$.73 may seem crazy until you think of all the logistics that goes behind getting a letter somewhere. A mail carrier picks it up, brings it back to the station, it gets picked up at the station and brought to a processing center, it gets put on a plane and flown across the country, it gets sent to another post office and then passed down to a carrier who delivers it to your house. All for $.73.
Local anecdotal evidence suggests that DeJoy's intentional crashing of the USPS is being accelerated. Shit is wildly dysfunctional up here. Whole streets are not getting their mail regularly (like, nothing for weeks), and workers seem very on edge. This is from a larger discussion occurring on a neighborhood forum: "Our mail delivery person was a fourth-generation mail carrier who took over his father's route. When I went to the PO to inquire about when our mail might be delivered, I mentioned whose route it is/was. I was informed that he resigned. When my husband had spoken with our carrier a couple of weeks prior to this, he said, I guess the rules are changing." The mail carrier's response was "There are no rules.""
USPS seems like a complete shit show nowadays. I’m just glad that I am in an office that is fully staffed. We have been waiting on a new contract for 600+ days. Our union president just finished negotiations and came back with a tentative agreement with an annual raise of 1.3% per year. Our union voted it down and it’s going back into negotiations but I would imagine that’ll a lot of postal carriers felt like the 600+ days of negotiation only to come back with a 1.3% raise was a giant slap in the face, considering we delivered all through Covid with no hazard pay or any kind of raise.
I just read usps is suspending the delivery of all packages from Hong Kong and China. Is this an inner-agency issue or part of the president’s international economic agenda?
Wired article seems to hint it's due to the removal of the $800 duty minimum along with the tariff on China, and they now want all inbound packages inspected for duties. This will disrupt a lot of the current web marketplaces. If this extends to Japan in the near future it's going to be awful for this hobby.
The service to US from China via USPS has been resumed. Expect to pay on any packages where the Country of origin is China or Hong Kong. Also, expect some confusion while people figure out how things work. That being said, I've seen people already receiving bills to pay customs fees in US on personal shipments. All the technical crap is here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2025-02-05/pdf/2025-02293.pdf https://content.govdelivery.com/bulletins/gd/USDHSCBP-3d072a2 https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USDHSCBP/bulletins/3d062f4 Also, don't be surprised if the situation continues to change.
"Effective February 5, 2025, the Postal Service will continue accepting all international inbound mail and packages from China and Hong Kong Posts. The USPS and Customs and Border Protection are working closely together to implement an efficient collection mechanism for the new China tariffs to ensure the least disruption to package delivery." Some additional insight, My buddy who lives in HK and I often ship each other packages. Hearing the news above, he attempted to mail something to me before it gets worse. His words were, "Just arrived at post office and they say no until further notice." So he was straight up denied shipping something to the US.
It should be no surprise that it will take time for changes to settle out. All the new policies are coming so fast when usually there is built in time for people to prepare for new rules. I feel like we're right back at the start of Covid again, and like that time, things will get worse before they get better.
The China => USA small parcel tariffs are on temp hold: https://archive.is/Dczzo So Stack'em Pack'em & Ship 'em.. or somethin..
https://restofworld.org/2025/temu-sellers-fake-usps-labels-shipping-costs/ There's a chance that Temu may be able to slip our bootleg Transformers past the goalie!
There was a bust this past week where hundreds of thousands of counterfeit forever stamps were sent from China and seized in Chicago. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/13/nx-s1-5297006/counterfeit-forever-postage-stamps-seized-cbp
I must include my tale of woe here. I have been in a fight with a local post office for 6 months now. The package in question was a simple order from the official Godzilla USA store. The order was nothing special, but unfortunately the package hit the black hole that is the Palmetto GA sorting facility. The fine folks at Godzilla USA refunded the money, but the package is still in the weeds somewhere. I have done everything I can including contacting my congressman. If you are in GA and you are buying from the Godzilla USA store, do yourself a favor and select something other than USPS.
So one package was lost that was nothing special, you got refunded from the vendor and you thought it was critical enough to call your congress person over one package?
So one package was lost that was nothing special, you got refunded from the vendor and you thought it was critical enough to call your congress person over one package?[/QUOTE Well, It was one package from the Godzilla store, but it has been happening with increased regularity. I have had about a half dozen packages (business related) disappear into the same deep dark hole in Palmetto GA. It is a huge problem here, and the only way it will get fixed is if the community I live in let everyone know. Also, I wound up call my congressman because I had been ignored at every level. Post offices need to work correctly for every piece of mail. If they don't you wind up with idiots running the country.....
