We should start a funny post like a Dilbert cartoon about our retail sales experiences. I'll start.

Many people appear to live or die by tracking numbers. They must be pressing refresh on thier computers every 15 seconds and will call or email to ask why "thier package has been in "Puncksatany, PA" for 15 minutes like I somehow conttrol the global postal system
So some reveal trim clips were ordered yesterday AM. Shipped 3PM yesterday (thats when our mail guy picks up. He gets back to the depot at 6PM usually he tells me. I asked today).
Label wasn't "created" at 6:30PM cause I leave at 5PM. I think this is some "intial scan" of the form we create that allows them to scan one barcode and import the data for all 250 packages a day we give them. I never spoke to this person or "blamed USPS" for a delay? Wants to "talk to someone"

I ordered these items at 8:00 am California time. I received an email at 11:30 am stating that my order was shipped. I tracked the shipping number and this is what I get:
Shipping Label Created, USPS Awaiting Item
WARREN, MI 48089
September 7, 2023, 6:31 pm
You tell me my order has shipped and the USPS shows they are still waiting for the package! How is this fair? I pay extra for shipping [HE PAID FOR PRIORITY MAIL], yet your company doesn't get my shipment to the Post Office the same day [WE DON'T GUARANTEE SAME DAY SHIPPING?] yet tells me it has shipped? Then you blame USPS for the delay? [NEVER CORRESESPONDED AND NEVER BLAMED USPS] Creating the shipping label and shipping the package are 2 different things! Kind of dis-honest if you ask me! So as of 12:10 [3:10PM MY TIME BUT AS OF 4PM MY TIME TRACKING SHOWS MOVEMENT] on 9/8/2023 it still shows it isn't in the USPS Possession!
Not sure who to talk to about this. I was trusting that you shipped it out yesterday as you emailed me and I find out that it hasn't yet! Please have someone contact me about this challenge.

Tracking as of 4PM today the 8th shows the following..........
9405511899562056263491

Tracking number created
September 07, 06:31PM
Warren, MI

In transit
September 08, 02:07PM
Warren, MI

I'm 2,000 miles away. I placed my order this morning at 3 am, and here it is 7 am. Why have I not yet received my package?

Some people can't understand how these systems work. There is no possibly way to explain it so they can understand.

Pretty happy all the business from my shop was in person, on site. I didn't have to deal with this crap. It was pretty easy for me to look them in the eye and tell them I could not give them what they wanted in their time frame, so they needed to find someone else to do their job. I would give them a time frame that I could do the job in. Then it was their choice, on my time frame, or find someone else. I may have missed out on some income, but I did not working under pressure from them. Any distraction because of them inquiring about their job being done faster in (less then my time frame), just pushed the finish time back farther, and I told them so. I worked as quickly as I could to complete their job, but I would not cut corners to save a few minutes.

Some a-hole who buys alot from Amazon & has it drone delivered hours later.
Think tracking should move as fast as their text messages are sent.
Some think the postal service SHOULD be faster then all others.
We're becoming an impatient society for sure: be it mail, driving, checkouts, etc.

I just got to play this game with the US Mint. Bought two coins a month ago, for some reason shipped separately. Got one coin in a week. got shipping info for USPS. Followed it and for 2 weeks said 2nd coin was in Washington DC. So I asked the Mint, they told me is was a USPS problem and to contact them. Waited another week. Still nothing. So I finally contacted USPS this week. Today I got a call(really cool too) from local office. They said, yeah, coin was supposed to be in a container. but we have additional tracking info and Mint never shipped it. Yeah, they got you a label but your package was not in that container. Finally today Mint tells me, We will refund you for the coin. Amazing how fast all this happened once I got emails going and the USPS involved. I'm shocked at how fast they figured this out. Now, yeah, someone could have stolen the coin from the container but the lady fromthe post office said nope, you were tracking a label. We were tracking a package and the package never entered our system. I've been buying coins for years. First time had this happen.

I had a customer mail a check from 130 miles away that took a month to get here based on the post mark and what he told me. My wifes grandma can use snailmail to mail a letter and from almost 3000 miles away we get it two days later usually.

