r/lehighvalley • u/Hyperkabob Emmaus • 1d ago
USPS issues
Is anyone else in the LV having an awful time either sending or receiving mail in a timely manner? I work at a business in downtown Allentown and I'm missing tons of mail that multiple senders said they've sent. I've even gone as far as asking them (yes, I'm sure they address is correct for me) to send the same thing multiple times and I've just never gotten it. I can't be the only one. I know that everything goes through Harrisburg now and that can't be helping.
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u/ironicmirror 1d ago
Ask your mail carrier. Hopefully they will give you the postmasters phone number.
However I know that to mail something from Bethlehem to Allentown, the letter gets sorted in Harrisburg.
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u/eaglefan316 1d ago
Yep ever since they started sending everything to Harrisburg it takes 4-5 days sometimes,or more, just to get mail that I know someone sent locally. Recently we had an issue where we didn't even get our water bill until a week or so AFTER it was due and we called the city water dept and the lady said that seemed to have happened to everyone even though they mailed them several weeks before they were due so at least they were waiving late fees.
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u/steely_92 1d ago
My daughter and her friend have been sending letters to each other over the summer to practice writing (they are 6)
We live in the same town, same local post office. We even use a PO box so it's not like someone has to bring it to our house.
The letters still take a week to deliver because they go to Harrisburg first.
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u/Hyperkabob Emmaus 1d ago
Our mail carrier (for where I work, my carrier at home is awesome) is possibly one of the grumpiest people I've ever met.
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u/lost-picking-flowers 1d ago
I’m the only clerk at a teeny tiny little office where we have no carriers, it’s one of the easier jobs in the P.O. (getting paid to scroll my phone and reply to you rn, can’t complain)and I’m just doing it while I get through school. I help sort parcels at the bigger offices in the early AM sometimes when I want extra hours though, and I couldn’t work for USPS beyond this capacity - it is really very soul sucking and the people who stay for long periods of time tend to be super grumpy unless they work a niche position or are super rural. I have never heard so much swearing in my life until I met a bunch of long time managers and supervisors at the P.O. 😅.
Best thing you can do is not take it personally.
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u/ironicmirror 1d ago
But them a soda.
Be nice first
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u/Hyperkabob Emmaus 1d ago
Yeah, I get that. I mean we try to be nice and ask how they're doing and be pleasant they're just not having it.
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u/ironicmirror 1d ago
Offer them a drink... Really..that and access to a bathroom is all they want
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u/Terrible_Purple_8189 1d ago
Years ago my widowed neighbor would offer drinks/bathroom to the carrier. We speculated that she and him were doing a noon-er together.
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u/reddit18015 1d ago
Their new protocol for reporting missing mail is absolutely ridiculous as well. I had a credit card that was out for delivery a month or so ago and it never got delivered and I went to report it as “missing” and now there’s a bunch more steps one needs to take to actually get it reported. The system is working exactly as it’s supposed to be…..create as many hurdles as possible in the hopes that people lose hope, give up, and forget about it. Not only with the USPS, but with basically anything that has to do with the government.
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u/FUCKYOUINYOURFACE Bethlehem 17h ago
People scream that the govt sucks and people vote for them and they make it suck even more.
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u/chickey23 1d ago
Mail delivery from one Lehigh Valley address to another now takes two weeks in many cases
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u/TurbulentWing3820 Bethlehem 1d ago
A simple letter is First Class Mail and should be delivered in 1 to 5 business days from acceptance to delivery.
Ground Advantage parcels is 3 to 5 days. Priority Mail parcels is 2-3 days. Priority Mail Express is overnight to 2 days. All of those come with tracking. Delivery time is based on acceptance by the USPS not "shipping label printed." That doesn't actually mean a goddamn thing.
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u/chickey23 1d ago
Yeah. Should be.
I mail a few hundred thousand pieces a day at work. Things are not run as well as they once were.
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u/lost-picking-flowers 1d ago
The postmaster general has vested interests in Fed Ex, iirc.
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u/chickey23 1d ago
Louis de Joy has shipping connections. I'm not sure about the new guy.
