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Post by kirby101 on Jul 17, 2024 11:31:58 GMT -5
Question for Icctrombone . I had to order a new phone. The seller was in Englishtown NJ and as you know, I am in Queens NY. The tracking had it picked up in Englishtown and then going to the distribution center in Jersey City, all good, just across the Hudson. But then! it goes from Jersey City to the Center in Trenton, the opposite side of the State and the 60 miles further away. How does this make sense. How does this not delay my receiving my phone? Perhaps you can explain this in your professional capacity. If not, thank you for letting me rant. It’s also possible that the address was faulty. Give it time , if you never get it , the seller has to make good.
Looks like the have it. Should get Friday.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 17, 2024 14:17:38 GMT -5
Question for Icctrombone . I had to order a new phone. The seller was in Englishtown NJ and as you know, I am in Queens NY. The tracking had it picked up in Englishtown and then going to the distribution center in Jersey City, all good, just across the Hudson. But then! it goes from Jersey City to the Center in Trenton, the opposite side of the State and the 60 miles further away. How does this make sense. How does this not delay my receiving my phone? Perhaps you can explain this in your professional capacity. If not, thank you for letting me rant. Depends on the carrier. With the US Postal System and cutbacks, a lot of smaller stations were shut down and more things were routed through distribution centers in other areas, which can lead to some ridiculous routing. Commercial carriers can have similar problems, depending on the area. With COVID and Post-COVID, a lot of transport companies were seriously undermanned and still have not filled positions, leading to consolidating routes and shifting delivery hubs to other locations. This is especially true with subcontractors, who deliver packages for these services. In my work, we deal with some of these issues, as we have our deliveries split between two stations, with one handling high priority air transport packages and the other handling surface traffic. The surface station is 50 miles away, while the air transport is 5 minutes from us (but closer to our airport). Our surface hub used to be about 30 miles away and with the change came a change in the subcontractor who handles our pick-ups and delivery of the packages we hold for customers. The new contractor is trying to nickel and dime things and the end result has been a parade of new, poorly trained drivers and upset customers, who call us because we have a local phone number, but no involvement with the actual delivery portion of the business (I work for the printing and retail side, where we process shipments and accept dropoffs). The problem you have in both the commercial and quasi-governmental systems (post office) is that corporate/Wall Street mentality means that they try to maximize profit by cutting costs to the bare minimum; but, at the expense of service and rational and truly efficient systems. They will justify it with lip service to increased efficiencies; but, the end result is a tired and stressed workforce, with high turnover and dissatisfied customers who will bail when a better alternative comes along. So, cut staff by closing centers in smaller areas, consolidate in regional hubs that are usually located more due to political reasons than actually centralized locations, then a lot of rationalizing decisions that have nothing to do with efficiencies. Then, you have a package picked up in a location, that should go across town, but is taken to a regional center, outside of town, then routed right back to that same locale. This was probably a decade ago; but, I had ordered a DVD from the Warner Archive site, which was being fulfilled by a warehouse in Indiana. I lived in East Central Illinois, less than an hour from the Illinois/Indiana border. You'd think it would come directly from Indiana to my locale, just across the border. Nope, it went right past my location, to the other side of the state, where they had the regional hub, to then be routed back the direction from which it came, to be delivered to my home. It's the same problem with airlines, as you are routed to hubs, rather than direct flights that would consume less fuel and be less costly to operate, like it used to be, before the 1980s.
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 17, 2024 14:57:55 GMT -5
Thanks cody. It's USPS. I see it now went from Trenton NJ to Brooklyn, but still says Friday. 2 days from Brooklyn? I can walk there and back in that time.
