UPS Registered vs FedEx or UPS

As of today I am of the opinion that sending a valuable item via 1st class insured mail is like shouting to everybody that it wants to be tampered with or somehow become lost.

I have never used register mail so I cannot comment.

I love flat rate priority mail for the 70 pounds you are allowed to ship and the fact that they will deliver after hours and on Saturdays. The tracking for priority mail leaves a whole lot to be desired , but I have never had a single item being sent to me nor 1 I sent to others , misrouted or lost via USPS Priority Mail.

When you discover the heights that some of those packages can fall off the conveyor belts during sorting and processing , you will appreciate the strong emphasis of over packing , padding and taping. I usually place 1 medium flat rate box inside another for double the strength. Heck the flat rate boxes are free at any post office and they do come in an adequate variety of shapes and sizes. You can further save on the actual shipping costs if you use the Click-n-Ship service online & print your own shipping label.

One limitation of Priority is that you are not supposed to ship coins nor currency internationally. You can however add insurance and signature required to Priority Flat Rate Mail very inexpensively.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Lol, I'm sure my mailman would do it, and I bet many others would too. On one occasion (a few months ago) I had a package shipped to me Priority mail with insurance and Signature conformation. I was out the whole day and when I came home I was surprised to see the package in my mailbox. When I went online and checking the tracking number, do you know who it said signed for the package? Me! The mailman actually signed my name and just left the package in the mailbox.

 

Carrumba.....

 

That's the NY Postal workers for ya! Similar has happened to me as well.

 

I would actually like to take that bet, because when it comes to Domestic Registered Mail, no Postal employee is going to chance losing their job. Several years ago a carrier accidently lost a Registered package worth over $25,000, he ended up making monthly payments on it because it was determined that he was the last Postal employee to have signed for it.

There is a reason that Registered Mail is the safest way to send packages, it's because the package can be tracked to each and every employee who handled it, and there are multiple security systems in place along the way that make it nearly impossible to lose.

 

Can a postal employee be fired for forging someones name on a Signature conformation package and leaving it in a mailbox? If so, I know of at least one mailman who would chance it, and I would really be surprised if I happen to know the only one.

 

Your initial comment was in regards to a Priority Package with Insurance and Signature Confirmation. There are very little security checks with regular Insured Mail. It doesn’t even come close to the security of a Priority Package with Registered Mail, so I was trying to point out that what might happen with an Insured Package is not likely to happen with a Registered Mail Package. To be sure, anything can happen when you figure in the human factor, but most Postal employees are smart enough to know that you don’t mess around with Registered Mail, because you won’t be around very long if you screw up!

To answer your question about firing employees for signing a customer’s name on a Regular Insured package, the answer is yes. I’m very surprised that anyone would even allow that to happen. If it were me, I would have called my local Postal Inspector and sent him a copy of the signature. Are you sure it was the carrier who signed the 3849, or could it have been someone else at the residence? The carriers are required to ask for ID if they don’t know the addressee, unless it’s being delivered to a business where a secretary or mail clerk can sign for it if previously agreed upon and it doesn’t say RESTRICTED DELIVERY, in which case it MUST be sign for by the addressee.

 

Great info thanks ! Wished I would of mailed my coins to NGC tomorrow instead of today after reading all the comments.

 

Houston Texas

Thanks, by the way I have audited nearly every major Post Office in the country, and I liked the Houston Texas P&DC very much. I even picked up some Tony Loma boots while in Houston.

 

100%, no one else was home that day.

I actually have a few coins at NGC, they're going to be mailed back Registered mail, should be interesting to see how it turns out. I'll update this thread when I get them (probably won't be for 2 weeks though).

 

As a former auditor for the USPS , do you know if there is a way to push for mandatory annual polygraph test for all postal employees ?

 

Doesn't matter took 2 of them myself and the results were amusing. Dont wanna tell might offend someone

 

Ploygraph Test

I’m not sure why it would be necessary to mandatory a polygraph test for all Postal employees. If you worked for the FBI, NCIS which is my favorite show, or some other government high security department, I could understand it, but Postal employees?