USPS In Transit Arriving Late

Had this message a few years ago on a Priority Mail package and it eventually got out of that status after almost two weeks. What are your experiences lately with this status? I am experiencing it again on a package that's been in that status with no update for one week now. Are all the cancelled flights to blame?

I find that this often means the item is sitting at my local Distribution Center (about 45 miles from my local Post Office). It can sit there for a number of days without moving to my local Post Office.
Don

I haven't seen this message since early COVID, but I just got it on my Anchor pages from another thread. Nothing against firstamp, the ebay seller, as they shipped day one, and honestly, with the weather and the holidays, I'm cutting the USPS quite a lot of slack, too.

Things seem to be in a bit of turmoil these days in the shipping world. I was watching tracking on a package from Europe and got the "left Zurich for New York on flight XX" Great. "arrived New York." Great. "Left New York for Zurich on flight XX" NOOOO!!!! It took about two weeks, but all's well that ends well.

Another DHL package from France hit the U.S. and went dark for ten days. No updates, nothing. It came back alive a week ago, and arrived just before Christmas.

Now, in the last ten days, FedEx has delivered two packages from Japan in three days, the last one at 4pm on Christmas Eve. I pick FedEx whenever I can, but much of what I get from Europe has to come through DHL.

Would not the current weather conditions be in the mix?
Probably more like this in the coming weeks.

Something weird is going on with USPS and not only late deliveries, but no deliveries. For close to 20 years I have had a US parcel delivery service in the small Washington state enclave of Point Roberts. I have never had a shipment lost or any problems. The address has been the same for all that time and still is. In the last 3 weeks I have had 3 parcels returned to sender due to "no such address". That to me means that someone at USPS is either not doing there job or playing some sort of game. The fact that the Post Office and the shipping center are half a block apart and the address has not changed leads to an inexplicable response of "no such address". Weather certainly has nothing to do with that.

USPS service is definitely deteriorating. I see the "Arriving Late" notation at least 3 times a month. Earlier this year a copy of the Robson Lowe Encyclopedia for Africa died in Pittsburgh, never to be seen or heard from again. I currently have a package hung up in Cincinnati. The Flat Rate Priority Mail package was evidently opened there as part of the contents arrived back in my mail box yesterday (I had used the sender's original Priority Mail envelope as a stiffener for the return to him and that is what arrived). In October a package took 10 days to get out of Oregon.

Delays are not the exclusive property of USPS. In October I sent a registered envelope to someone in Italy. It made it to Poland in two days and to Italy the following day. It took four more weeks to make it to its final destination.

I got it twice on packages mailed around Thanksgiving to very different locations. Both have been lost and I had to refund the buyers. First losses in a couple years - but both happened one day apart in Nov.

The USPS has also taken to destroying packages. Two times in the past three months my wife has mailed pricey antique teacups and wine glasses. Both packages arrived badly damaged, and the contents were destroyed. The items were packaged extremely well. There is not much else you could do to protect the contents. Somebody really had to go out of their way to inflict the damage they did. Really sucks.

This is not the postal service of yesteryear when precious metals and children were entrusted to the post office.

Well for anything normally transported by air, the USPS has no special power to make planes fly in bad weather. Now if the USPS senses a long delay for air, then it may begin to reroute items by ground but with the storms of the past days, ground transportation needs a sleigh or canoe depending where in the country you are looking.

Me, I have photos of a USPS disaster struck large priority box I may post. Since the OP has no photos nor anyone else in this thread, I will not post mine here. My box hit the ground, hard, in a muddy puddle and arrived in a large clear plastic bag filled with water induced mold further color enhanced by good old red soil mud. It was not helped by not being presented to me during several pick ups at my PO Box further allowing an extra 13 days of mold growth. Luckily insured to $200 with $197 in contents cost. But the loss was in some very high face value stamps (up to $75--for international express mail) I picked up for less than 9% face and 3% catalog. Other bidders were asleep that day. Nor will I expect to see them at that price again. I specifically got them for a club topical collector who could not afford such at even normal discount prices.

Edit:

When I was traveling extensively for work, I regularly passed a middle of nowhere post office in Arizona. For some reason I figured out how the Express mail traveled to that office from my home. Thus when ever there was a correct flight delay, I would mail myself a nice Express item with proper and current express stamps. Then when I showed up at the PO for my item, I got the item and collected the full refund for the item arriving late. Cost to me, $zero, but just a small bit of collector time.