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 17, 2024 15:57:24 GMT -5
Thanks cody. It's USPS. I see it now went from Trenton NJ to Brooklyn, but still says Friday. 2 days from Brooklyn? I can walk there and back in that time. Here in Illinois, most smaller communities had post offices closed down, or stripped to the bone, while regional centers sort stuff out. At my workplace, we have people shipping with us because previous shipments though the post office took anywhere from two weeks to over a month, even over short distances. The Postal Service used to be very efficient and reliable; until commercial and political forces tried to get their hands on their business, cutting their funding and forcing up costs, creating self-fulfilling prophecies of loss and inefficiency, to then justify privatizing elements of their service, towards an ultimate goal of complete privatization. My own employer has blood on its hands in that, as do our competitors. The same model has been used across agencies, at the Federal, State and Municipal levels, in aid of privatization of public services, mostly resulting in higher rates to the consumers, inefficient and unresponsive service, and a lot of executives pocketing bonuses and large scale investors making huge profits, with public subsidies. Sadly, it isn't something split along political ideology lines, as both major parties have aided these things. I'm all for a free market, but the market, as it exists, is hardly "free."
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 17, 2024 16:09:26 GMT -5
Adam Smith never advocated for an unregulated market
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Post by Calidore on Jul 17, 2024 17:27:25 GMT -5
This was the sun at around 4 in the afternoon when the smoke from the Canada fires hit us.
Superman: "Oh, s**t."
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 17, 2024 17:34:57 GMT -5
You win the internet for the day!
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 17, 2024 18:38:47 GMT -5
This was the sun at around 4 in the afternoon when the smoke from the Canada fires hit us.
Superman: "Oh, s**t."
Good one.
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 18, 2024 9:42:34 GMT -5
Phone shipment update. Before I tell you where it is, you should know my local post office is next door to my building. So it went from Trenton to Brooklyn yesterday. This morning at 6:45 it arrived at the post office next door. The tracking then says preparing for delivery at 9:30. Now again, the post office is next door. The expected delivery time is by 5:30pm TOMORROW! It is sitting next door and they can't get it to me until tomorrow at 5?
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Jul 18, 2024 10:27:45 GMT -5
Phone shipment update. Before I tell you where it is, you should know my local post office is next door to my building. So it went from Trenton to Brooklyn yesterday. This morning at 6:45 it arrived at the post office next door. The tracking then says preparing for delivery at 9:30. Now again, the post office is next door. The expected delivery time is by 5:30pm TOMORROW! It is sitting next door and they can't get it to me until tomorrow at 5? Likely means the carrier for the route that your building is on had already had his daily mail sorted and was either out the door or ready to go out the door before it would be sorted into the proper route so it could go out for delivery. Pretty much everything I ever shipped or had delivered goes out the day after it arrives at the facility because once it arrives it needs to be sorted internally into the proper route for the carrier to take. I'm assuming, since your in the city, there are multiple carriers servicing multiple routes out of that particular post office building, and they likely receive thousands (more likely tens of thousands for a large city post office) of pieces of mail and parcels that need to be sorted into the proper routes each day, and do so we while being massively underfunded and understaffed thanks to the nitwit who holds the postmaster office. And each carrier is likely servicing 2 or more routes each day to cover absences and vacations since part time support staff to cover those largely doesn't exist any more due to the cuts that created the staff shortages. I'm amazed our mail gets delivered at all, let alone in anything resembling a timely manner with how badly understaffed and mismanaged at the top the USPS is. The employees are doing yeoman's work to keep the system form collapsing form the top down. Our local post office branch is the only one for a small city (they closed the other two branches due to budget cuts). There are three total clerks on staff to man the desk at it, one of them is booked all day just to handle passport applications, so that leaves one to man the counter and one to cover breaks/lunches so at most peak times there is 1 clerk and the line is out into the street if you need to do something at the counter. I know people who work there, and they've been told there's no money in the budget to hire more staff. Most of the carriers working out of there have a morning route and an afternoon route, and then sometimes have to cover a third if too many people are out sick or are on vacation. They've got stacks of applications for people who are qualified and want to get a job there, but there's no hiring being done except to replace those lost to attrition. Again, it's a minor miracle the employees doing the work manage to keep that system afloat. -M
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 18, 2024 11:18:12 GMT -5
Our post office requires appointments for passport applications, though the post offices in the surrounding communities have less traffic and can usually take walk-ins. We take passport photos and have a link to a passport expediting service, via our rental computers, and have a steady traffic of people stopping in to get passport renewals. We don't do the renewal process, but aid them in using the on-line service and take the photos and ship out the applications, for rapid turnaround. So, we often have to send people to the post office for initial passport applications, as they have to verify identity documents, before the forms can be sent in. We usually counsel them to use the smaller post offices, for faster service. We have still had problems with ignorant postal employees telling these people that the expediting service is a scam, which it is not. They don't issue the passport, they act as a facilitator to get it to the passport authority and then ensure that there are no issues and get the passport issued quickly, then send it via expedited shipping. They offer different service levels, depending on the speed needed for the passport and different documents are required for expedited issuing, like an overseas work commitment. The service helps screen the documents, to catch problems before they go to the authority.
