USPS SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 

I've been having so many issues with USPS I could fill 100 pages here ranting and crying about it like a little kid. Yes, they just flat SUCK!!!!

Over the holiday season they lost or miss-delivered at least a dozen shipments. Only a couple made it back here and they had the CORRECT address on them.....duh?

So last week I shipped out 15 orders on Thursday and they disappeared into oblivion. Yes, the driver only scanned four of them before leaving the shop. I guess since it was 12:07 he was in a hurry to start his lunch break or scoot over to his girlfriends house for a quickie, or most likely just had to find a secluded pull-off and get caught up on his text messages....whatever..

Yes folks, he did NOT do his job and 11 didn't get scanned at all. Even the four that did get scanned show NOTHING and no one at the post office or the driver can tell me what happened to them. If you were anywhere in the Mount Vernon Ohio area on Wednesday morning at 8:35 am you could have heard my "discussion" in the front lobby with the Postmaster about how INCOMPETENT his employees are. They were dialing 911 and headed for the exit doors!

Doesn't much matter, but at least I got to "vent" a little. Bottom line is that I'm out nearly $2000 and having to scramble around starting today and replace all of them.

They want me to wait 30 days before filing a claim....SERIOUSLY? So I'm supposed to tell my customers that are beating my door down wanting their parts yesterday that USPS thinks (yes they really don't know) that all those orders are stuck on a truck in Columbus due to the sub-zero temperatures and heavy snow we've had over the past week or so.

That just doesn't cut-it, not in 2025 when nearly every single human being sucking air walks around with a hand held computer and they give USPS drivers another one that within milli-seconds scans their pick-ups and relays precise information to the website so everyone in the chain of events knows EXACTLY when they took delivery of the package(s) and every movement it makes until it reaches the destination.

Yes folks, they just flat SUCK at every level!.......Rant over.......

Cliff - I am beginning to think maybe we should deliver our product ourselves, :) and charge for the service. At least we would see more of the country.

A few months ago, built a wooden box to protect a complete tri-power assembly that we shipped, only to have the UPS fork-lift driver run one of the forks completely through the box and snap off the water neck:mad:.

As far as the post office: If I buy something east of Missouri, it goes to St. Louis, then to KCMO, then to KCkansas (where it is lost for 3 days) then to Columbia, and finally to Eldon. About 5 or 6 days from St. Louis to Eldon. :eek:

I feel your pain!

Jon

Most of my issues are with my local driver. I wished they would put the long-legged blond gal back on my route. She looked so good you didn't care if she lost ALL your mail!.......LOL

Seriously folks, I've had quite a few "turds" on my route recently after having an excellent carrier for many years. One gal had the worst Marlboro-breath you'd ever had in your face, and she wasn't worth two squirts of duck poop at her job either. After many complaints to the Postmaster they finally terminated her. They day she got her walking papers she "slipped" and fell leaving the building and filed for disability due to the injuries, or that's the rumor I heard from her replacement.......

Ya, like the old saying, you can't fix stupid. Nobody seems to give a sh*t lately. Talk to the younger group and their head is focused on a phone. No eye contact. Call them and they won't answer. They only want to communicate with a text. Us old timers need to be able to talk to express ourselves. I truly believe talking and listening is becoming a lost art in itself.
Sorry to hear of your troubles. We have all been there.

Work ethic? These youngsters can't pull their face out of a cell phone long enough to get any work done.

If you want to see work ethic in 2025, hire the Amish. I just had my woods logged by the Amish. They took out 135 trees in four days. They show up at 7:30, work all day with a quick lunch break, battled the cold, snow, wind and got the job done. The oldest guy on the crew was a 20 year old named Lester. He was a pretty smart guy, and very good at his trade.

Second day into the job I was letting the chickens out to free range while they were cutting a HUGE Maple tree behind the shop. While making their bore cut I heard a lot snap, and saw the tree drop and lean toward the shop pinching the saw. The saw shut off and he said "that's not good"! No chit! I were quickly vacated to a safe distance.

Within seconds they fetched rope, block & tackle and a team of horses and this big "sling shot" device. It threw a tag line into the tree and the horses were pulling it safely in the right direction minutes later. I'd estimate the two other kids at 15-18 years old. At least the Amish are still teaching and exercising good worth ethic in the next generation........

