USPS Tracking And Delivery Problems

I've been selling on ebay for about 5 years. I'm not a big seller though. I have a friend named Rick that lives in Sarasota. He sends coins and bullion to me to sell periodically. I listed a group I had just received from him. I listed the items,sold them, and shipped them out. All were shipped through ebay using USPS first class packaging with tracking. I've been a fan of the tracking as it allows buyers to check the status of their shipping. Very few ask me anymore to check for them. It allows me to do other things and builds trust among us.

Rick and I were talking about expanding the store and start listing and selling a much larger and diverse selection of coins, bullion, stamps, covers, and even autographs. This expansion would have meant selling 50-100 a day. Rick isn't very good with a computer so most of the workload would fall on me. When this last group of items shipped I commented to Rick that I've had a lot of damages to glassware that I sell. All is shipped USPS Priority Mail and is automatically insured. I package the glass well and have never had such a high level of breakage. we both have been watching the tracking information posted on USPS and ebay. We noticed many of the shipments stalling in Houston and other areas as well.

Yesterday I did a Google search USPS shipping problems. I found this report from a local news station and new immediately that this is what has been the problem. http://abc13.com/news/expect-more-s...year/441159/

The issue is really much larger than this story. Several years back I think it was Fedex tried to purchase the USPS from the government. They were turned down. Shortly after that the congress voted to force the USPS to fully fund their retirement fund. The short of it the USPS is on the the way out. I'm very concerned about ecommerce if we can't get it delivered and tracked. I can't build a fleet of drones to send things out like Amazon.

1847bill... my personal advice to you would be to get your own
UPS and FedEx accounts... we use both of them in addition to USPS
and they complement each other quite well...

In addition, when your recipient has a UPS or FedEx account, you
can ship on *their* account, which shifts all of the onus directly
onto them... which would include any breakage for insurance purposes...

I'm on the west coast, Oakland, CA, and have noticed a number of issues with shipping. Similar to what the article stated, items sent First Class just sat in the local distribution center for days. I sent FYI notices to all my buyers, it took 8 days for some items to go less than 100 miles (usually only takes 2 days).
Another issue is the tracking is often blank or never recorded, I don't think scanning is happening as thoroughly as it use to be. Items I've sold or bought that were shipped with tracking now often show up without ever being scanned, kind of making the tracking service useless.

I've had stuff sit for days with no updates as well, even weeks. But my favorite was an order I place with an East Coast seller in November. I live in Iowa and I watched as my order got sent to Honolulu(!), where it sat over the Thanksgiving holiday until making its way back to me. It was a German stamp of 1872 which has at least been on both sides of the Atlantic already. I guess it made it halfway over the Pacific as well. Maybe visiting Hawaii was on its bucket list; if you've ever been to Hawaii you know it's a popular vacation spot for Germans. My biggest regret is that I didn't get to spend Thanksgiving with my stamp. In Honolulu, of course.

Thanks gentleman. This shoots holes through the TRS status. I really don't give a hoot much anymore for the TRS but I do like to have customers that are plugged into the items they purchase. I can't recall the parcel if the customer wants to cancel an order after a week or ten days because the order hasn't been delivered.