US Postal Service Air/Sea Shipment Diversion

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mediatechnology
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US Postal Service Air/Sea Shipment Diversion

Post by mediatechnology »

For those of you with orders in transit from the US the US Postal Service has begun diversion of shipments by sea.

The press releases from the US Postal Service can be found here:

First Air/Sea Diversion arrives in port May 7th: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service ... effect.pdf
Second Air/Sea Diversion arrives in port May 15th: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service ... effect.pdf

List of countries with international mail service suspension: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service ... elcome.htm
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Re: US Postal Service Air/Sea Shipment Diversion

Post by crin »

i ordered some LPs on discogs earlier this year from two different US sellers. one packet was shipped from michigan on april 2 and arrived in switzerland on june 21; the other packet took even 3 days longer…

trying to track the parcels, i also stumbled across USPS' press release. i later talked to a friend working for swiss post. he explained that USPS was caught by surprise when commercial air travel came to an aprupt stop in march whilst they still accepted parcel shipments to europe. these parcels kept piling up not only to hills but mountains at several int'l US airports.

USPS saw no other way out than put these mountains into containers and ship them to rotterdam. there, the mountains were again piled up and each and every parcel had to be sorted by hand for its destination country. the sorted and smaller mountains were then trucked to the entry point of international mail at the various countries. these were of course also caught with their pants down because the customs offices were not informed that they'd be getting about 20 x the number of a normal busy day dumped at their front door.

and because nobody had any idea where a particular packet was at any given moment, USPS removed all packages from their tracking system after 45 days.

so yes, it would probably been faster to cover the atlantic back and forth in a rowboat to pick up the LPs in person… 8-)
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mediatechnology
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Re: US Postal Service Air/Sea Shipment Diversion

Post by mediatechnology »

Thanks for the feedback. Your description of packages piling up are what I had in my mind.

I still have a number of shipments from May which do not appear to have arrived and like yourself don't see updated tracking.

Parcels from April did get delivered and do have tracking showing they were finally delivered.

At the moment I've stopped shipping Internationally other than UPS which is crazy expensive.
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Re: US Postal Service Air/Sea Shipment Diversion

Post by crin »

things have cooled down considerably. i ordered a ton of inner and outer sleeves for LPs from sleevecity. they shipped in late may and the package arrived 10 days later.

postage for packages from the US to europe has literally exploded in the last couple of years. shipping one LP used to be around $8…12, now it's at least $20. since i find it ridiculous to pay more for shipping than for the vinyl, i end up buying 3 LPs instead of 1 just so that the vinyl costs at least as much as the postage…
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Re: US Postal Service Air/Sea Shipment Diversion

Post by emrr »

Yes, Shipping charges to EU from US have really spiked, but it's also true they've gone up enormously within the US. I had someone ship 5 items in 5 boxes for repair recently, AZ to NC, and the round trip shipping had to be near $600. Weights ranging 18-30 lbs.

I hadn't seen those press releases. I did ship something to Belgium in May that made it in less than 2 weeks.
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mediatechnology
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98 Days to Switzerland

Post by mediatechnology »

Just got an email this morning from a customer in Switzerland who has just received his package that I shipped April 10th.
98 days...

In mid-June I stopped shipping internationally via USPS.
We need to have regular air service before I'll ship internationally again unless someone is willing to pay UPS rates.

Doug - were those items you received for repair via UPS?
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Re: 98 Days to Switzerland

Post by emrr »

mediatechnology wrote: Mon Jul 20, 2020 7:51 am
Doug - were those items you received for repair via UPS?

Yes
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Doug Williams
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crin
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Re: US Postal Service Air/Sea Shipment Diversion

Post by crin »

i think the corona-pile-up mostly affected parcels shipped in late march, all of april and the first half of may. by now, things are slower than usually but stuff from the US arrives in europe within 10…14 days – shipped with USPS.
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mediatechnology
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Re: US Postal Service Air/Sea Shipment Diversion

Post by mediatechnology »

I've got one shipped June 1st to eastern Europe that's not had a tracking update since June 12th when it was in Chicago.
58 days and counting...

A May 24th shipment to Germany was delivered June 18th.
Pretty good.

Switzerland June 20th shipped; delivered July 24th.
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Re: US Postal Service Air/Sea Shipment Diversion

Post by mediatechnology »

Shipment to Czechoslovakia shipped June 1; Delivered September 3.
94 days.

No tracking visibility from June 12th until August 25th.
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