I wanted to believe in the United States Postal Service.
As a student of Economics, I liked the idea of removing the profit motive from what I consider to be an essential social service. I liked that the USPS would deliver to any address and not choose to ignore certain customers based on their profitability. I liked that the USPS employs so many of our ex-military. I liked that they appeared to have become more stream-lined and efficient through their massively expensive marketing campaign. “If it fits, it ships!”
Notice how their slogan doesn’t mention anything about being delivered?
The United States Postal Service failed to deliver 5 of my customers’ last 22 shipments via Express Mail service. That is a disgraceful 22.7% failure rate and absolute proof that their current infrastructure is broken.
For this absolutely horrendous service the postage bill alone came to $799.88. That is an average of $36.36 postage per shipment. I charged my customers $35 (if I charged them anything at all) and this doesn’t reflect the cost of the shipping materials and irreplaceable livestock.
The missent shipments weren’t specific to one geographic distribution center. There were errors shipping to 28804 (Asheville NC), 20850(Rockville MD), 95128 (San Jose CA), 30093(Norcross GA) and 37027(Brentwood TN).
Want to put a claim in with Express Mail? Try dialing 1.856.933.4459 (my regional Consumer Affairs Office). What you will get is a phone that rings off the hook and is never answered during business hours. After an insane amount of rings, you will get a voicemail that instructs you to leave your name and number to receive a return phone call in the order in which it was received. I once left a voicemail every day for 2 weeks and didn’t receive a single return phone call.
I have legible hand writing but I went so far as to preprint my shipping labels just to eliminate the possibility of that being a contributing factor.
I’m done with the USPS. Clownfish Sushi will immediately discontinue shipping via the USPS and begin shipping with UPS Next Day Air.
The flat shipping rate I offer will be increased from $35 to $39 but that is subject to change based on the postage numbers I see coming from UPS. UPS has previous charged me over $138 to ship from Delaware to California so it remains to be seen if a flat shipping rate will even be feasible.
A sincere apology to any of my customers that were inconvenienced by the utter incompetence of the United States Postal Service. And a strong warning to anyone that dares to gamble by shipping livestock with the USPS.
The USPS is a National Disgrace. It’s just not worth it. More than 1 in 5 shipments will not arrive on time, if they arrive at all.