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Sick of USPS


Goosedub
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Hey all,

I have been shipping fish. I am pretty fed up with USPS. They are so unreliable. I just shipped angels to my brother and USPs lost the package. Didn’t show up until 5 days later with all the fish dead. 
 

Doeas anyone ship with  UPS or FedEx? What is your experience. Is their pricing similar? Are they any more reliable?

any opinions appreciated.

 

Thanks

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On 2/17/2022 at 3:25 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

I find UPS and Fedex to be more reliable, less this year then prior years but its been a difference of hours not days like expecting Monday afternoon and showing up Tuesday AM. 

Any tips? I have a whole process Inuse with USPS but never used the other two. Difference in pricing? What service do you use to ship (like what type. Ground, etc) their overnight prices are astronomical. 

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I do use USPS.  It usually works fine, with 3-day shipping arriving in three days, and occasionally in two.  The only bad experience I've had shipping to someone else was just over a year ago I sent some plants to another state.  It took around 10 days to get there, and most of the plants were dead.  I'll try to remember to never ship in December again.

At least twice I've had packages sent to me that made it to Houston, which is less than an hour away, and from there be sent in a completely different direction before they finally circled back and got to me.  Thankfully those didn't contain anything perishable.

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On 2/17/2022 at 3:25 PM, Beardedbillygoat1975 said:

I find UPS and Fedex to be more reliable, less this year then prior years but its been a difference of hours not days like expecting Monday afternoon and showing up Tuesday AM. 

Any tips? I have a whole process Inuse with USPS but never used the other two. Difference in pricing? What service do you use to ship (like what type. Ground, etc) their overnight prices are astronomical. 

On 2/17/2022 at 4:24 PM, Streetwise said:

I have good luck as a customer with USPS. I had to print a banner for FedEx to find my door. I haven’t had a UPS order in a while.

I am getting that Fedes and UPS are not much better than USPs and more expensive so not worth it… Great… It really isn’t fiscally reasonable to ship anything other than USPS priority. I don’t know how other people get away with $40-$50 for overnight. I can’t find those rates.

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I am a USPS Mail Processing Clerk (I work in distribution plants instead of local stations) and can maybe give some insight. 

I would say the most surefire way to guarantee live animal success is through shipping Priority Express. Yes this is expensive but this mail is highly segregated internally. I am our plant’s clerk in charge of handling all of the Priority Express that comes through. Things like live chickens, bugs, exotic fresh fruit, live fish, you name it. I am always seeing live fish come through. This mail comes to us only with other live animals / express mail and is handled extremely carefully, separately scanned and much more carefully tracked. Each live animal that makes it to me this way is placed in an individual tub with live animal placard, and loaded last onto dispatch trucks so that they are unloaded first. Express is also given top priority, so even if a piece arrives at a station after a carrier has started their route they must still delivery that express mail. Yes it is expensive, but it is certainly better than risking your expensive/rare live fish somehow getting buried amongst lesser priority parcels. Trust me it happens. I also recommend putting bright yellow/lime sticker on your packages indicating they are live animals.

At the end of the day, we really do care. I take great pride in knowing I made sure my local hobbyists fish are handled with utmost care. I can’t speak for other logisitics companies but I am sorry you had a bad experience.

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On 2/18/2022 at 8:40 AM, 813aquatics said:

I am a USPS Mail Processing Clerk (I work in distribution plants instead of local stations) and can maybe give some insight. 

I would say the most surefire way to guarantee live animal success is through shipping Priority Express. Yes this is expensive but this mail is highly segregated internally. I am our plant’s clerk in charge of handling all of the Priority Express that comes through. Things like live chickens, bugs, exotic fresh fruit, live fish, you name it. I am always seeing live fish come through. This mail comes to us only with other live animals / express mail and is handled extremely carefully, separately scanned and much more carefully tracked. Each live animal that makes it to me this way is placed in an individual tub with live animal placard, and loaded last onto dispatch trucks so that they are unloaded first. Express is also given top priority, so even if a piece arrives at a station after a carrier has started their route they must still delivery that express mail. Yes it is expensive, but it is certainly better than risking your expensive/rare live fish somehow getting buried amongst lesser priority parcels. Trust me it happens. I also recommend putting bright yellow/lime sticker on your packages indicating they are live animals.

At the end of the day, we really do care. I take great pride in knowing I made sure my local hobbyists fish are handled with utmost care. I can’t speak for other logisitics companies but I am sorry you had a bad experience.

Wow this is really great information. Is there a table or something that lays out Express rates? 

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Locally, our USPS and UPS are great. Fed-Ex is an absolute disaster. Other people have opposite experiences, but I cringe when I see something is coming Fed-Ex. I'd ordered some live snails a year ago and they were shipped two-day air Fed-Ex. Yeah. They sat on the ground in three different locations for two days each. Fed-Ex blamed the weather. Then they tried to say they tried to deliver it one day and no one was home. But the tracking showed that for them to have tried to deliver it would have required their truck to have traveled over 90 miles an hour from the time the snails were loaded until they showed up in the next Fed-Ex facility. They lie. They lie a lot.  And they know they're lying, and they don't care. They just assume we're dumb enough to believe the lies. Given a choice, I'll ship with anyone but Fed-Ex. Other people love Fed-Ex though. I think where you live really matters.

