For the past several years, I've used USPS to ship small/light stuff and UPS for big/heavy stuff. Lately I've been noticing that my USPS deliveries have slowed down significantly; things are taking 2-3 days longer than normal to get delivered.
I finally asked my usual postal clerk about it today, and he said that as of Jan 10 any given post office now has just one big truck coming through each day. It's an early morning truck that drops off the mail that needs to be delivered that day and picks up whatever mail accumulated the day before. Prior to Jan 10, there was both a morning truck and an evening truck. So there's one day of delay added on to my deliveries. Another thing particular to my area is that our mail first goes to a hub in Roanoke where it does not get scanned (i.e no tracking update results) and then it goes to the next major hub in Greensboro, NC where it does get scanned. The same 1 truck vs 2 truck delay now happens at Roanoke, too, so there's a second day of delay added to my deliveries.
I used to be able to drop a package at the post office before 5 PM, and it would get scanned in Greensboro later that evening. Now it's getting scanned in Greensboro 2 days later. Before I talked with my clerk, I had been hoping this was a temporary thing, but it's not.
Putting myself in my customer's shoes, I would imagine that these delivery times (3 days for states near VA, 7-8 days for CA/OR/WA) are unacceptable. My instinct is to shift all of my shipping to UPS, which is a bit more expensive. I probably can't do that for everything (mainly single sets of strings that cost $25-30 and just barely cross our free shipping threshold).
Or maybe I need to raise that $25 free shipping threshold up so I can use UPS for everything? If I made the threshold $40 or $50, I wonder if folks would adjust to buying two sets of strings at once or if they'd just abandon shopping on my site altogether?
Or are these longer USPS delivery times reasonable? Should I just stick with USPS?
I'd love to hear whatever opinions ya'll have!
I finally asked my usual postal clerk about it today, and he said that as of Jan 10 any given post office now has just one big truck coming through each day. It's an early morning truck that drops off the mail that needs to be delivered that day and picks up whatever mail accumulated the day before. Prior to Jan 10, there was both a morning truck and an evening truck. So there's one day of delay added on to my deliveries. Another thing particular to my area is that our mail first goes to a hub in Roanoke where it does not get scanned (i.e no tracking update results) and then it goes to the next major hub in Greensboro, NC where it does get scanned. The same 1 truck vs 2 truck delay now happens at Roanoke, too, so there's a second day of delay added to my deliveries.
I used to be able to drop a package at the post office before 5 PM, and it would get scanned in Greensboro later that evening. Now it's getting scanned in Greensboro 2 days later. Before I talked with my clerk, I had been hoping this was a temporary thing, but it's not.
Putting myself in my customer's shoes, I would imagine that these delivery times (3 days for states near VA, 7-8 days for CA/OR/WA) are unacceptable. My instinct is to shift all of my shipping to UPS, which is a bit more expensive. I probably can't do that for everything (mainly single sets of strings that cost $25-30 and just barely cross our free shipping threshold).
Or maybe I need to raise that $25 free shipping threshold up so I can use UPS for everything? If I made the threshold $40 or $50, I wonder if folks would adjust to buying two sets of strings at once or if they'd just abandon shopping on my site altogether?
Or are these longer USPS delivery times reasonable? Should I just stick with USPS?
I'd love to hear whatever opinions ya'll have!
