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Why Is USPS' Customer Service So Terrible?

So I ordered a package off of Amazon and it said the package would arrive in 5-9 days (I chose the free shipping offer) and Amazon sent me an e-mail saying that the arrival date would be the 29th of July. As of today its 2 days over-due, and their track and confirm service on the USPS website is a joke, its rarely ever updated. So I decided to call them today, and all the numbers that the USPS website offers are all automated recordings, and when I entered my shipping label #, the automated service said the package couldn't be tracked on the phone, so I finally found a USPS number to order shipping supplies and I got an actual person on the phone who transfered me to their shipping / tracking department, the guy asked for my phone number and when he re-read the number back to me one of the numbers he said was wrong, so I corrected him, which he didn't like very much and so he hung up on me, I wasn't rude at all about it either. So I called the number for ordering shipping supplies back (since I never got a direct phone # to the shipping department) and they told me that all the lines were busy and that I'd have to call the general automated number again and I had to keep hitting the pound button on the phone in order for the automated service to direct me to a real person, tried it and that didn't work at all, it just kept repeating the same thing over and over. Needless to say, I'm not very pleased with USPS at the moment, and I'm very tolerant of customer service employees as I am one myself and know how hard it can be some times, but this is just ridiculous. So my question is, does anyone know what the problem might be with my package? And / or why customer service is so horrible with USPS? The only reason why I care so much about where my package is at is because I don't want it to get sent back if they've already tried to deliver it to my house, and since they hardly ever update their Track & Confirm service on the website, I wouldn't be surprised if its sitting on a shelf at the USPS delivery place in my city right now. wow bulkmailtech you sound like you've given that speech to every customer whose ever complained in the 24 years you've worked at the post office. And its been 11 business days since I've ordered the product, past due the maximum 9 days.

Public Comments

1. My guess is that it is an independent enterprise (agency) which is government owned and operated. If I were you I would have used any number of for-profit companies: UPS, FedEx, and Deutsche Post. It seems for-profit enterprises are in existence to serve the customer while USPS continues to receive subsidies from the government.
2. You have Delivery Confirmation. DC is NOT a tracking service, so you should not expect it to act as one. The Delivery Confirmation information you will see will update, when the item has been delivered. 2-9 days is an "Estimate", not a guarantee, so the anticipated delivery date of July 29th, is just that, anticipated but, again, not guaranteed. Why is the CS so horrible? Well, you called a department that has nothing to do with your problem and expected them to continue to transfer your calls. Please understand a few things. although you may feel that your problem is very important, and I am sure that it is, there are, on average, more than 700,000 calls to the 800 number, dail every day, 365 days per year. What you want to know, is not possible to find out. What a CSR is going to see on a screen when they use your DC number, is basically the same thing that you see. Especially if the item was sent as Media Mail, 2-9 days is really optimistic. 2-3 weeks is more the norm. Cheap Shipping isn't Fast, and Fast Shipping isn't Cheap.
3. Sometimes it is just the matter of reaching the right person. I have found most companies make available specific Customer Service Numbers for specific problems or projects. Companies like http://customerservicenumbers.com offer the numbers you need without all the fluff. They also make it user friendly to add your company to their data base.