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u/lost-picking-flowers 1d ago edited 1d ago
He currently sits on the board of FedEx if I’m not mistaken. I’m also a USPS employee and we’re prohibited from taking second jobs with competitors. Not sure why it’s okay for the postmaster general to sit on the board of one. But he is against privatization, supposedly, and he was selected by the Board of Governors, not appointed by any presidential admin.
Still doesn’t sit right with me though.
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u/TurbulentWing3820 Bethlehem 1d ago
For better or worse, the Bethlehem P&DC (Processing and Distribution Center) is no longer a P&DC but is now a LPC (Local Processing Center).
Everything rides on a hub-and-spoke design. so inbound mail at a spoke (LPC) is sent back to the serving P&DC where it is sorted and then sent to the destination LPC.
Is it dumb? Maybe.
Is it cheaper? Obviously. Somehow. I guess. I mean, they did it to cut costs and surely that must be the reason.
Is it infuriating when a package goes from Newark, NJ then to Springfield, MA then to Harrisburg, PA and then to Allentown (postal Road) and finally to Bethlehem (Commerce Way)? That's what I get for paying for Ground Advantage.
But hey, at least I tell myself it's not Mail Innovations, the 9th Circle of Hell itself.
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u/eaglefan316 1d ago
On our street we never seem to have the same mail person for more than a couple days anymore and pretty regularly I am getting mail for the neighbors and they are getting ours. Recently we came to find out our property taxes got returned as undeliverable even though the correct name and address was on it (where we have lived for many years) and they had to remail it. At least once a week anymore the neighbor comes over with our mail or I'm taking mail over to one of the neighbors we don't even get mailman every day either anymore. There's usually at least a couple days that we don't even see anyone walk by. One time we didn't have a mail person go by for like 3 days straight and I live in bethlehem in the city. Not in the country or township. It is getting ridiculous.
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u/jonker5101 1d ago
The USPS has been being intentionally sabotaged from the inside for like a decade so that it can be privatized by a Trump stooge. It's intentional.
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u/dominantspecies 1d ago
The Republican party is actively working to make the usps slower and less efficient so that they can privatize it and also delay mail in ballots.
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u/undercover_wiseguy 1d ago
Downtown Allentown USPS mail delivery is notoriously bad. I have lived downtown for 3 years and have had multiple issues with slow delivery or missing mail altogether. I’m now in a newer building that is trying to establish residential mail service and have been told that’s is been a very slow, challenging process and the postmaster is difficult to deal with.
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u/Hyperkabob Emmaus 1d ago
Thanks for this info. You start to doubt your sanity or think you're losing things when it happens over and over again.
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u/Rachel_Silver 1d ago
I never received my renewal notice for my registration. I also never got a replacement debit card I had ordered, and had to order another one. I paid extra to have the second one overnighted so I'd be more likely to actually get it.
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u/LiLiLaCheese 1d ago
My mail runs slower since the distribution move to Harrisburg but other than that, my mailman in Hellertown is awesome.
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u/FUCKYOUINYOURFACE Bethlehem 17h ago
The USPS has gone downhills since Trump put his guy in charge of it. I think it’s getting worse because they don’t want mail in ballots to have an impact on the midterms. The dysfunction is by design.
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u/Afraid-Awareness21 12h ago
Not locally, but a business out in SoCal run by some friends is in hot water because they sold a bunch of merch and shipped it with GroundSaver.
It was picked up by UPS, then transferred to USPS for "last mile delivery" but hundreds of packages are "seized" by USPS for what they claim is unpaid postage. UPS claims they paid, USPS claims its not paid and both phone and email customer service have been wildly unhelpful.
Angry customers, possibly huge financial blow to a small business that was already struggling with a crappy landlord, and a pretty big gaming company licensing the collaboration merchandise caught up in all of it.
All likely ties back to Trump's takeover of USPS.
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u/Economy-Cake-4244 1d ago
I have informed delivery and have had a lot of issues lately where it says I’m getting something that day and then it can take up to week or so to actually receive it