It takes 12 days for an invoice sent from Harrisburg Pa to me in Tucson.

A letter from Tucson sent to another person in Tucson, living one mile away, takes a week.

And the USPS people wonder why folks are moving to electronic billing and emails.

Interesting.

One of the guys I shoot with is computer illiterate and discovered a week ago that his Arizona CCW had expired a week earlier. He had no way of getting an Application for renewal, so I printed one up and mailed it to him.

He lives in Mesa, I live in Gilbert about 7 miles apart or so.

I put it in my mailbox, the mailman picked it up around 3PM. At noon the next day he had it and called me to ask about one of the questions on the application.

I'm the first guy to badmouth USPS but this kind of service got my attention.

You live in the Phoenix area, while I live in Tucson, with the recently closed USPS mail distribution center. All mailing in Tucson to Tucson goes to Phoenix, then back to Tucson.

That was a cost cutting move, said the USPS.

quote:

It takes 12 days for an invoice sent from Harrisburg Pa to me in Tucson.

That kind of timing seems not unusual currently, unfortunately. Assuming it gets delivered at all. A customer tried mailing me a postal money order recently. After waiting a couple weeks, we realized it was never going to get here (which it didn't). Had to arrange an alternate payment method.

In a "cost reduction" action, the photographic equipment was removed from my town post office.

Now, to mail a letter across the street it travels 215 miles to be photographed and sorted. then driven back 215 miles to my town to be delivered.

PC

They might as well remove the photographic equipment at my Post Office.

I get the daily email showing pics of tha mail I'll be receiving that day. It usually shows one or two or sometimes 3 images.

I actually get 5 or 6 pieces each day. I wonder how they choose which ones to photograph.

I dropped off a package at a satellite PO in Cheyenne at 3 pm on Monday. It arrived in Florida on Wednesday. I'll take that sort of service.

quote:

Originally posted by Flash-LB:
I wonder how they choose which ones to photograph.

I have been told by our local Postmaster that the pieces that are electronically scanned for sorting are the ones that produce pictures.

Well, their new motto/song is “I’ve been everywhere man”.

They are just living up to that…

quote:

Originally posted by PCWyoming:
In a "cost reduction" action, the photographic equipment was removed from my town post office.

Now, to mail a letter across the street it travels 215 miles to be photographed and sorted. then driven back 215 miles to my town to be delivered.

PC

Local town post offices haven't been able to cancel "local" mail since 2005 per federal law.

Following the Amerthrax Attacks in 2001, they devised a system to "sniff" the mail for Anthrax and that equipment is married with the cancelation equipment at the processing centers.

With the latest Postmaster General, he has been consolidating and cutting services, leading to a 'generally accepted' turn time of up to 5 days for 1st class mail.

quote:

Originally posted by GWbiker:
And the USPS people wonder why folks are moving to electronic billing and emails.

Are moving to? That ship set sail a long time ago

Why do people still insist on snail mail for bills and statements? The value of USPS is for mailing tangible items, i.e. small~medium size packages. I use USPS almost exclusively for my small business and they've been 99.9% reliable in my experience (knock on wood).

quote:

Originally posted by Gibb:

quote:

Originally posted by PCWyoming:
In a "cost reduction" action, the photographic equipment was removed from my town post office.

Now, to mail a letter across the street it travels 215 miles to be photographed and sorted. then driven back 215 miles to my town to be delivered.

PC

Local town post offices haven't been able to cancel "local" mail since 2005 per federal law.

Following the Amerthrax Attacks in 2001, they devised a system to "sniff" the mail for Anthrax and that equipment is married with the cancelation equipment at the processing centers.

With the latest Postmaster General, he has been consolidating and cutting services, leading to a 'generally accepted' turn time of up to 5 days for 1st class mail.

It is incredibly inefficient to process local mail at individual offices.

The reason some letters aren't in your informed delivery is because not every letter is processed through the sorting machine, carriers still get loose letters to case up.

quote:

Originally posted by SevenPlusOne:

The reason some letters aren't in your informed delivery is because not every letter is processed through the sorting machine

Evidently this service is only available for residential addresses. Too bad it's not available for business addresses; I would really like to know when customer checks are inbound.