I've became friends with a couple in our dance club. John is a X Marine he is a safety mgr for USPS in the Pittsburgh area some of the stories. Especially people who are trouble being protected by the union. He is no nonsense with common sense. We were talking about the woman USPS delivery person in Ohio, driving one of the boxey delivery Van's caught street racing a Mustang!! Yes true. Or the 2 in Baltimore driving those Van's playing 'bumper cars' hitting one another,man and woman fighting,she threw mail
at the man. I cant imagine your frustration.When renewing my vehicle registration in Pa I do not use the mail,I get it renewed locally by my Representative s office. 2 reasons one is the mail and 2. I know in Harrisburgh sometimes info gets messed up!

I feel your pain Cliff as many others. I am still waiting for my Federal Tax Returns and State tax Returns from 2022 to arrive at their destinations. Sent USPS with tracking, Priority, Registered, requiring a signature. They made it as far as the black hole sorting center 75 miles away in Columbus, OH. Fed-EX has their own scam going. If you have an account, like I had for 12 years, your package gets a $$ amount attached to it so you can charge your customer. When you get your monthly statement, you find what you charged the customer and what Fed-Ex charged you most of the time does not match. What you charged your customer was just an "estimate". You have to wait 30-45 days to find out how much your account was "actually" charged. I had a dozen charges over 2 months that were actually double or more what the "estimate was". I took it as far up the ladder as I could and basically it was a "sorry about your luck" situation. I closed my account which was super convenient, and use UPS exclusively now. And they are far from perfect as well. "There are no winners in a world full of losers".

USPS more than sucks. Their tracking system is useless. After a very long delay on a delivery I started asking how they are shipping an item, if they say USPS, I ask them to use UPS. Usually cost 1 or 2 bucks more but it arrives when promised and tracking is easy and accurate. Have never had a problem with UPS. Just my experience.

My USPS carrier is not great. I get the neighbors' mail pretty frequently. I just throw it back into the box and raise the flag, even if it's only going next door. Theft of gift cards, checks and cash by USPS employees is rampant now and in the news frequently. The whole thing needs to be shut down and put out for bids. Fed Ex ground is the next worst, as most of the stuff I recieve is beat to hell or damaged. Their trucks are dirty and damaged and their public image is crap. Amazon is pretty good overall and UPS is also good, with an older fellow as my usual route driver who gets the stuff out of sight and out of the weather.

I had an order from you this past summer Cliff that disappeared for over 3 weeks that finally did show up. I should have had it 2 days tops, it showed after about 22 -23 days.

"USPS more than sucks. Their tracking system is useless....."

Their insurance is USELESS as well. Been down that road a few times.

First they tell you to wait 30 days. (Hoping you'll go away and never come back).

Then they LOOSE the first claim, ALL of it, so you will be making a third trip to the Post Office.

Then the will DENY the claim for "insufficient packing" or some other lame excuse for damaged goods.

Then they wanted me to PROVE to them that the Ram Air carburetor they LOST was worth the amount of insurance I put on it.....and as I walked away the Postmaster told me that they will NOT accept Ebay or any website sales as proof of value. I needed to go to Pep Boys or some other auto parts store and get a "replacement cost"......WTF??

NEVER again will I ship any valuable classic car parts through them.

As far as my current claim goes, not worth the effort to fill out the paperwork and deal with the "drama" headed my way. I'll just bitch some, then replace the items and keep on moving thru life.......

I can relate Cliff,

I ordered some parts from Pontiac Heaven in Arizona, and they were shipped on 12-9-24, scanned out of the local post office, with an expected delivery date of 12-13-24. No scans at all for 30 days after the scan so the sender was about to start an insurance claim, and then 31 days later it was scanned in Atlanta? So evidently Atlanta is a direct route from Arizona to Detroit? It then spent 6 days traveling around the Atlanta area, then 3 days to Indianapolis, 2 days to Detroit, and 3 days to get to my local PO, and delivered the next day. So 45 Days from Arizona to Detroit?
On the bright side all 3 parts arrived intact and are much better parts than I had. So yeah the tracking system is almost useless IMO

Last week at work I removed mail from my box that my immediate neighbor was trying to mail out. I took it to him and asked him to try again. We have lived with incompetent carriers of various ages, sexes and races for the twelve years that I have been in this building. The last time I spoke to our post master I told him that hiring the disabled is a great thing, but stop sending blind and illiterate carriers to my street.

