Hello all!
My first order came today!!!
Instant Shine definitely does give a brief euphoric buzz
OK a quick but urgent question: I 'm ordering Instant Honesty and need to have it IN HAND by Thursday (preferrably in the morning)
Should I pick next or 2nd day air?
Should I order regular or double strength?
It may depend where you are. I ordered some stuff at 4:44 on Thursday, it shipped regular USPS on Friday, and was in my mailbox on Saturday (Daaaaaaamn that’s quick). Of course, I’m only 110 miles from their “drop ship” address in Beverly Hills, Ca.
I talked w/ the postman and found out what the delay had been: he said the addresses on the "From " and “To” were too close- and that is what slowed it up! It won’t always do that and Im pretty sure nothing can be done about that particular thing
We live in Denver
I’m meeting with the Workman’s Comp Dr on Thur, and a major player in the company of Fri, and a whole bunch of small but critical things in between
So not to take a chance I went with Next Day Air 
Different services have different ways of “figuring” delivery times so it can get tricky. Many DON’T include the day you hand them the package in the delivery time claim, or they may have limitations as to time of day, like it has to be in their system by 9:00am.
Some companies like UPS don’t “really” work over weekends or holidays so a “2nd day” sent UPS on Friday won’t arrive until Monday or Tuesday (they do have their premium Saturday delivery option). The USPS works “every day” although Sundays can be iffy. A package shipped “Next Day” (Express) mailed by a certain time (and there are city restrictions as well) can indeed be mailed Friday and arrive Saturday. But they also have two different levels of Next Day. One gets it in your hands, the other just gets it to the “delivery unit” by the next day.
I’ve had nearby Parcel Post packages arrive just as fast as Priority/First Class. And I’ve had more distant packages take up to two weeks via PP…
I’v also discovered there area places UPS doesn’t even deliver. Even in the US! I was checking shipping options on a parcel to Hawaii and evidently they didn’t deliver to the particular island it was going to (they also don’t seem to deliver to some areas of Puerto Rico). Of course UPS to Hawaii has to go air and it costs a fortune. For all the negatives you can state about the USPS, getting a letter from New York to Hawaii for 39 cents is fantastic…
One other hint: try to establish a relation with a local business for package delivery. Business addresses usually get preferential treatment from all delivery services [see my note below], plus you don’t have to be home to sign or receive the package or wait around all day. UPS even charges less for delivery to “commercial” addresses (although shippers don’t always pass on the discount to you.)
{Note below: I was employed by USPS for over 10 years and we were told specifically to put businesses ahead of residential deliveries. And as a business owner for about another 10 years I found from the UPS driver the same thing. Business place deliveries came first. Also a Post Office Box is nice. Everything is (supposed to be) sorted by 10AM, and it’s fairly secure, although you usually have to go in during open hours if you get a large item or have to sign for it. Sometimes my regular USPS carrier does’t get to my house till 4 or 5 inthe afternoon… }
{One other tidbit: USPS Delivery Confirmation is supposed to show date and time of delivery. But most Post Office people I know tell me items are scanned when they first get to the delivery office, not at actual delivery date/time. My carrier tells me it’s common to scan everything before they leave to deliver, so it could sit somewhere semi-forgotten for who knows how long even if it’s been “officially” recorded as delivered. And I have occasionally gotten things in my PO box that were supposed to have been signed for…)
LOL -all true --I am familiar with the mail servie b/c my step father and my mom were Rural Mail Carriers (my mom was also a nurse- she juggled two jobs for years)
I wouldn’t have been in such a tizzy except that I really was eager to try everything, and…I’m in a special pressure cooker in my life right now and can use al the edges I can get!
It came today!!!
So excited to try this!
Lots of great points here.
To summarize:
–> We ship 98% of packages ordered before 4pm PST the same day, unless the order is very large, or requires lots of custom work.
