Why is that? They deliver more mail than all the other US carriers combined, and deal with almost half of the worlds mail traffic. For the truly massive amount of traffic they deal with, they are incredibly accurate and fast. If you have lived in another country like I have, you will quickly learn to appreciate the USPS.
Exactly! It is very impressive when you think about how unusual it is for something even as small and seemingly unimportant as a postcard to fail to arrive.
I'm sure it could be worse, but out of the 3 main providers we have in the US here, they're the most unreliable. I'm not trying to just rip on them, but from my experience, they don't think much of delivering packages a day or more late as it happens fairly consistently.
In my experience DHL is the absolute worst (I know others have said they're pulling back from the US, but they certainly still do a lot of deliveries here in San Francisco, especially Amazon deliveries).
One time DHL literally threw a package containing a hard drive over my gate to land on my concrete steps. Thankfully the shipper had put a ton of bubble wrap in there so the hard drive itself ended up without any damage, but I still count myself lucky. That was actually the third time they'd done that sort of thing, and after calling to complain (for the third time) they finally told me they were putting a note "don't throw packages over the gate" on my address. I'm shocked that's even something that they have to say.
The real problem is that there are very few delivery companies, so everybody has to pick one.
Just like banks. Name any random bank in the world and you'll have 50 people saying "Best. Bank Ever", 50 more people giving you horror-stories and saying "Worst. Bank. Ever", along with many more people who are entirely indifferent.
At the volume the delivery companies are operating, with millions of deliveries a day, even 0.05% of failures will affect a large number of people, and will result in "Worst. Delivery. Ever" complaints.
Sadly there's not a great solution. No matter which delivery company you choose you might get your stuff quickly, or you might not. The only practical step you can take is make sure you minimize risk (multiple smaller packages + insurance).
It varies widely based on the sorting center near you, your local post office, and your specific mail carrier. A friend of mine used to work in a sorting center and said it was the most brutal job he'd ever had because it involves a lot of physical labor. He said he never saw anyone purposefully mistreating mail, though he did see one or two people busted for stealing packages. He also saw several accidents where automated machines would mangle a package, once while he was working the station. IIRC he had to carefully pickup all the pieces he could get out of the machine and pack it in a new box.
Everywhere I've ever lived all of them were great and I've never had a lost package or any problems.
The only negative experience I've had is the substitute carriers here in SF; when my regular guy is out the sub loves to claim he tried to deliver the package without bothering. When someone is home all day it is a bit difficult to believe they attempted delivery without leaving even a note.
I have found just about everyone picks one carrier: FedEx, UPS, USPS, etc, and decides they suck. It's all anecdotal. I've had several problems with UPS and so I tend to avoid them. Yet USPS is batting 1000 for me.
Same here, been repeatedly screwed by FedEx (parcels marked as delivered, carrier shows up 2 or 3 weeks later and won't explain WFT happened), but USPS has treated my parcels pretty well. The employees at my local post office are competent and well meaning, opposite the vibe I get at other shipping places.
Ultimately, they all do work most of the time (except OnTrac, showing up at 11pm at night at my office and calling me is not acceptable).
I'm not a high volume shipper, but I do a fair amount of buying and selling online, and I have never once had an issue with USPS. I understand the last mile service quality varies widely across the country, though.
The USPS is easily on my top 5 list of incompetent companies.