It's funny you mention that. 2 days ago I went into my local post office to mail off some brochures to a client in MA. Walk in, 10+ people in line. I put my things in an envelope and needed to write the address on the envelope. Not a pen in sight. None, and this is a big post office. 1 person working. I walked out. I went over to UPS. Cost a few more dollars but at least my items got scanned.

it's time our new government takes a look at and fixes USPS. Just waited ten days for a two day package. Every single thing I buy or ship has the same thing happen. Most go into KC zone and sit or get lost.
Or it show they go out for delivery then I find out it has not even left our local office. They need to be overhauled badly.

I being smart, USPS,FEDX,and UPS are merging USFEDUPS.

I noticed a nose dive in USPS in the last few weeks at my location. I have a feeling that it's a bit of a covert political protest of some kind.

This week two of my orders from Amazon just disappeared as soon as USPS got them from Amazon, no explanation or details, just fell off the face of the earth. And EVERY single thing I have ordered has been late, every one.

Most things here go through the Memphis sorting facility that is a documented USPS black hole. Like one of the highest theft and mishandling records in the country.

It should come as no surprise that Government shipping is no better than anything else they do. I hate the USPS. I didn't even have a mail box at my house until Amazon started using USPS so much a few years ago. Then I really had not much of a choice.

I recently sent a 1/4" thick catalog to a guy in Arkansas, from my place in SW Ohio. It doesn't arrive, so at the end of two weeks, I send another. It and the first one arrived the same day.

OK, something is up, the replacement item Amazon shipped to replace the first one that disappeared has now disappeared. Was supposed to get here today and now they say four days from now as it is "delayed in transit" ... the exact same thing the previous ghosted item said.

Either the weather/fires is playing heck with them, or this is some kind of "work slowdown" that we'll be reading about in the news soon.

Here is the USPS website that shows current issues.

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/

USPS.....hate them for a number of reasons and avoid them like the flu when possible. That said, my local carrier is pretty good...same guy for more than 25 years.

Have to agree. Just sent a letter priority mail to another PY member and it took over a week to get there. Pathetic! Not even worth my time to travel the three blocks to the local office to voice a complaint. Its way past time for a complete overhaul, or better yet, shut it down and open it up to bids from companies in the private sector to compete for zones. Award efficiency and remove incompetence. There is no way these people should be paid the salaries and benefits they are with this kind of performance.

I recently sold some inexpensive parts and the buyer mailed a check. The check arrived on the Saturday morning when the Raleigh NC area was having a snow/sleet/freezing rain event. We ended up getting maybe an inch of mostly sleet covered with freezing rain. The roads were mostly OK, but the slush accumulated on the grass and trees. I checked the mail on Saturday and we got nothing.

On Monday, my wife went to the mailbox and found two pieces of mail, including the check, in the thawing slush. The mail had already run, but the mail on the ground was under the slush, so it had been delivered Saturday and we didn't see it. Not only was it soaking wet, the mail man apparently drove over top of it, ruining the check. We haven't seen major issues, but it's not uncommon to find mail from somebody else in our mailbox.

I mostly use Fed Ex when I ship. I haven't had any major problems lately, but nothing ever arrives on the promise date.

"On Monday, my wife went to the mailbox and found two pieces of mail, including the check, in the thawing slush."

Yesterday I took the tractor down the driveway to get some logs with the grapple. I noticed a folded over white envelope in the slush where the driveway meets the road. Low and behold it was a medical bill from Knox Community Hospital....LOVELY!

As of this morning the 15 packages I shipped back on the 16th are still missing. Yesterday I put a thread on Facebook asking for anyone in my area to be on the lookout for a 55 gallon plastic bag full of USPS shipments. I got a PM from a gal who didn't want to go public that said on the same afternoon my shipment was picked up she saw a large black bag along Monroe MIlls Road about 1/4 mile from my house. It was in the ditch behind some mail boxes on the West side of the road . I drove down to check it out but it was long gone.