–> Unlike most companies, we almost always ship packages 6 days a week – Monday through Saturday
–> FedEx doesn’t deliver on Saturdays or Sunday (without a huge upcharge, anyway, of at least $25 additional dollars). USPS delivers on Saturday for free
–> FedEx is ridiculously reliable for M-F deliveries, and their tracking # is real, unlike USPS’ “delivery confirmation”
–> USPS is taking an average of 3 to 4 days to deliver, with a maximum of 9, according to our delivery statistics which we track electronically.
–> The USPS tracking is in every way inferior to FedEx’s. Don’t expect it to work the same way, as it’s not real time at all, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all! We always get asked about the nonsense they call a tracking #, due to the badly thought out messages USPS gives.
Basically, if you see it show up in the USPS at all, we’ve shipped it.
–> 2 Day FedEx packages shipped on a THURSDAY, won’t arrive until Monday or Tuesday. Recently, it’s been Tuesday
–> Overnight FedEx packages shipped overnight on a Friday, won’t arrive until Monday
–> FedEx International usually takes 1-2 days to get to the destination country. Then add another day for clearing customs and local delivery. This is the BEST option for countries with SLOW CUSTOMS (like Canada)
And here’s something really nice…
–> If you OVERNIGHT or 2-day FedEx packages to the US don’t make it on time according to the tracking… tell us… if we can get a refund for them breaking their delivery guarantee, we’ll refund your shipping costs!
Also, we can sometimes ship out FedEx packages on Saturdays, but the cut off time is a little earlier.
Not sure exactly what time it is, as I don’t handle shipping… but I think if it’s overnight, and we get it out Saturday, you usually get it on Monday from what I see in the system. 2-day packages probably take until Tuesday, maybe Wednesday.
Here’s a few more facts about international shipments:
Also unlike most companies, we buy insurance for Global Priority Mail (GPM) shipments. That means that if you choose “cheap shipping”, you’re still covered.
I know with most other companies that sell anything (not just pheromones), their responsibility “ends” when it ships, but we’ll back you if it doesn’t arrive.
Our insurance requires that the package be lost for 45 days, but in practice we don’t make most people wait that long. We know you want these things ASAP, and we have a great deal of trust for our customers.
We tend to send out replacement shipments very quickly for 1st world countries where we know the average delivery time is 4-15 days (yes, sometimes GPM gets there QUITE fast!). In those cases, we like to see you wait an extra week over the average delivery time to your country (averaged all customers in your country).
There’s usually an extra wait for countries such as Canada and Italy, that seem to have extra slow mail systems.
I’m often suprised at how fast GPM arrives. I’ve been shipping recently from the US to France, Germany, and Austrailia. Sometimes arrives in a matter of days. I expected weeks…
Also, USPS supposedly also refunds for slow not-on-time Express Mail as well.
I usually consider USPS Delivery Confirmation more of a “cheap insurance” thing. Items doen’t seem to get “lost in the mail” as often, if you know what I mean. It has given me some interesting insights however, as when a Parel Post package I sent from Illinois to California supposedly sat in an Illinois facility for almost a week before the number got scanned farther along the route. Looked like it took a week to go 50 miles, then only a day or two more to go the remainder.
I recently ordered a dwarf banana plant from a mail order nursery in Ohio. It didn’t show up on the estimated delivery date, which was a Thursday. It finally arrived the next Tuesday. When I checked the tracking number, it looked like the plant arrived in Houston, went back to Ohio, and then to Houston again before continuing on to Arizona. 
Yes, it’s AMAZING. Sometimes packages will arrive out of country, faster than they do in the US.
Weird, isn’t it?
What’s your insider knowledge tell you about this?
But who wants to deal with USPS? 
I’m sure it’s DIFFICULT to get your refund, as are all things USPS. They’re such a nightmare overall.
The admin costs to get the money back from USPS probably run more than what we’d receive.
With FedEx, we just give them a call (you can get a real live human within seconds), or file it online, and it gets approved in a couple of days. Costs us less a dollar in wages to have someone do that.
The BIG benefit to USPS Express mail, in my mind, is that there’s no upcharge for overnight Saturday delivery, right?
That alone could be a reason to add it.
Very true!
Interesting.
