Postal tips

If someone was to mail me a Reissue 6 Megatron from Hong Kong with registered 1st class mail with tracking, do you think that the Hong Kong/US post office would open up the package or anything?

The post office would not open it, but customs is not a part of the post office. It is unlikely they would open it unless they see something suspicous about the package, but always possible. I order things from Japan all the time and have never had customs open one.

I just wanted to add some tips for all you American's selling to Canada and Canadians importing from the USA. First of all I just recived a letter back from Canadain customs today and apparntly they will slap duty on packages that have been declared over $20. In pratace I have also found that it is essential for American sellers shipping to Canada to mark it as a gift otherwise the Canadian at the other end is definatly paying the price at the other end.



Soundwave.ca

WOW!! Great info!!

I just have one question (which you may not be able to answer). But why would at one point I get my mail at say around 10am, and then over the course of a year or so it now takes the carrier until around 6pm!

-Shifty

Actually I can probably answer that. It is like that in many places these days. Starting in 2001 the Post Office realized they were losing a LOT of money. They later tried to blame it on 9/11 but the truth is they were already losing in the hundreds of millions before that happened. But anyway this caused a hiring freeze. They are not hiring anybody now. The only way an office gets a new person these days is if they get an excess person to transfer from another office. On top of that, they recently had an early retirement session that a lot of people took (though they didn't get as many people to retire as they wanted I hear) and they didn't replace those that retired either. So offices all over are shorthanded in both clerks and carriers. Less clerks means the mail takes longer for the carriers to get their mail and get out of the office. And less carriers means sometimes that certain routes are done by carriers who do other routes, after they finish their own. That is the reason for late mail in many places these days.

I know all of this is the case in my office. When I started, during the busiest time of the day of mail sorting for a clerk in my office (5-8AM) we had 6-7 clerks every day. One transferred to another job, one retired, and another is out for a long period of time with surgery. Now we have 3-4 on any given day. The mail used to be done by 9am almost every day and the carriers would be out on the road shortly after. Now, there are days where the carriers don't get on the road until after 11am. In addition to this there are less carriers now too so when they do start delivering they have to split up the work between those who are there and it takes even longer.

That is what it probably is for you, but it could also be something more simple like they changed the carriers route, so that while you used to be in the beginning of his route, you are now at the end. But even then the lack of employees is probably coming into effect because most carriers would be on overtime by 6pm.

Wow...good to know, Thanks

-Shifty

Maybe you can shed some light on my problem. I've sent a package to a board member who lives in USA 5 months ago, and the problem is the package still hasn't arrived.
3 months ago I filled a tracking request, and whenever I go to my local post office (I live in Serbia-Montenegro in Europe) the clerks say "You'll be notified". In the request I stated everything clearly, and the clerk told me when I did that that either I or the bloke I sent the stuff to will be notified if the package is found, he if they're able to send it to him or me if they are returning it to me. As I allready said, its been 3 months and still nothin'. Maybe the people at the post office is stalling, they know its lost but don't want to tell me, hoping to piss me off so I'll say "to hell with it", and stop bugging them for a year, because that's the deadline they give for international mail that's lost to be found, if after a year it isn't found they are bound to refund me the whole
shebang (shipping and value of the package). Anyway I just wanted to know is there a way to check with the USPS if the package has arrived and is delivered? Send them an email or something?
Thanx very much for looking this up.
Razorclaw

The only real way to see if it was delivered on the US end is if you had tracking of some sort. Registered, Insured (over $50), Express, and Delivery Confirmation would all be trackable to varying degrees. Certified is trackable too though that is generally used for letters. If none of those were on it they would probably tell you tough luck pretty much as then the only way you'd be able to tell if it came would be if a clerk happened to remember seeing a package for that particular person from you, which is highly unlikely.

If you had any of those on the package you should be able to look up the status online at www.usps.com, or call. I think the number is 1-800-call-usps.

One other thing you could try, though it is a longshot is to call the office it was supposed to be delivered to and ask to speak to the accountables mail clerk. He should be able to explain things far better than I.

Something I just leared from my post office:

If you are shipping by Prioriy Mail and use their on-line shipping label maker, you can get Delivery Confirmation added for free.

Everything I've shipped for the past month has now had DC at no extra charge... And amazingly, I've had no more delays (like shipping Prioriy from Virginia to Texas taking 26 days... Or Chicago taking even longer!)... Maybe just a coincidence...

I don't see what does that have to do with my case, since I live outside of USA. I just wanted to know if there is some kind of way to contact the postal service in USA to ask if the package arrived, because I have the felling the local post office is holdig back on me.