Could have been my packages but we'll never know at this point. What I do know is that my driver has a BAD habit of unloading boxes at my pick-up point to make room for mine and forgets to load them back up. Hardly a week goes by I don't walk outside where we leave the shipments and I've got someone else's package or packages laying there on the ground.

Complaining is a complete waste of time, the driver doesn't care and neither does anyone else.

I also ordered a bar and chain for a chainsaw. The chain was delivered yesterday withouit the bar....LOVELY!

Have also been waiting on a part for a chainsaw shipped to me over a week ago. It made it to Cincinnati four days ago and no movement since. Just says "delayed" when you look at the tracking info......LOVELY!

There’s been talk (just talk) of outsourcing the USPS. As far back as the late seventies as I recall. They’ve been thrown so many lifelines without any conditional and measurable goals and expectations to meet. It’s unbelievable what protections a USPS employee has.
Part of my responsibilities was supervising the mail team for our Sheriff’s Office. 3 jails, Courthouse, Field Office, Headquarters, Training Facility, and Medical Division. My Couriers were to pick up and deliver mail at the USPS main facility every morning at 08:30. The jackass running the bulk mail-USPS dock would ignore my courier and make him late the rest of the day. I went and talked with the USPS Director about the situation. I was told that his bulk mail manager “had a thing against our Sheriff “ and was just “emotional “. In our next Executive Command Staff meeting I adivsed the Sheriff. We were getting threatened by inmates’ attorneys due to their mailed communications being late. The Sheriff directed our Special Ops team “assist” my courier with morning pick up for several mornings all on a random schedule. This was a team with all the ground combat gear and armored vehicle escorting my courier to the USPS dock to pick up our mail. The manufactured delay of our mail stopped after that point. Only because our Sheriff took a stance. Not because of USPS management. There is NO OVERSIGHT and NO REPERCUSSIONS for useless postal workers.

I could be wrong, but seems like I remember back in the 60's when the USPS was a fully government run operation it was actually pretty good (very surprising). It was almost para-military back then, everyone in proper uniform, people looked fit and efficient, vehicles were all in good shape, post offices almost had the look and feel of tiny military bases. Their unofficial motto seemed to mean something back then.

I'm only guessing what happened in my situation, but I'm guessing the mail man threw two pieces of mail out the window in front of the mailbox. I checked the mail Saturday afternoon while taking the dog out. I didn't see any tracks in the snow where the mail truck had pulled off the road to put mail in our mail box. I saw a mail truck earlier that day, but I often see several mail trucks come into my neighborhood on any given day. Sometimes mail trucks come through to deliver next-day air mail on early morning deliveries. When my wife went to the mailbox on Monday, there were tracks in the slush where the mail carrier pulled over to actually put mail inside the mail box, and most likely ran over the mail buried under the slush.

I can understand the mail carrier being concerned with maybe sliding into my mail box while out in sleet and freezing rain. But to just drop it out the window and leave it to me to find it while the sleet was still coming down is plain stupid.

Ouch. These stories sound bad, especially if you're running a business. We've had similar issues with lost and delayed packages, along with repeated letter deliveries to the wrong addresses....even the wrong box in a cluster.

The USPS is a weird "business model" to me. As I understand, they remain under government "control" to make sure rural areas get delivery yet are not really funded nor managed "normally" by the government and are basically expected to be profitable. I like the goal of covering everyone, but expecting to do this profitably seems daunting. Or at least unnecessarily complicated and self-conflicted.

Or in the words of Rosanne Roseannadanna:

https://forums.maxperformanceinc.com...1&d=1737824981

I personally think the USPS has shifted heavily to part-time and sub-contracted employees as a way to cut costs. Private companies do the same, but for some reason, the USPS may not be able to manage this workforce as well. Comments in the thread about "they don't care" may be accurate!

When we lived in Montrose, our delivery person was off Mondays. Over 5 years, we had at least 3 different Monday people and got to swap mis-delivered mail with our neighbors about 30% of those Mondays. It became a social event. The full-time carrier was near flawless.


Mike

My daughters fiancé is a many decade letter carrier, and I get to hear some real horror stories from him, through her.

