I reached out to the seller of the tires I’ve been writing about that have been en route from San Diego for almost two weeks. Because that’s what Priority Mail gets you now. Two weeks between the largest cities in California with and no anticipated arrival date.

Credit to the seller through Amazon for giving an estimated delivery date for way later than reasonable Priority Mail transit time. Today is the upper bound of the delivery window, so I reached out to the seller. The last update I’d received from USPS was August 2.

The seller replied quickly and with heartbreaking statements. Here are just a few:

We checked the tracking on usps.com and we too see no movement. 

Unfortunately shipping and tracking seem to be not as smooth lately as they have been in the past. We have been in mail order for over ten years, and we have never experienced issues similar to those we are experiencing at this time. We have more items missing than we have ever had in the past. Packages are not moving as they usually do. Packages are not being scanned. Packages are being returned as undelivered or in the case of international, not getting into the countries they are addressed to.
...
We spend our days shipping and our evenings responding to messages and filing lost mail and claims with USPS!

This is absurd. This is a small business that has been operating for more than a decade and has relied on the Postal Service and for good reason. Now they’re being let down. And so are we.

But the scale of letdown is eye-opening. Packages returned as undeliverable, packages disappearing in the system without movement scans, and the hit of losing the trust of the public in being able to order goods for delivery.

This s awful.

But that last sentence: “We spend our days shipping and our evenings responding to messages and filing lost mail claims with the USPS!” brings it all together. That shouldn’t be a thing a seller should have to do. A lost package can happen. And Priority Mail includes some insurance by default.

But if USPS isn’t doing well as it is, the unreliable delivery is the body blow, and the insurance payouts are the uppercut that sends the organization flying across the ring for a knockout.

This has to stop. We need USPS to succeed. We need to be able to rely on mail delivery so we can vote. We need the mail.

I’ve contacted my representative and my senators. Contact yours. Let them know you’re fed up with Louis DeJoy and the new policies.

DO NOT LET THEM SILENCE YOU.

https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
https://www.senate.gov/senators/index.htm