Problem with Post Office

It seems to me that I have more and more packages turning up undelivered always containing baseball cards

In the last few weeks
1) Jake Burger Bowman's Best from Ebay - shows up as delivered however, it never arrived
2) trade on bekcett 23 card $200+ value never showed up

The guy on beckett I have traded with multiple times so I believe him, he didn't do tracking, the ebay was not tracked

about 6 months ago my son's birthday present (cards) never arrived, I made a claim PO didn't pay

about 9 months ago a huge trade on beckett - shows up as delivered to Cincinnati Post Office and is stuck there, I opened a claim and the USPS closed it without an explanation

I am going to change my mailing address to my usiness address for all trades....but I have lost about 5/6 trades in less than a year. Figure you guys should be on your toes

BIll

It might be worth while to get a PO Box.

Sounds like someone at your local post office has found an interesting way to grow their card collection.

@horfin

I agree with @zlw1 and @JDog I think those are both really good thoughts, you may also want to take it up with the local postmaster, since that is an absurdly high rate of "lost" items. USPS is really struggling. I just sent an envelope with 2 autographed items to my best friend who lives just south of Nashville, and it took from the end of June until last Saturday to get there. Over 2 months. I could have walked it there faster!

Cheers!

Kevin

I actually think it is something happening at the Cincinnati transfer station....I have had two packages just get stuck there never to be seen again. So thinking it through if I do all my mailing to my office then it might not fix the problem. I do trust my local carrier at my office, I know him personally. . . i don't know who delivers to my house though....I'm not home when the mail comes.

Bill

Ugh, that is frustrating. I know we had a news story here a few years back about one of the postal employees opening peoples packages in the back room of the post office and stealing the contents. They caught the guy on video, so it would not surprise me that there is more of that going on than just one post office. We also had a story about one of the carriers throwing his mail over a hillside rather than delivering it. I hope you find your stuff.

I think one problem might be using regular envelopes. I am waiting for a card that was sent in July and one that was sent Sept 1st. I sent 2 cards in a #10 envelope and it arrived in 5 or 6 days. Cards sent to me in a #10 envelope have arrived, took 6 days but I got them. Something to think about. Can't explain why unless the regular envelopes are hand sorted and there are so many of them compared to #10 envelopes.

My issue with the USPS is receiving PWEs with one end being opened up and it's always the right side but all cards accounted for w/o any damage-and members receiving the same way-it appears like there cut open if they got caught up in the sorting machine the ends would be mangled up

I had a trade end up in Ireland took 5 weeks for it to be removed out of customs another 2 weeks for it to be delivered

Sold a Starting Lineup on Ebay 1 week later received negative feedback was like what ? a few ldays later got email say's sorry
you received negative feedback from my husband he got mad and tossed it into our fireplace -I notified Ebay and negative
feedback was removed.

cubman1941 said:

I think one problem might be using regular envelopes. I am waiting for a card that was sent in July and one that was sent Sept 1st. I sent 2 cards in a #10 envelope and it arrived in 5 or 6 days. Cards sent to me in a #10 envelope have arrived, took 6 days but I got them. Something to think about. Can't explain why unless the regular envelopes are hand sorted and there are so many of them compared to #10 envelopes.

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I don't think PWE is the issue here for the most part....I send a bunch every week and have a very high success rate in general. The danger in PWE is you can't track it, but when we're trading cards that are only work 20 cents a piece on the open market (not BV) it's crazy to think we should spend $5 just to get them to each other.

AndyDrummond said:

I don't think PWE is the issue here for the most part....I send a bunch every week and have a very high success rate in general. The danger in PWE is you can't track it, but when we're trading cards that are only work 20 cents a piece on the open market (not BV) it's crazy to think we should spend $5 just to get them to each other.

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I agree with this but all I was saying is that I believe a #10 envelope might be better to use than a regular envelope. I have had a couple #10 envelopes with cards come to me ripped and torn, one was put in a plastic bag after it was ripped probably by a machine and then sent to me, however, I got them. I am still waiting for one card that was sent July 25th and one that was sent on Sept 1st (according to the senders) that I presume was put in a regular envelope. I don't understand the rationale in this but, my thoughts are, if a #10 envelope works better, I will use it for PWE trades.

I would not expect it to be an envelope problem either, unless it is too thick. Those machines process thousands of letter envelopes and are set to accept up to a slightly thicker envelope (why they usually test them for thickness when you give them to the clerks at the post office). Those machines are rough as the envelopes are flying through them and all it takes is one item to get hung up and then a whole pile are jammed into it and torn up. Sometimes this is even caused by people mailing coins, I used to work in a bank processing area for bills and people would send cash and tape coins and if the coins get loose they will jam those machines up and cause the envelopes with them to get torn to shreds. This is why I don't like PWEs very much unless the cards are cheap enough that it is not a big deal.

Looks like Informed Delivery is down as well, not sure for how long?