You work part time when first hired in, at a token of what the full timers get. They abuse the part timers and most get fed up and quit before they make full time status. They get a bunch of no call no shows, and because they have no backlog waiting in the wings, no reprimands.

She told me he, and his supervisor don't get along, and she (the supervisor) screws him over every chance she gets. Scheduling time off is a nightmare from what I understand as they have no backup labor to run your route if you use vacation time, if you can even get a relief person. He says when he does come back from time off, it takes him a week to get his route back to normal.

The pay and benefits used to be a magnet to get the employees into the golden handcuffs, but the starting pay being low, employee retention is also low. Morale seems to be about the same as IRS employees, and if you ever had to deal with the IRS, you understand that comment.

From what I hear it's poorly run from the top down, and it isn't getting any better.

[QUOTE=Sirrotica;6547716]My daughters fiancé is a many decade letter carrier, and I get to hear some real horror stories from him, through her.

You work part time when first hired in, at a token of what the full timers get. They abuse the part timers and most get fed up and quit before they make full time status. They get a bunch of no call no shows, and because they have no backlog waiting in the wings, no reprimands.

She told me he, and his supervisor don't get along, and she (the supervisor) screws him over every chance she gets. Scheduling time off is a nightmare from what I understand as they have no backup labor to run your route if you use vacation time, if you can even get a relief person. He says when he does come back from time off, it takes him a week to get his route back to normal.

The pay and benefits used to be a magnet to get the employees into the golden handcuffs, but the starting pay being low, employee retention is also low. Morale seems to be about the same as IRS employees, and if you ever had to deal with the IRS, you understand that comment.

From what I hear it's poorly run from the top down, and it isn't getting any better.[/QU


That sounds allot like starting a career as an automotive technician. I have quite a few college seniors in their second and final year of co-op work, at $10.00 an hour. They have to provide their own tools and box, typically at least 20K in tools and their own high end scan tool, bi-directional with programming capability. Their friends are working at Burger King for $17.50 an hour and only need to be able to fog a mirror!.

usps
 

Your story is interesting. Our lady carrier [large rural route] is very competent and all her customers are very protective of her. That said, she has shared the same exact story as above. So it would appear that here in Nevada the story is the same as in other parts of the country. there seems to be a pattern ???

The difference between a new automotive tech and a USPS employee is the learning curve. It takes years of OTJ working to master the vocation. Working as a letter carrier your worst fear is a dog bite.............no one dies if you screw up delivering a piece of mail.....................:)

Sad

And IMO, wrong

co-op or coerce?

I know a major problem for the USPS is the burden of their existing pension and healthcare obligations. Evidently the retirement package for long time employees in decades past was outstanding. They are still paying dearly for people that retired 30 years ago.

My business is located in an industrial park, where no businesses are open weekends. This (a customer's new part) was left today, courtesy of USPS.

Here's our Chapter of the online book 'The USPS totally SUCKS ! '
 

We're in Las Vega$, NV.

My youngest daughter mailed a fairly nice pair of earbuds to her sister who's attending college in Idaho.

After looking on the USPS website, she realized that, for ‘safety’ reasons, they wanted her to mark the box to indicate lithium batteries were enclosed.

The instructions also said that these could not be shipped via Priority Mail, but had to be shipped 'USPS Ground Advantage'. So that's what we did. The label showed HAZ-MAT and we attached a Lithium Ion Battery sticker that she found on the USPS website.

She ships quite a bit of hobby stuff, so she generated her label on PirateShip with ALL the correct and required warnings on it.

We taped the USPS label and warning sticker on and dropped off at our local Post Office. It's a smaller location in a grocery store near us and we ship there, literally, ALL the time.

They accepted the package and gave us a receipt and we were done with it.

NOT.

On the 3rd day after shipping my daughter tracked the box to see if it had been delivered and it showed as being in PHOENIX, after the 'Sender corrected mailing address'. WHAT THE F* ???

Calling the '800' number is an exercise in futility. NO-body knows anything about anything at all.

We even tried going to the big Post Office here in Vega$ to ask about it. Again, NO-body knows anything about anything. They told us to 'wait and see'.

