[crewl1]

One package arrived to me in 2 days, while the other, was rerouted to some sorting facility halfway across the country before it came to my doorstep 2 days after the first package came.

Yup, so mine was not an isolated incident.

[redrockcoulee]

I don't understand these "sorting facilities"...
I ordered two items from the same Ebay seller, they were rather large, so they went in separate boxes. The seller shipped them together, same day, same time, same post office.
One package arrived to me in 2 days, while the other, was rerouted to some sorting facility halfway across the country before it came to my doorstep 2 days after the first package came.

There is no way that some one at the Post Office would carry the two boxes together all the way through until it was put into the truck that goes to your house. The boxes are most likely sent up on convere belts to one part of a plant or another. In the process one box got missread or perhaps was accidently bumped onto the wrong belt. I am guessing that hundreds or thousands of boxes per hour are going past any one point. A machine reader could even malfunction or a worker could have accidently or deliberately put it in the wrong place. Even the two bins might have been adjacent.

I only worked in letter sorting and it was 4 decades ago but I know at that time one would need to read an address as fast as possible in order to keep up. A relative worked in the Post Office and also government courier service this past decade and the same thing, speed is important and you cannot have speed without some cost to accuracy, the important apect is to have as little inaccruarcy as possible. I do not know what happened to your one parcel but there are so many places that things could go wrong and seldom do.

But then I know that I am not perfect and have made mistakes, and I bet I made a few when sorting letters or the Christmas I delivered them. I make mistakes in many things but try to make as few as I can. Things happen and I would think that fact the two boxes were delivered at the same time has no bearing on why the owe was sent to the wrong place the first time. Glad you got both of them.

[jogiba]

You Tube

You Tube

[sjwaldron]

I only worked in letter sorting and it was 4 decades ago but I know at that time one would need to read an address as fast as possible in order to keep up. A relative worked in the Post Office and also government courier service this past decade and the same thing, speed is important and you cannot have speed without some cost to accuracy, the important apect is to have as little inaccruarcy as possible. I do not know what happened to your one parcel but there are so many places that things could go wrong and seldom do.

Yep, I had worked at a UPS sorting facility in my earlier college years. There is quite a lot of human error potentially involved. Say, there are 10 large belts that are the final destinations. Each belt does one or more states with around 10 workers. If a package gets placed on the wrong belt, it has the potential of being sent to the wrong state. The workers need to catch it and walk it over to the correct belt.

Just for the final air container/trucks:
- The person loading it might have one or more containers to deal with.
- They have to know what zip codes go into each container (maybe 10 to 100 per container).
- They have to read the (small-ish) zip code on the packing label.
- They have to check all sides of the package for hazardous materials labels (management like to place fake stickers on packages to test it)
- They have to scan the label before placing the package into the container. Sometimes a package is accidentally scanned, but not placed into the container. The person has to remove that entry, or it will show up as being sent somewhere it isn't actually going.
- They have to do it usually withing a few seconds, but it really depends on volume. Some days, especially in the holiday season, it was absolutely crazy.
- This all usually happens around midnight to 3am. The place I worked at had from 50,000 to 200,000 packages a night.

I think most of the error comes from too much package volume or people who don't put enough effort into their job. Not sure how USPS works though.

[magkelly]

When I ordered the adapters for my Oly I also ordered some filters for our water pitcher because Amazon always has them a lot cheaper than our local stores. The day before hurricane Sandy they were on route and they finally hit some town in NJ. They had yet to show up since, but as of this morning they're supposedly en route again. I'm half wondering if when they finally come they'll be soggy and moldy? Not to make light of the disaster but I figure something must have happened to the PO there because otherwise it makes no sense that they would take this long...

[stormtech]

Yep, I had worked at a UPS sorting facility in my earlier college years. There is quite a lot of human error potentially involved. Say, there are 10 large belts that are the final destinations. Each belt does one or more states with around 10 workers. If a package gets placed on the wrong belt, it has the potential of being sent to the wrong state. The workers need to catch it and walk it over to the correct belt.

Just for the final air container/trucks:
- The person loading it might have one or more containers to deal with.
- They have to know what zip codes go into each container (maybe 10 to 100 per container).
- They have to read the (small-ish) zip code on the packing label.
- They have to check all sides of the package for hazardous materials labels (management like to place fake stickers on packages to test it)
- They have to scan the label before placing the package into the container. Sometimes a package is accidentally scanned, but not placed into the container. The person has to remove that entry, or it will show up as being sent somewhere it isn't actually going.
- They have to do it usually withing a few seconds, but it really depends on volume. Some days, especially in the holiday season, it was absolutely crazy.
- This all usually happens around midnight to 3am. The place I worked at had from 50,000 to 200,000 packages a night.

I think most of the error comes from too much package volume or people who don't put enough effort into their job. Not sure how USPS works though.

Nice summary of the UPS hub. I can do the same for a USPS hub.

- sleeves of envelopes and packages run on a sorting conveyor where their destination conveyor is directed automatically by bar code.
- end of each conveyor (hundreds of them) the sleeves and packages are manually loaded into carts. The carts then get a placard taped on (yes - scotch tape)
- carts are then towed to a designated area for their destination hub - no scanning involved - all manually done by humans reading the placard
- trailers are put into a dock at a certain time and allowed 15 minutes to load (x 140 doors all going at once). Cart is scanned as it is loaded by a hand held scanner. This scan assigns the cart to the trailer - doesn't matter if it is the wrong trailer.
- trailer leaves for destination hub.

All this is done at a feverish pace and nothing is automated. The mail handlers have 15 minutes to load a 53' trailer full of mail. In a lot of facilities like this there are no signs or markings telling the mail handlers what trailer is going where. The regulars know their stuff quite well, but during the holiday season a lot of temps are hired just to push carts on and off trailers. Just image this going on constantly at 140 doors 24 hours a day. So yes, there is a lot of chance for human error.

It all looks looks like total chaos both inside the building and out in the yard. Around 400 trucks per hour loaded and unloaded all by hand.

So those packages that get re-routed across the county - it happens.