stuffs and shipments, was Re: SCSI preprocessor for HP16500

On Jun 14, 2013, at 10:42 AM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote: It's a shame, really. The USPS used to be my preferred shipper, because they did the best job for the lowest price. Things have gotten REALLY bad in the past few years, especially where I live in Philadelphia; most of the carriers genuinely do not care. There are a few of them who don't even bother knocking when they come with a package and leave it on our doorstep on a BUSY CITY STREET. We've even had one rubber-band a package to the door handle. Someone tried to stuff a padded envelope full of 6502s into the slot in our mailbox and gave up halfway because it got stuck (I had to cut the package in half; fortunately, I could cut BETWEEN two of the chips).

Most of the time I swear they don't even knock (I work from home, so I should be able to hear them knocking). One time a few weeks ago, we got a slip in our mailbox when we never heard a knock, and when my wife went to the post office the next day to pick it up, there was a line out the door (in a post office that's not usually even busy) full of people with the same story, all of whom had the same carrier who apparently hadn't even brought the packages back to the post office. We eventually got it the next day, but it was pretty much the last straw; I avoid USPS shipping altogether now if I can help it.

We have one older carrier who always knocks loudly and waits more than 3 seconds for an answer at the door and never leaves the package on the step. He's the ONLY ONE out of about 7 different carriers, and he's about to retire. What a shame.

I wonder if people didn't grouse so much whenever postage went up with rising transit and administrative costs (and a drop in junk mail, which also subsidized the service) the system might be better. A few months ago, they were going to stop Saturday deliveries because no one would accept a hike in postage rates, but our Congress decided that that just wouldn't do and MANDATED that they continue Saturday delivery (without actually offering any more money to sustain it). It's such a broken system.

- Dave