TWO DAYS LATER (now 5 days after mailing), we get a notice of a Certified Letter with a Phoenix return zip code. Of course, we missed the mailman that day (last Saturday) and the Post Office is closed on Sunday and this past Monday, too (due to our Presidential Inauguration Day that happened to fall on MLK Day).

So last Tuesday morning, bright and early, I'm at the Post Office to retrieve the Certified Letter and see WTF is going on.......

The letter tells us that they've 'seized' the box because of the Lithium Battery 'warning' sticker. That particular sticker, they say, is against the USPS rules. No problem with the lithium batteries or anything else – just that scary sticker.

Remember that my daughter printed the warning sticker FROM THE USPS WEBSITE (?). Kinda ironic, isn't it?

The letter told us that we had 48-hours to arrange for someone to pick up the box (in Phoenix) or it would be 'disposed of'.

I tried calling the number on the letter repeatedly to no avail. FINALLY, at about 8pm, someone answers the phone and takes a message.

They explain that the facility is simply the largest sorting facility in Arizona and gets 'lots of packages'. They also explain that we need to pick the box up, unless we want them to destroy the box and its' contents.

Mid-day the next day (Wednesday) I get a call back from the person who generated the original letter. She’s friendly enough but she’s a typical bureaucratic official.

I ask ‘Why is the box in Phoenix when it was mailed from Las Vega$ and supposed to be headed to Idaho ??’ She can’t answer me. I ask ‘How much trouble is it going to be to pick it up? Will we need to make an appointment ?’ She tells me that we just need to present the Certified Letter and whoever is ‘at the window’ will send a runner to find our box. Seems simple enough, right?

I suspect that, once they discovered the ‘bad’ sticker, they sent it away to make it more difficult for us to retrieve it. But that’s purely speculation on my part.

I talked it over with my daughter and she’s totally pissed off and wants THOSE earbuds back NO MATTER WHAT.

So day before yesterday (Thursday) we took a road-trip to Phoenix. Just under 600 miles round-trip. Just under $70 in gas to retrieve an $80 pair of earbuds…..

But that’s still not the best part. We get to the Phoenix distribution center at 245pm. The worker at the window states he can’t go get the package because he is alone in the office and can’t leave the office. I ask who can go and get it and he repeats that he can’t leave the office.

He complains that we don’t have a location for the box, because ‘there are over a million boxes back there’ and he ‘can’t just go look for yours’……

I suggest that he find a Supervisor that CAN leave the office to help us. He makes a phone call and tells us that no-one is answering and we ‘might want to call back later’. I explain that we just drove for four hours to pick the box up and we’ll be ‘happy to wait’. ‘OK’ is his reply.

So we wait. And wait. And wait. And WAIT.

I get his attention several times (about every thirty minutes) and ask about getting a Supervisor. Each time, he makes a single phone call and tells me ‘no-one is answering’.

Thank God we weren’t on FIRE…..

Finally, at about 405pm, he leaves the office through a door into the warehouse. He returns about ten minutes later and tells us that he just left a note on the locked door of the Supervisor’s office.

At about 450pm (remember that we’ve been there since 245pm, so just over TWO HOURS), a frigging Supervisor finally shows up at the window. HALLELUJAH!

I explain what has happened, how far we’ve driven and how long we’ve been waiting. The Supervisor takes the letter with the box info and says ‘I’ll be right back’.

She was gone less than three minutes and comes back with our box. Then she needs to see our IDs and fill out forms and get signatures and all sorts of bull****. You can tell not too many people come and pick their stuff up, because she has to read the instructions on the forms so she can explain them to us.

She apologizes for the inconvenience and thanks us for our patience and heads back inside.

So it only took us four hours of driving each way and two and a half hours waiting to get the box. I guess that’s acceptable for the USPS, since they are absolutely the LEAST-efficiently-run business in the world.

I did have a nice visit with my daughter on the way down and back and she now understands why I complain vocally about how horribly the Country is run most of the time. She has a much better understanding of this now.

Here are my observations/questions:
1) If it was an improper sticker, why is it on the USPS website ?
2) Why did the Post Office accept it ?
3) And if it was a ‘BAD’ box, why wasn’t it at least caught in Vega$ ?
4) And, finally, how can it take over TWO HOURS to get help ?

