Postal hypothesis...
Mar. 27th, 2008 08:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpBack when we owned the store, we became acutely aware of the fact that the USPS claim of Priority Mail being a 2-3 day service was, at best, optimistic. Priority Mail generally worked as advertised from Colorado to, say, Texas and California; not so if the destination was, say, New York.
Our bank has no branches in New York, so we've been depositing my freelance checks - which are actually written to our LLC - by mail. Not wishing to pay twenty-something smackeroos for courier service, I sent an envelope via Priority Mail to Oregon some time ago, which was delivered in two days. Similar letters sent since have all arrived in two days, up to now.
An envelope I sent Tuesday to the same place has, according to the post office, just left Alabama. I am pretty sure it will not be delivered today in Oregon.
What explains the difference? Of course, there are random factors, such as a mis-sort, that may be playing a role, and it's not as if I've sent hundreds of envelopes, which might give me a better overall picture. (Heck, I haven't even one good data point, yet.) But the envelope sent yesterday was different from the previous envelopes in that instead of buying the postage online (and having it be "part of" the label, in terms of bar-coding), I created and printed a label and then added postage using stamps.
I wonder if, because the bar-code reader can't find the postage in the bar code, whether the envelope gets spit out for manual processing to make sure the postage is right?
Cheers...
UPDATE: USPS says the item's been delivered. I'm pretty sure the wording of what I read at about 9 am said the item had actually left Montgomery; apparently, I either misread it, or the report of its departure was, um, premature.
Our bank has no branches in New York, so we've been depositing my freelance checks - which are actually written to our LLC - by mail. Not wishing to pay twenty-something smackeroos for courier service, I sent an envelope via Priority Mail to Oregon some time ago, which was delivered in two days. Similar letters sent since have all arrived in two days, up to now.
An envelope I sent Tuesday to the same place has, according to the post office, just left Alabama. I am pretty sure it will not be delivered today in Oregon.
What explains the difference? Of course, there are random factors, such as a mis-sort, that may be playing a role, and it's not as if I've sent hundreds of envelopes, which might give me a better overall picture. (Heck, I haven't even one good data point, yet.) But the envelope sent yesterday was different from the previous envelopes in that instead of buying the postage online (and having it be "part of" the label, in terms of bar-coding), I created and printed a label and then added postage using stamps.
I wonder if, because the bar-code reader can't find the postage in the bar code, whether the envelope gets spit out for manual processing to make sure the postage is right?
Cheers...
UPDATE: USPS says the item's been delivered. I'm pretty sure the wording of what I read at about 9 am said the item had actually left Montgomery; apparently, I either misread it, or the report of its departure was, um, premature.
Shipment Activity Location Date & Time Delivered PORTLAND OR 97208 03/29/08 4:33am Arrival at Unit PORTLAND OR 97208 03/29/08 4:32am Processed PORTLAND OR 97218 03/28/08 9:57pm Processed MONTGOMERY AL 36119 03/27/08 7:46pm Processed BETHPAGE NY 11714 03/25/08 10:13pm
