In my opinion, the two things that the USPS has wrong are that their tracking is lousy and their rates are confusing. If they fixed those, mostly the rates issue, I think they could improve their customer base for packages significantly.
Lousy tracking? I just spent 26 seconds (by stopwatch) tracking a package I sent out last week. That includes going to my cliptrak program and loading the tracking number into the clipboard, starting Firefox, going to usps.com, pasting the tracking number and clicking the Go button. What more information could I want, and how much faster could I have gotten it?
Rates confusing? Use their flat rate shipping, and you have a grand total of three rates, one for small, one for medium, and one for large packages. No matter what the weight. No matter where (within the US) you are sending. How could anything possibly be less confusing than that?
In the attached tracking info, note that after the considerable delay getting out of Mexico (using a forwarding service) through customs and into the US postal system, delivery took three and a half days (84 hours) from Texas to Alaska.
[Well, it hasn't been delivered to his home yet, that'll be this afternoon, so call it four days] I was able to print my own postage and charge it to my credit card, track it effortlessly on-line, and use shipping materials provided for free by the USPS. Simple, fast, secure, $4.85 -- an incredible bargain.
If you haven't spent time on the USPS website, you should do so. It is (IMHO) a shining example of what a commercial website should be.
tanstaafl.
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