USPS frustration

It got there today. 10 days to get to Florida. The other i sent first class was an envelope from metro ny to Buffalo ny. That took 5 days. Oh well. It's the new normal.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Glad to here it finally arrived. The service is not what it used to be. Sure glad that I retired from them now.

 

I would strongly advise not doing that for the simple fact that if they figure out you under insured it they will deny your claim saying it would have been handled differently if they knew the true value

 

They may just deny it anyways haha

 

Signed up for "informed delivery". I wonder if i can track packages I've sent through that. So far, so weird.

 

Unless the po has changed it, it is only to inform you of a package delivery.

 

You are 100% correct. I was informed by an informed postal worker. Thank you!

 

I'm going to praise the usps, I'm sorry.
I mailed a package to Florida on Wed, I've seen updates, AND the package is already at the Ybor P&DC, in less than 48 hours.
I'm impressed for a change.

 

Not sure if anyone mentioned it, but third-party shipping insurance is a super duper alternative to USPS insurance, or any carrier's insurance. It's cheaper, and much easier to file claims. And faster turnaround and payment.

Two providers I know of in the US are U-PIC and Shipsurance. At least one of them sells to individuals. I'm sure there are others. There's no reason to buy insurance from the carriers themselves – literally no reason, not price, certainly not service.

The USPS is coercive monopoly, and they behave exactly like we would predict humans given a coercive monopoly will behave. They don't have a coercive monopoly on package shipping, which is why UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc. are able to exist. Their monopoly is on non-urgent letter mail, and they got Congress to shut down private sector competitors in the 19th century, like Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company, by making their monopoly official in law, and thus coercive. Their mail monopoly gives them an unfair, artificial advantage in package shipping though – since they're already delivering mail to effectively every address every working day, the marginal cost of delivering packages to those same addresses is low. That's why they generally offer lower prices for package delivery than UPS and FedEx Ground, as well as cheaper overnight service.

 

A few years back when I researched third party shipping insurers they had different rates depending on the shipping method used. For their lowest rates, by far, you had to ship by Registered mail. You just didn't declare a value, so you paid the minimum fee to the post office and received no coverage from them, and declared the coverage value to the shipping insurer. If I remember correctly the rates were SLIGHTLY less than the registered rates from the post office, but collecting from the private company might have been a little easier. But since Registered mail almost NEVER goes missing, the private company didn't really have anything to worry about. Odds are good they never had to pay any claims for their cheapest service.

 

https://www.shipandinsure.com/

Has really good rates on all types of service, you just cant use them for first class mail as far as I know. It's a bit of a balancing act between the USPS and private insurance as you have to calculate the extra fee for the type of shipping they cover vs the lower rates they offer. Once you get into significantly expensive packages it is much cheaper though

 

I agree; apparently there is a limit on how much insurance you can buy? I bought the max they had. I'll never ship 40 coins again that for sure...

 

If you ship with Priority the max ins is I believe $10K. With Registered it's $50K, and the $50K Registered ins is cheaper than the $10K Priority ins by a significant margin.

 

Cool - thanks for sharing that!

 

In my opinion, that is an unhealthy attitude towards the post office and fails to understand both its roll and its function in society.

 

I bought a very hard to find goodie for my 87' Pontiac Trans Am on ebay last Tuesday morning and received it via USPS last Friday (same week). Came from Michigan and I'm in San Francisco. Yabba dabba dooo!

 

It's a 5k limit for everything that isn't registered mail

 

You are right, I thought they had raised it to 10K when they raised Registered from 25K to 50K.

And as an example of the cost saving, a $5K insured Priority mail package has an insurance fee of $78.55, a $5K Registered package has a fee of $25.75 A $50K Registered package has a fee of $109. $78.55 would cover a Registered mail package of $34,000.

 

Its always seemed weird to me that first class, priority, and express all have the same limits. At the very least express seems like it should have a higher limit than the other two.

That's also a good demonstration on how USPS is shooting themselves in the foot with insurance rates. Private insurance is SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper than that and just drives extra revenue away with the insane rates USPS has. They lose basically nothing and would make more with more insurance being purchased at more competitive rates

 

Have any rate quotes or tables for private insurers?