USPS: Shipping

[Tothwolf]

On Mon, 1 Feb 2016, Guy Sotomayor wrote:
> On Feb 1, 2016, at 10:30 AM, Ken Seefried <seefriek at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 31 Jan 2016, Tothwolf wrote:
>>> On Sun, 31 Jan 2016, Pete Lancashire wrote:
>>>
>>>> Spend the extra few dollars (or what your currency is) and pack it in 
>>>> very strong box. I've actually had EPROMs show up cracked in half
>>>
>>> Seconded. The machines the USPS uses for automated sorting of mail are 
>>> not gentle on parcels.
>>
>> I'd rather strongly suggest you not us the USPS period.  In the last 6 
>> months or so they've flat out lost 4 items either destined to or 
>> shipped by me, and one item apparently (according to the tracking web 
>> site) sat in a sorting facility in Utah for nearly a month before 
>> magically showing up.  Glad it wasn't perishable.
>
> I’ve had failures with *all* of the major shippers.
>
> UPS tracking is a *joke*.  It tells you not where the package is but 
> where it’s supposed to be.  I was tracking an IBM 3278 terminal and it 
> wasn’t until the tracking said it was “on the truck for delivery” that 
> they realized there was a problem.  There was not one “physical” scan of 
> the package and they had no idea where it was.

I recently bought a vacuum tube tester and whatever USPS carrier happened 
to be on duty scanned it as delivered but it was nowhere to be found. 
After calling the USPS and getting the branch manager involved, it 
magically appeared the next day. Someone at the USPS had also marked out 
the tracking barcode on the label.