Perhaps they thought it was a wheel of Brie and they were helping you out.

ParcelPostGuy: I don't have pictures of the Priority Mail envelope because I have not received it, but based on your post, I might cry when I receive it, if ever, should "Item in transit, arriving late" cryptically refer to a mangled package. To make matters worse, this is from a small businessperson on eBay that I had a friendly message exchange with about the stamps he was selling and I know the seller is not at fault for the USPS problems, but I don't have my item.

That I understood. I was hoping for a screenshot of the USPS tracking details.

My large priority box came from a cottage industry eBay seller ho does about 325 or so lots per week all closing on Sunday. He has retired twice and sells mostly stamps and postal history when buying out a dealer. He gives a job to his PTSD retired military (Iraq and Afghanistan) nephew as his sole extra help. Being a retired career military person, who also saw combat and was the last face his CO saw before passing in the field from battle wounds, he understands. Lost his only child in Iraq as well.

That said no one deserves their mail mishandled, but deserved has nothing to do with it; its just plain luck, be it good or bad. Getting thousands of packages from around the world, I am rather amazed at the fact only a handful arrived with problems fewer yet with contents damaged, this being the first USPS damaged stamps. Postal scales have suffered as well as several high end sharpening stones with a 50-50 split between USPS and poor packaging. Also I did once receive from overseas a wet envelope but the sender had wrapped all contents in plastic so they were dry as a bone.

Refund is coming soon the seller assures me.

I do love brie rogdcam and live just a couple of miles from the oldest continuously operating cheese company in the USA (same ranch too) started in 1865. French style is their specialty with Camembert and Brie their top cheeses. We have another new comer between us and them, it started in 1919. A flash in the pan called Cowgirl Creamery came and went recently. It got the most press not due to the quality of their cheese but due to the two women who started it both with food pedigrees from certain sainted and legendary Berkeley restaurants in Berkeley's several gourmet ghettos, areas the woke are trying to rename. Likewise as they were newcomers, the woke deemed they could not be tainted by so-called colonialism. They lasted barely 25 years before selling out to an international conglomerate, never owning nor raising the animals from which they made cheese. In their Point Reyes store they carried many cheeses, the majority of stock which was made by others.

EDIT:

Here is the sheet I was getting for a topical collector at one of my clubs. At current exchange rate the $75 Tala express equals $27.75 US and US $55.04 for the sheet. Catalog is about $115 US mint or used.


Sadly there were more than ten high denomination face value covers worth well over the face values of the stamps.

Sounds like the Rouge et Noir in Petaluma. As a kid (and as an adult), we would stop there to picnic and enjoy the cheese on our way to the grandparent's place on the coast. Glad that they're still there.

Being a cheese aficionado I enjoyed the cheese story. One of my favorites is a local cheddar produced in Granville MA since 1851. Alas, not solely a cheese company so it does not qualify as the oldest cheese company.

https://www.granvillecheesestore.com/ourstory

Nothing beats a good cheese. In the countryside near my hometown are farms that make and sell their own cheeses. When I come across a food market, weekly market, or delicatessen shop - it depends on the country - I look for local cheeses, or if their is no regional cheese, at least a traditional cheese from the country.

Last year, I got talking to a stand holder at the weekly market in La Seu d'Urgell. He sold locally produced cheese from their own sheep. When he told me their farm was just outside town, I told him I had seen it when I went for a walk in the countryside. He invited me to visit them and see how they made the cheese the following day. Sadly, I had to catch an early bus back to Lleida and could not visit. I did buy his cheese.

Earlier this year, I partcipated in a wine tasting at Bodega Muelas in Tordesillas. They had bought cheeses from a specialised shop some fifty kilometres away. Apparently, some cheeses were almost impossible to buy anywhere.

No postal services involves. All cheeses travel in the luggage hold of a KLM flight.

I once did buy my girlfriend brie, as she loves it. She took it home. The airline sent her suitcase to Kazakhstan. It took a week to be delivered to her. In the distance she could see the brie running home from Kazakhstan. It almost beat the suitcase getting home.

The Anchor stock pages did finally arrive, no visible damage. I now know from the ebay-label thread that I shouldn't have expected a typical level of detail normally provided by actual tracking.

If you have even a passing interest in cheese, and haven't tried Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Uplands Cheese Company in
Wisconsin, seek it out. You're welcome.