Politics and the Post Office

[toysaver]

I've noticed lots of irregular scanning in the last few days and believe it is intentional.  There have been significant delays in acceptance scans and transit times in Wisconsin.  Not a single package since last week has moved along 'normally'.  It's doubtful mail in ballots are at fault but there may be an agenda to cause the disruption.

[itsjustasprain]

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@toysaver wrote:

There is a God.  My 3 packages from yesterday just got the acceptance scan more than 24 hours after being dropped in an inside slot yesterday morning.

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Take that up with your postmaster. They are supposed to scan the items when they take possession (emptying the drop box). If more than 24 hours went by then they probably did not bother to scan anything and the local sort facility generated the Acceptance scan once the packages were scanned for the first time there. (If the scan time was sometime in the middle of the night and/or the wording says 'Accepted at origin sort' then that is what happened.)

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@toysaver wrote:

I will no longer drop off without a scan sheet.  I've shipped for over 20 years without using one but the integrity of my being can't take the stress.  

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If your PO has a self-serve kiosk in the lobby then you can get a provisional scan of each package there before you drop your packages in the box. Ebay accepts a provisional scan as proof of mailing just like the SCAN sheet.

[shado-x]

The postal employees with whom I deal on a daily basis are just as upset about these problems as we are, but place the blame directly on "newbies" that simply aren't paying attention to accuracy.

As one of those temporary employees (called a "casual employee" in USPS terminology) from 1998 - 2000 Christmas Seasons, I guarantee the blame is on supervisor management, but they won't dare state the obvious.  Assigned casual workers are pulled away from their tasks by really bad supervisors to do tasks permanent employees don't want to do (like load numerous 70 lb crates of fruit, or shipped to the airport to push large carts filled with packages on mini-train tracks to go into trucks).  Salary was $10/hr for me.

[krazzykats]

My Florida-bound package seems to be on an unexpected cross-country tour, racking up scans like its sightseeing.

Fingers crossed it's homeward bound now. It was once a mere 76 miles from its sunny Florida destination before arriving back in Portland, Oregon.  Maybe it will go back to Florida now?

But hey, I packed it for an adventure so long as it doesn't catch fire, it'll be just fine wherever it lands.

[robbie31415]

The political aspect could be due to increase volume where there were already employee shortages.

Interestingly my main Hub (City of Industry, CA) has not scanned a package of mine in the last few days.

Sure it happens from time to time. But never on this scale.

Thank heavens that I always make sure to validate my tracking.

[a_c_green]

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@krazzykats wrote:

My Florida-bound package seems to be on an unexpected cross-country tour, racking up scans like its sightseeing.

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It may also be that it was not scanned when coming out of the container, and thus tracking continues to follow the container on its rounds, on the assumption that the package is still in it. If or when the next direct scan of the package occurs, the tracking should sort itself out.

[bdmh-enterprises]

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@fbusoni wrote:

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@bdmh-enterprises wrote:

Simply that political mail (flyers, pamphlets and ballots) are mostly non-machinable and have priority over ALL other mail.

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Is this the fact for all non-machinable mail?  I did not know this... but I guess it would make sense.   Thanks.  

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This was stated by a couple of postal employees in a TCG group when this subject came up about slow shipping of cards. Lines up with my carrier complaining the other day about all the oversized postcards he has to go through in the morning. The issue, I believe, is that they only have so much time to sort the non machinables before leaving on their route and all the political stuff is separate from everything else and has to be done first. So if that takes all the time everything else waits.

I assume this would be to avoid any look of impropriety on the part of the USPS.

[a_c_green]

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@bdmh-enterprises wrote:
The issue, I believe, is that they only have so much time to sort the non machinables before leaving on their route and all the political stuff is separate from everything else and has to be done first. So if that takes all the time everything else waits.

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I don't know how much labor this actually saves, but if I look at a representative sample of our recent junk mail (both political and not), they all carry Presorted Standard U.S. Postage Paid postmarks, and our carrier route number is indeed printed with our street address.

[adamcartwright]

@toysaver 

I get many each day. And they all go straight into recycling.

I don't even look to see who the candidate is.

In this internet age, I don't know anyone who reads campaign mail. Even family members in their 80s seek info online.

[a_c_green]

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@adamcartwright wrote:

I get many each day. And they all go straight into recycling.

I don't even look to see who the candidate is.

In this internet age, I don't know anyone who reads campaign mail. Even family members in their 80s seek info online.

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I notice most of our junk campaign mail is for purely local candidates running for councilman or judge or dogcatcher or something similar in town. The sole exception in recent memory was a series of laughably fake local "newspapers" in the Chicago and surrounding areas, with a bunch of semi-fictitious articles about various party candidates (mostly negatives about the other side, of course). I can't recall at this moment whether it was during the 2020 election or the 2022 mid-terms.

We had about 3 weekly mailings of the things around Election Day, although they had been widely recognized as fake after the very first edition landed in mailboxes, and the USPS (wisely, or at least accidentally) didn't get the second one delivered until the day after Election Day, and then another one , totally pointless by this time, showed up a week after that.

The only other campaign-related silliness I can think of right now are those ridiculous robo-calls, paid for by clueless candidates who think that recipients of their spam calls are actually going to listen to their recording drone on and on, and aren't simply going to hang up three seconds into the call. (Their blank or "Unavailable" caller ID gets them routed to our voicemail anyway.)