USAKilts shipping is quick, USPS not so much.

**Dale Seago** · 20th December 11, 11:11 AM

Don't get your hopes up: USPS' website still said my delivery was expected to be on the 14th. . .all the way up to the 17th.

**rlloyd** · 20th December 11, 12:33 PM

Originally Posted by Dale Seago

Don't get your hopes up: USPS' website still said my delivery was expected to be on the 14th. . .all the way up to the 17th.

Indeed, no such luck today. Hopefully tomorrow, as I'm visiting the Scottish Tartan Museum on Thursday and haven't yet decided on which kilt to wear. Though the two I'm now waiting on are Ireland National and German-American, so for my first visit to the STM it most likely won't be one of the two...

**rlloyd** · 22nd December 11, 10:54 PM

Finally arrived today! I had resigned myself to not getting them before Christmas, so I was pleasantly surprised.

**MikeS** · 23rd December 11, 02:40 AM

Originally Posted by RockyR

Sorry to hear the Post office took so long. They're an odd company... I've shipped things out on a Friday and had them arrive in FLORIDA on Saturday via Priority mail (go figure THAT one out) and I've had things like this that take 10 days to go a few hundred miles. No consistency.

As an employee of the USPS for nearly 14 years i'd like to offer some insight. I'm a carrier so I work in a local post office delivery unit, so my observations are mainly based on that.

1. Scanning devices do not live update to the web like UPS does. If I scan a package 'delivered' at 9am, it will not download until i plug in the scanner at 4 or 5 pm which means it won't show up on the web until sometime after that.

2. USPS tracking is not true tracking in the sense that every little stop along the way will show up.

3. The arrival time listed on the web site are most likely the 'best possible outcome'. The post office always assumes everything will always work perfectly.

4. Parcels are still largely sorted by hand by standing in front of 40 or 50 bins and throwing them one at a time. If it lands in the wrong bin it may take 2 days to come back (1 there, 1 back) from wherever to get resorted to the proper destination.

5. Mail does not always take the shortest path to its destination. For instance, I live on the Ohio-Michigan border,literally less than 1/4 mile away, in Toledo. If I mail a letter to Bryan Ohio which is near the Indiana border about 80 miles west of Toledo and drop it in a box in Toledo at 9am it will be in Bryan the next day, because the mail for Bryan is sorted at the processing center in Toledo. If I mail that letter just over the line in Michigan it will go all the way to Lansing to get sorted to Toledo to go to Bryan. This seems to add 2 days to the trip.

6. Most importantly, most postal workers are unable (not unwilling) to do anything about it when we do find something wrong. Being a government agency that is largely staffed by military vets, it is run as a top-down paramilitary style organization and does not accept input from the employees doing the work.

Mike

**BoldHighlander** · 23rd December 11, 02:47 AM

I was told the other day by our local post office that if you ship a package via ground (rather than priority or express) that right now it could take 3 weeks for it to arrive. This is because all their shipping containers are filled to capacity (no more room).

**RockyR** · 23rd December 11, 06:43 AM

While they may be a little slower around this time of year, I can count on 1 hand the number of missing / misdelivered packages I've had from the post office in over 8 years of business (out of literally thousands of shipped packages). Their prices are the most reasonable, boxes are free (a BIG plus) and they are generally reliable. The Express service lets me down on occasion, but for average speed of a package (Priority Mail), they're good and least expensive.

I'm glad your package arrived before Xmas for you.

**Dajo95** · 26th December 11, 10:01 PM

My wife ordered hand knit hose for me from USA kilts. Came two days later! Awesome service.

**longhuntr74** · 27th December 11, 08:43 AM

Originally Posted by RockyR

While they may be a little slower around this time of year, I can count on 1 hand the number of missing / misdelivered packages I've had from the post office in over 8 years of business (out of literally thousands of shipped packages). Their prices are the most reasonable, boxes are free (a BIG plus) and they are generally reliable. The Express service lets me down on occasion, but for average speed of a package (Priority Mail), they're good and least expensive.

I'm glad your package arrived before Xmas for you.

My experience has been the same with USPS, Rocky! Obviously I don't have even remotely close to the volume of shipping that you do, but having been to Afghanistan and Iraq, I've come to trust them pretty darned well. Are they always as fast as FedEx or UPS...no...but they do routinely work on Saturdays which is more than you can say for those other companies. As others have said, their online tracking is worthless, IMO...I like UPS's system the best for that!! On the whole, though, stuff has always gotten to it's destination, be it NY, NC, CA, Iraq, or Afghanistan!