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Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.
I can completely understand the situation in the above letter. I have not found a shipping service yet that is paying any attention to care of the packages. And I think that much of this is caused by the push for profitability at the lowest labor cost. The employees of the USPS are picking up the burden while the USPS is struggling to become profitable. n my town, for instance, the mail delivery personnel use their own vehicles. They go into the office at 6AM to sort the mail for their routes. Then, they pack their cars with as many boxes & mail as possible & delivery until the vehicle is empty–and then go back & fill up their car again & again until their route ha been completed. Some are doing this 3 or 4 times a day. And, they’re working 6 days a week. In all weather–and we have some weather extremes, both summer & winter. Some things are working–in the 4 years I’ve been in business they have lost only one package. Yes, some are late, though all are shipped Priority Mail. But you couldn’t pay me enough to do their job.
Why are we still paying for signature conformation when the customer can no longer sign??? I have noticed same thing. As for the damage, I left UPS years ago as they went crazy brutal after that Christmas season when they were left with tons of undelivered parcels. That was the breaking point (and I do mean breaking!). Post office can be brutal too but all you can do is pack like crazy. I now almost always double and even triple box.
We print large format artwork. It is usually shipped in a tube (we ship unframed only). Once upon a time we used the USPS triangle priority mail tubes to save on purchasing tubes. That was a mistake, they were crushed more often than not. Then we went to ultra strong kraft tubes. Huge increase in cost over free, and the mail carriers are still trying to shove them into mailboxes (tubes are 38″ long). Tried squares too. Moved away from USPS for shipping artwork. Now it is UPS. Their drivers are used to getting out of the truck to deliver. We have a much better success rate with UPS.