Trim clips? Trim clips. Must have thought they were ordering a kidney or something.

unfortunately people refuse to put real thought behind anything other than what THEY do to help themselves.

i recently did a $15K front end collision repair on a 2023 VW Atlas. it was about a 70 hour job that had minor frame damage that needed to be put on a frame bench to repair properly. the SUV was actually still drivable without causing more damage. so the owner drove it for about 2 1/2 months until we got the parts to repair.

when he dropped it off for repairs he expected to WAIT for the repairs to be done. he expected the job to be completely repaired in about 4 hours.

he was told by both the insurance estimator and the body shop office worker it would take at least 2 WEEKS to repair probably closer to 3. the ins adjuster authorized a rental car for 3 weeks and he tried pocketing the $$$

his comment was we were just walking around padding the bill to charge more and we were ripping him off. he said it should take about 2 hours to bolt on new sheet metal. and it only takes about 1 hour to paint a comparable sized wall in his house and we should be able do it faster because we use spray paint instead of a roller.

^^^ between that and insurance companies pushing substandard parts & methods, I'm SO glad I'm not running shops anymore.

As for retail, people returning their old crap in the new-part boxes was always a "favorite"...
About equal with butchering the new part and then returning it, because they couldn't install it with an axe & sledge hammer.

Some people really need to be removed from the gene pool.

Amazon prime fast shipping has spoiled everyone. You can order something and its literally on your doorstep the next morning

Good: they should get spanked if ordering from other then amazon.

The 2 things about USPS that piss me off are when something is considered " shipped" as soon as a label is created. That is NOT "shipped"!!!!./
I admit to be guilty of this one. I had a label printed but left the label on the counter for a few days before I actually put it on the box and dropped it off at the PO. But because I had the label, it was "shipped".


The other one is (I live in Illinois) when I order something say in Iowa, and watch it go right past me via tracking multiple times before it gets here. It'll go to Indianapolis then it'll go to Wisconsin then it'll go past me again to somewhere downstate then finally to me. Now I definitely realize that it's not like someone delivering it directly from where I ordered it to my driveway and I'm ok with that. But the additional handling, (things like the "it must have been thrown " comment above, happening multiple times at each depot,) to the amount of extra fuel wasted, no wonder shipping has gone thru the roof in the past few years.

I think they just throw packages on the next truck out, not caring which direction the truck is going. Let the next person deal with it, seems to be the USPS slogan.

no surprise a federal company/agency cant get its act together. has not made a profit over 20 years, 1 billion loss first quarter of 2023 . they do amazon deliveries on sundays.. never fear though congress threw them a 107 billion lifeline
and the plan is to raise rates until profitable.

20 years ago, my shop was next door to the local UPS depot.
The process then was everything went to one of 6 hubs around the country. The closest one to IL was in KY at that time. If a package dropped off in Freeport was being shipped to Freeport, and someone in shipping caught that, the package was put on the proper truck for delivery.

But if no one caught it, it was sent to the UPS airport in Rockford and loaded up on a plane. The next morning it was at the nearest hub where it went through sorting and was flew out by plane to the nearest hub to its delivery point, or if that was the nearest hub to its delivery point, it was sorted to be sent to the nearest UPS airport (to the deliver point) then sent to the depot to its delivery point. There it was placed on a truck to be delivered.

That Freeport package was driven to the Rockford airport, flew to KY, sorted there and sent back to the Rockford airport sorted and sent to the Freeport depot, placed on the truck for delivery. I doubt the process has changed much, other then I heard that everything now has to go through the full process. The depot people are not suppose to pull something off of one truck and transfer it to a different truck at the depot, it now has to go to the airport, go to the hub, return back to the original airport, then return back to the original depot and then put on the correct truck.

I've been in that Freeport depot during the Christmas delivery season. Its a wonder how anything gets where its going! The store closed at 5PM. Everything that came in on the 20 trucks had to be loaded onto the semi trailers, and the semi had to leave for Rockford by 7 pm. That loaded semi returned from the Rockford airport just before 11 pm (if the roads were good), then the semi had to be unloaded, and everything had to be sorted and put on the correct truck for delivery. Those 20 trucks left the shop at 8 am, and most didn't return until very close to 5 pm, some were after 5.

Yes and I LOVE it, their prices in most cases, and their customer service is over the top. Plus you get free returns in mst cases, streaming music and movies etc. with a prime subscription. that's 14.99 a month. Shipped a pkg from a supplier lately?