That is just ignorance of the system but I have seen a wide variety of service at our local offices, from very good to horrible. There are not enough employees to serve the population and they are obviously stressed, in busier times. Then, you see the mail carriers having to deal with things like Amazon packages getting priority treatment because of contracts, while everyone else's mail sits in a sorting facility, waiting to go out. I don't blame the workers; they have to deal with the situation as best they can. The system has been deliberately sabotaged, over the years, to justify privatizing it, much like Medicare and other government programs.
Our company has its own manpower issues; and, in some cases, leadership issues at the stations. We had problems with our pick-up drivers not taking all of the packages we had and then had them arguing with us. We are a company location, not just a pick up at a commercial client location. We have pickups every weekday and one on the weekends and have the highest volume of any stop in town. We even have customers bringing us packages because the pick-up drivers aren't showing up or are causing issues with their shipping people and the contractor's supervisors refuse to address the situation. We got into it with the supervisor and took it above their head. We are waiting to see if the problem smooths itself out or we have to get bigger guns involved. With our previous pick-up sub-contractor, things ran as smooth as silk; but, it was switched to another hub and that facility, from top to bottom, seems to be in over its head. It needs some serious leadership changes to get things on track.
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Jul 18, 2024 12:34:38 GMT -5
Our post office requires appointments for passport applications, though the post offices in the surrounding communities have less traffic and can usually take walk-ins. Our post office requires appointment as well, but all appointments are booked about 3 weeks out typically, hence one person spends all day just ding passport applications. -M
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Post by MRPs_Missives on Jul 18, 2024 16:26:57 GMT -5
shaxper @supercat Anyone in the Ohio area attending Gem City Comic Con this weekend? I'll be there on Sunday, if anyone is attending let me know, we can arrange to say hi in person. -M
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shaxper
CCF Site Custodian
Posts: 22,873
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Post by shaxper on Jul 18, 2024 16:29:53 GMT -5
shaxper @supercat Anyone in the Ohio area attending Gem City Comic Con this weekend? I'll be there on Sunday, if anyone is attending let me know, we can arrange to say hi in person. -M Unfortunately, no one else in my clan is psyched for comic book shows these days, so I will be engaged in other pursuits, but please have a double blast for my sake!
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Post by kirby101 on Jul 18, 2024 16:55:27 GMT -5
I actually went next door and asked, "Hey, if the package is here and can't be delivered until tomorrow, can you just give it to me?" The window person checked and said it was already out for delivery. Well, here it is 6 pm and no package. So maybe it was somewhere else in the P O ready to go and they couldn't get to it. Hopefully tomorrow. Normally I don't stress with deliveries. But it's a new phone, which I need.
UPDATE** My phone was in my mail box when I returned from an evening out last night. (Not there at 6 when I left.) So thank you anonymous post office person for working late.
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