Shipping fish for 6 days will they survive?

[Adrian Rodriguez]

I ordered two rams with 2 day shipping but UPS decided that they will come tuesday late and thats 6 days shipping not the 2 I paied for. Will the fish have posibility to survive? or is it impossible?

[KBOzzie59]

Wow, yeah tough call.  Possibly with a large enough bag and good heat pack.

[StephenP2003]

I've been selling fish for a few months and had several USPS packages arrive annoyingly late -- shipped Priority on a Monday and arriving on a Friday or in some bad cases on the following Monday or Tuesday (8 days!). I've had 99% success with fish (guppies, platies, endlers, BN plecos) being alive for the 5-day transit times. When it goes into the weekend, you start to see variance in species survivability. Endlers about 75% survived, plecos 50%, and with guppies and platies 100% survived.

I'm shipping hardy home-bred fish that can tolerate temps in the 60s and low 70s, though. Rams, I feel like those would benefit from overnight, but I'm surprised UPS is going to be so late. I got tired of USPS being so consistently late and switched to UPS 2nd Day Air a while back, and those have been 100% on time. 

Hopefully your seller is reasonable enough to accommodate DOA due to delay? Most everyone seems to only refund the fish cost and not shipping. Personally, I reship. Kills my profit on that sale, but I'm then more motivated to do whatever I can on my end to make DOAs rarer and rarer.

Edited April 2, 2021 by StephenP2003

[anewbie]

If they are dead take a picture before you open the bag and the seller can file a claim with the post office. I shipped some snails to someone priority mail about 800 miles from me (basically 1 day drive). Only took usps 20 days to deliver a priority package. They did not survive.

[StephenP2003]

1 hour ago, anewbie said:

If they are dead take a picture before you open the bag and the seller can file a claim with the post office.

I don't think you can except for express shipments. Priority never has had a guarantee, but used to be very reliable before 2020. I reported the half dozen packages that were extra late a while ago, and all they said was "sorry cuz covid". 

Hell, in February they even temporarily suspended their Express guarantee, and they made the suspension retroactive by a few days. 😂 

I think all of UPS air shipments are temporarily "not guaranteed" as well, but I've had better reliability with them so far.