eMoviePoster.com

Everyone who collects movie paper knows that the the Post Office (and the other delivery services, UPS, and Fed Ex) have drastically raised their prices over the past decade. We all know that they blamed this on rising oil prices, and yet, in recent months when oil prices fell by 50%, they have not lowered their rates one bit, and in fact UPS recently raised their rates once again. But just as depressing is the news that the quality of Post Office's service has gone down drastically in the past year.

This is true in three ways:
1) Delivery times. The Post Office incredibly stupidly decided to label packages sent by Priority Mail as "2 Day Priority" and "Three Day Priority" (no doubt because they felt they were losing lots of business to 2nd Day UPS and 3rd Day UPS. However, they not only did not give a money back guarantee (as UPS does) but they also did NOTHING to improve their delivery times, so Priority Mail packages now routinely take a week or more, and those labels are on the package and the tracking emails, so the customers rightfully expect them delivered in two or three days, and then are hopping mad at the seller when they are not.

2) Tracking. The Post Office has a miserably antiquated tracking system, but this is made FAR worse through human error. Recently we have had multiple packages where the tracking indicates it was being returned to us for a "wrong" or "insufficient" address, when it actually addressed fine, and they got to their destination (but the tracking was never updated). We strongly suspect some employee along the way simply "clicked wrong".
     We have also had multiple packages where the tracking indicates it was in an entirely different country than where it was addressed to, and again they got to their destination (but again the tracking was never updated). We again strongly suspect some employee along the way simply "clicked wrong".
     We have also had multiple packages where the tracking indicates the package was never even sent, and again they got to their destination (but tracking was never entered). We strongly suspect some employee along the way simply "forgot to scan the package", and it continued on its way without ever being scanned.
     We have also had multiple packages where the tracking simply "stopped" at some city along the way, and again they got to their destination (but again the tracking was never updated). We again strongly suspect some employee simply "forgot to scan the package" along the way.
     We have also had multiple packages where the tracking simply "stopped" at the destination country, and again they got to their destination (but after a delay of a week to several weeks). We again strongly suspect the package got "overlooked" in the destination country, and then was "found" and delivered.

3) Damage. It USED to be that the Post Office handled packages FAR better than UPS or Fed Ex, and that we almost NEVER had even a single damage claim over the course of a month (usually two or three in an entire year). Of course, those of you who order from us a lot know that this is because of the super-strong packaging we use, and the great care we go to in packaging EVERY order. But over the past year we have had at least one damaged package every month, and amazingly this included TWO Registered Mail packages. In the past 40 years I had NEVER had even one damaged Registered Mail package (out of the ten thousand or more I sent) and now I have TWO. That tells you something has changed for the worse.

Next week: What I think causes these problems, and how all of us can best deal with them