Oh, and FYI: I just dropped the box back off at the post office with a BRAND new label that doesn’t say there are lithium batteries inside. I anticipate it will be delivered on Monday. Probably gonna get to Idaho, too.

The USPS is a JOKE !!!

For four months my rent check comes back as not deliverable. When ya pull the yellow sticker off its the correct address...happened to my irs payment also..so I try to do it all online now.

I have found that " UPS" is using the " Mail innovations" program WAY Less than they once did. Mail innovation used THE USPS to do the final leg of deliveries.
Only thing I have seen that can help a lost priority package is to Track it OFTEN, from Both ends. The regional managers get a List Every day of highly searched packages and often some inside action takes place. I have had 4 friends also search for my incoming package.

USPS
 

Whjle the USPS has some advantages, mainly their "flat rate" boxes, the effects of single party "machine politics" is clearly evident in the agency, in this part of the country. Remember taking two exams, in the mid 00's in the then Las Cruces Hilton. Hundreds of test takers, some falling over themselves, to prove how many "points" they had, or thought they deserved.
Have made one formal complaint, against an employee of the agency. Six or seven years ago, went into a then country branch (Fairacres) to make a simple shipping inquiry. Roughly 1615, a few minutes before closing. The employee was busily engaged in "small talk" and banter with a "townie" for several minutes. Never said anything, just stood there while the BS continued. Walked out without saying a word. Made a formal complaint on their offical agency website. Did get a response from an alleged postmaster. Learned later, this particular employee was essentially "immune" from discipline, as due to his "protected" status. And they were constantly moving him around, following complaints.

Just heard a story on USPS in Louisville. Not sure exactly location. A USPS worker anonymously contact media. Packages still in boxes from before Christmas. Pallet trucks broke, they are leased I think he said. Main bldg packed full,another bldg packed. Didnt say about enough help. Media contacted Mgr no comment. Sounds like not enough workers or mismanagement.

Finally got hosed-up by USPS. Ebay fella messaged he never got my vacuum tubes i mailed 8 Jan.

Tracking number say in Memphis as of 25 Jan. OMG that slow!!

Personally, I dont "mind" that the USPS isn't profitable. As a federal agency, I don't believe its under any obligation to do so. HOWEVER, I do mind that they are somewhat incompetent.

I told my local carrier (I live out in the middle of nowhere), that if my stuff is just junk mail, dont even stop, just wait til I have something real and then bring it all. It actually works well, and speeds him up a little bit, I think other folks in our 'hood' have mentioned it as well. I sometimes go a few days without mail, and I'm not freaked out.

You’re a more trusting soul than I am. To allow a mail carrier to determine what mail is relevant is putting a lot of faith in their judgement on your behalf. They must be one in a million!

I get my wine delivered by the Brown, it’s always been good.

I had one very bad experience with "The Brown" that goes back a number of years. I haven't shipped with them since that time.

Someone shipped me a very heavy package. I was upstairs working when I heard the door bell ring. I went to the bathroom window to see who it was. It was the "Brown" delivery driver. He had set my package on my deck rails. I started to open the window and tell him I would be down to get it. Just about that time, he pushed down on the corner of the box and let it freefall to my side deck landing. I was pi**ed. I opened the window and started yelling at him, called him some fairly nasty names. He left before I could get down. Luckily the item was cast iron and survived with no damage. I called "Brown" to complain, they told me to file a damage claim if I found any damage.

A number of years ago, I ordered a large flat screen TV. It was delivered by "Brown" and was damaged. It was pretty apparent it was damaged in transit, since there was a huge gouge in the cardboard. It looked like somebody ran a fork truck into it. The TV was toast.

I had pretty good luck shipping with DHL. I used them to ship, never had any damage to anything I shipped with them.

Brown does not and has never used forklifts . From pickup to delivery, it’s all done by hand.
Brown Freight ( formerly Overnite) does use forklifts but they also drive tractor trailers and mostly deliver to docks

I’ve got to eat a little crow this morning, not too much though. I received a package from a PY member this morning and he shipped it last Friday via USPS. It basically took one day to get here, but the check I sent to him, which weighed quite a bit less, took eight to nine days. Not sure how that all works but I’m glad the parts arrived without issue.