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I haven't shipped fish as the shipper, but I have ordered online and had them shipped to me many times. If the person I am buying from wants to use USPS I always pay for the priority express, and have always gotten them fish the next morning, even though I live in a pretty rural area. The only time I have had any problems with delivery times is when the shipper insisted on using FedEx, was sent overnight, took three days to arrive. Tracking showed it sat at the hub that is about 20 miles from me for almost 48 hours. I called and tried to be able to pick up there but kept getting the run around saying they didn't have the package, yet tracking showed it sitting in their hub. If I go to order something and they say they only use FedEx I don't buy. I have never had fish shipped via UPS, so I can't comment on their service, although it seems that other packages I get through them arrives as scheduled or even a day early.

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I have fish shipped multiple times a year due to lack of availability in my area.  My one and only shipping disaster was through USPS.    I have never had problems with Fedex overnight but there were a lot of Fedex scandals in my area recently that give me pause on trusting them.   I have had fish sent UPS overnight and again no problems.  I actively avoid any shippers that use USPS but there are times I have broken that rule and the fish were still okay, maybe that one shipment was just rotten luck, I don't know.      

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On 2/18/2022 at 10:29 AM, gardenman said:

Locally, our USPS and UPS are great. Fed-Ex is an absolute disaster. Other people have opposite experiences, but I cringe when I see something is coming Fed-Ex. I'd ordered some live snails a year ago and they were shipped two-day air Fed-Ex. Yeah. They sat on the ground in three different locations for two days each. Fed-Ex blamed the weather. Then they tried to say they tried to deliver it one day and no one was home. But the tracking showed that for them to have tried to deliver it would have required their truck to have traveled over 90 miles an hour from the time the snails were loaded until they showed up in the next Fed-Ex facility. They lie. They lie a lot.  And they know they're lying, and they don't care. They just assume we're dumb enough to believe the lies. Given a choice, I'll ship with anyone but Fed-Ex. Other people love Fed-Ex though. I think where you live really matters.

Same experience with Fed-Ex, and we're in the same area. Fed-Ex has been nothing short of terrible every time they're used. Maybe it's a "your mileage may vary" situation, but USPS and UPS are far and away amazing and actually care about delivering your package on time or quicker, while FedEx delays, delays, delays again, takes mysterious routes, holds 1 part of a 2 part shipment for baffling reasons despite the two being shipped out from the same location at the same exact time... It's nuts. I wouldn't trust anything live or time-sensitive with FedEx.

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Just a little real world context to my earlier post. I’m here at the plant tonight covering Express mail and wanted to show how an individual live piece is handled. This is a small package that came through noted as “Live Snails” from a fish seller. No matter how small it will get it’s own tub with distinct placard so it isn’t missed.

F0F23229-D648-43BD-AF80-EB663B3E7FC4.jpeg.a632ecfdfbb69c0712f4fe56b8ae53dd.jpeg45AC08E3-9065-492D-9095-B843C641637C.jpeg.370e263259e83a01e37d29e4ff6ea35a.jpeg

Often I see and appreciate customers who put on bright stickers to indicate live creatures such as these that came through tonight. This is especially useful if you *arent* shipping express as clerks/mailhandlers will see the stickers and pull them from non-live mail.

Here’s someone about to enjoy their new betta friends 🙂

644AEE61-42F2-472A-AE0E-EADDAE7DED2B.jpeg.8bd1ab1aee1b69933b3d14e272bc9920.jpeg

10C7EEF2-5332-44A9-A08A-870E04243BE6.jpeg.6b951177a5cfdc2aa126ba274c3f1503.jpegB78E093C-A029-4F9A-8456-A4711A900C73.jpeg.99f1ef2c3ccd9ae788b65b23879095df.jpeg

Edited by 813aquatics
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I'd like to point out that delivery time is affected by location, and not in the usual way one would think.  I live in an area where 50% of the time, the local USPS is delivering not only postal, but for Amazon, UPS and FedEx as well, while the other 50% the usual services do their own delivery.  I'm not sure how often this happens elsewhere (I live in the sticks in horse and camping country),  but I wonder how often things get lost because of issues like that.  It seems to come down to who is working at the time your package is going through and whether they are a good worker or a bad worker.

In my 20 years of buying stuff on the internet, I've only ever remembered never recieving 1 package ordered via USPS.  Only other times I've had slow shipping speeds is when I've ordered from Russia and far east Asia with no tracking (Alibaba and BJD supplies) so I am not sure if I am lucky or not. I have been frustrated many times when I've had packages delivered only to find out that they're stuck in the mailbox half a mile from our house because it was faster than coming up the driveway.

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I took a package to the post office Wednesday afternoon about 4:20.  I sent it 3-day Express ($14 and change), and it had bright green Live Plants and bright pink Live Shrimp stickers on all four sides and the top.

It arrived in California just over 48 hours later, with everything in good shape.

Edited by JettsPapa
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