Of course, you only learned that because they bothered to scan it.
USPS, overall, is annoying from a business perspective. The USPS shipping prices we offer are artificially low, due to the admin, packaging and loss related costs USPS incurs.
If we had the volume of a huge computer supplier like NewEgg.com, and could offers the rates on FedEx they do, I’d drop USPS almost entirely.
The only exception would be for PO Box customers, military or those in ultrarural areas, which are better served by USPS.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen all shippers do crazy things like that. UPS seems to be better than even USPS at the misrouting game.
I understand a lot of it has to do with the destination country. I pretty much expect speedy efficiency in Germany. It may be a case that there is just a lot of air traffic between the US and the countries I have been shipping to (main destinations). If I was shipping to Ukraine or Nigeria it may be a different story.
Having worked for them, don’t I know it. Management was out of the 17-1800’s Oliver Twist sweatshop type. No clue. I took a management class at a local Community college during my employment time, and it was so sad that almost every time the instructor gave an example of how not to manage employees, that’s they way the USPS did it. Idiots.
I don’t thik I have ever even used Express Mail, but I have noticed that many businesses that do rarely bother asking for refunds on late deliveries. You probably have a point. It’s like the way I feel about mail-in rebate offers. By the time you get all the paperwork etc done and pay postage you have put in more work than you are getting “paid” for.
To the best of my knowledge that is true. There is no extra charge for Saturday delivery. However if you are mailing something with a “delivered by 3 in the afternoon” limitation, you have to bear in mind that many Post Offices are closed by 12Noon-1PM on Saturdays so you wouldn’t get it anyway. Much depends on specific destination. But that is true of UPS as well. I’ve not used Airborne or DHL or any of the other services to know their policies.
Very true… and the only reason I scanned it was because it was taking so long.
USPS is just easy for me as they are close, some of the materials are free, and the shipping rates are often cheaper than others. Plus of course, as you say, they deliver almost anywhere (I have a Postal magazine with an article on the mule train to the PO at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for example. Yes there is a Post Office down there amongst an Indian Tribe. And imagine delivering to a Louisiana bayou, especially now.)
And it takes me just as long to prep and ship a UPS package as a USPS one. Thankfully I use the relation I have with a local business to take advantage of their daily pickup service instead of having to take a 40 minute drive to the local terminal like I used to have to do.
Plus from a “delivery to me” standpoint, I prefer USPS especially because I have a PO box. When I was getting UPS or others delivered to my house the item could be left, exposed, almost anywhere. Or they’d leave a notice and I’d have to drive miles and miles to the terminal during business hours to pick it up. Making that deal with a local “brick and mortar” business owner to get my packages helped clear that problem up.
I once took the test to work for USPS but was never called to serve. I did have a couple of experiences related to me though through friends who worked there.
One friend, who now works in airconditioner repair, got in as a disabled Vietnam vet. On his first day of work, he was told to paint a yellow stripe on the floor around a piece of machinery. His second day of work, he was told that they made a mistake and that line wasn’t supposed to be there. So he spent the day removing the stripe. The Postmaster didn’t appreciate it much when on the third day, after being told that the stripe was supposed to be there after all and to repaint it, my friend blurted out, “what is this, the Army?”
The other anecdote is after the first postal shooting. I was partying at another friend’s house, where there were a couple of carriers that he knew who were partying there too. They started talking about the event and how great it would be to do that. ‘So-and-so’, “this is for you!” 
Due to various reasons, one of which was the “veterans preference,” we had a number of supervisors who were former military officers, and treated the PO like it was just an extension of the army. No thanks.
When the phrase “going postal” started going around I knew EXACTLY what drove people to that and could FULLY understand. I got pretty close myself. Fortunately I still had enough functioning mental capacity to quit the job before it was too late, and it came pretty close to being too late. Idiot idiots idiots!!! (management)
I also noticed that many of those who retired usually died within a few years… Not the kind of “retirement” I was looking for. Rubber room, cell, or pine box. It was impossible for me to have any pride in working there.
Sad.
Enough personal rant…