I think you just have to get on the train.

Small towns will likely feel the change most. People will not go to the Post Office daily, then stop at the market, gas station(if they even remain), stop daily at the diner.. By 2045 it will be a totally different world.

It's hit or miss.

I've had pkgs traveling 100 miles take a week. And some going 2500 miles be there is 3 days

Yep, hit or miss for sure.

We sent a package from IL to my sister in NJ and she got it in 2 days. Sent the same item to her brother that lives on the southern end of IL (we are in the top left corner) at the same time, 5 days and he still hasn't gotten it. Send letters out of here, anywhere from the next day through the next two weeks delivery time.

Also depends on where you send the letter/ package from, send it from home, you probably added 2 day minimum, your postman has to take it back to the office where it will sit until the next morning. Then it probably won't leave there until the end of that day, or even the 3rd morning. Then it enters the process.

It's hit or miss around here too.

You are one of the few lucky people. I live in a small rural farming town, few thousand people. About a year 1/2 ago, I had to renew my dog's yearly license. Instead of just taking the license renewal to the local court administration building, I was lazy, and just mailed in the $15 payment through USPS. My payment was NEVER received by the city! U.S. mail lost it! And NOBODY at the post office would do anything about it!
To this day, it is lost to the ages... lucky it was only $15.00.(I did put a stop on the check) And then I had to go over to the building and pay in person, the money...like I should have done in the first place! Silly me for thinking I should have trusted the U.S. mail, to do their job.
Moral of the story... DON'T trust USPS with even a small thing like this.

I've had mail from five miles across town take four days. If something comes to Fresno from out of town it will take two days as it goes to our main post office and then to our area post office.

When i get a package mailed by them i get a tracking #. Are they available for envelopes? It usually takes them a day to three days to get it moving after they receive the package. At least that's what the tracking is telling me. After that it starts moving and you track it to the destination.

This seems to be the same here for us and our local USPS. I drove to the local post office to mail a letter to a town 20 miles southwest of here and had it postmarked before noon and was hoping it would arrive the next day. Nope took three days to go 20 miles. The next time I drove east or the opposite direction to a slightly larger town (but not all that much larger) and dropped it off in the drive up box outside the USPS facility with a pick up of an hour after I put it in the box of 5:00 pm. It was there the next day?????? I had a part shipped to me via USPS and tracking showed that it arrived at our hometown USPS at 6:00 am and I kept checking to when it was going to show as "out for delivery" that morning and it never did??? Called and asked what was going on and asked if I could just come in and pick it up but was told NO, and it was in the sorting area for going out the next day and couldn't do remove it and it had to be delivered to the address. Cost me another day and a half to have it delivered at 2 pm the next day. Seems it's the chain of all of these small inefficient USPS facilities that screw up the speed at which something moves through the system. What gets me is when you see in tracking something that was only a few Zip codes away end up on hold in a town or city hundreds of miles away and way past where you are and most likely the semi truck carry your mail or package drove past on the highway or interstate roadway only a few miles away.

Like Jack Nicholson said as the Joker...."This place needs an enema!"

bought a 10.00 item off the bay, supposedly placed in my mailbox 4 weeks ago. maybe someone else's but not mine. We know all the neighbors so i wouldn't be a bit surprised if it showed up at some point. My wife sent a PKG to Seattle, showed up 8 weeks later

The USPS is killin' me, Smalls!