Unusual USPS Tracking info

Had to share the unusual USPS tracking updates of a uke I'm sending to Australia, via Priority Mail. It was mailed on 29 November.

The ukulele seems to like Hawaii, it's been there twice. Clearly, some of these activities can't be right. From now on, I'm only using Express Mail, internationally. Well, at least it seems to keep moving.

Shipment Activity Location Date & Time
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Arrival at Post Office AUSTRALIA December 17, 2014 5:55 am
Departed Honolulu, UNITED STATES December 13, 2014 12:01 pm
Processed Through Sort Facility AUSTRALIA December 11, 2014 12:23 pm
Departed Sydney, AUSTRALIA December 9, 2014 7:44 pm
Departed Miami, UNITED STATES December 8, 2014 9:23 pm
Departed Honolulu, UNITED STATES December 8, 2014 5:48 am
Departed Louisville, UNITED STATES December 8, 2014 1:54 am
Departed Louisville, UNITED STATES December 5, 2014 1:45 am
Departed Orlando, UNITED STATES December 4, 2014 11:50 pm
Arrived Miami, UNITED STATES December 4, 2014 10:01 am
Processed Through Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) December 4, 2014 2:53 am
Arrived at Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) December 3, 2014 1:43 pm
Departed Post Office MCDONOUGH, GA 30253 November 29, 2014 3:41 pm

Doc_J said:

Had to share the unusual USPS tracking updates of a uke I'm sending to Australia, via Priority Mail. It was mailed on 29 November.

The ukulele seems to like Hawaii, it's been there twice. Clearly, some of these activities can't be right. From now on, I'm only using Express Mail, internationally. Well, at least it seems to keep moving.

Shipment Activity Location Date & Time
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arrival at Post Office AUSTRALIA December 17, 2014 5:55 am
Departed Honolulu, UNITED STATES December 13, 2014 12:01 pm
Processed Through Sort Facility AUSTRALIA December 11, 2014 12:23 pm
Departed Sydney, AUSTRALIA December 9, 2014 7:44 pm
Departed Miami, UNITED STATES December 8, 2014 9:23 pm
Departed Honolulu, UNITED STATES December 8, 2014 5:48 am
Departed Louisville, UNITED STATES December 8, 2014 1:54 am
Departed Louisville, UNITED STATES December 5, 2014 1:45 am
Departed Orlando, UNITED STATES December 4, 2014 11:50 pm
Arrived Miami, UNITED STATES December 4, 2014 10:01 am
Processed Through Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) December 4, 2014 2:53 am
Arrived at Sort Facility ISC MIAMI FL (USPS) December 3, 2014 1:43 pm
Departed Post Office MCDONOUGH, GA 30253 November 29, 2014 3:41 pm

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Quite the trip! I have somebody interested in my Pono I'm selling but I need to ship to Japan. USPS Priority was about half the cost of the other methods I checked, including USPS Express. In prior transactions, I've used USPS Priority to ship to Canada and receive from Singapore and everything arrived on-time and good working order.

Clearly the USPS can't keep up with the demand and have subcontracted Santa to do their deliveries this year.

Ukulele Eddie said:

Quite the trip! I have somebody interested in my Pono I'm selling but I need to ship to Japan. USPS Priority was about half the cost of the other methods I checked, including USPS Express. In prior transactions, I've used USPS Priority to ship to Canada and receive from Singapore and everything arrived on-time and good working order.

Click to expand...

Yes, the USPS or Post is the only cost-effective way to ship internationally. Use the USPS on-line shipping tool. It will fill out all the customs forms for you and save on postage. Using online payment, USPS will give you the commercial rate for postage. Express for corporate rates really isn't much more. Insurance is substantially less for Express vs. Priority.

My guess is some USPS worker didn't update the tracking until it was already in Australia.
I deal with the USPS every day and know the staff, post offices are understaffed for the holidays and the staff has to type in a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy for each parcel.

I've seen some USPS miss routing myself recently. Not to the extent of this one, but an order that came from California to my home in Michigan. I watched it get to Chicago then to Kalamazoo Michigan which it less than an hour from my home. Typically when items get to Kalamazoo they show up at my home the next day. After a couple days, I checked again when it didn't show up, and it showed up being accepted at a Post office in Missouri, then back to Kalamazoo, then back to Chicago, back to Kalamazoo, then finally getting to me a week after the first arrival at Kalamazoo. I just shook my head. What can ya do?

USPS's tracking has been *incredibly* buggy as of lately. I recently had a parcel arrive despite the fact that the tracking said "undeliverable due to incomplete address" followed by "returned to sender." I also had another shipped to me in California, from a seller in California, but apparently it went the wrong way - through South Carolina, if I remember correctly. But yet it only took a day to get to me - so I'm doubtful that it ever crossed the flyover zone of the United States.

And... only tangentially related, but a definite sign of the times: my mail carrier today was making his deliveries out of a "rent me for $19.95" U-Haul van. TRUE STORY.

hoosierhiver said:

My guess is some USPS worker didn't update the tracking until it was already in Australia.
I deal with the USPS every day and know the staff, post offices are understaffed for the holidays and the staff has to type in a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy for each parcel.

Click to expand...

That has been my experience too. Sometimes 3 days will pass then bamn! a uke shows up at my door.

Simple its aloha magic.

My recent sale I shipped from California, USA to Ontario, Canada; International Priority. USPS sent it via Japan, where it sat in Customs awhile... where possibly the uke fans there had a little jam with it?

I am still a USPS fan. They are great. When I am in Puerto Rico I have my mail forwarded from Iowa down to me there. I also send stuff back and forth in flat rate boxes. In PR I live in a gated condo, so if UPS or FedEx is delivering something, I have to figure out when it is going to be delivered and I have to sit out there by the gate and wait. If I don't, I have to pick it up at their offices, which are a long ways away. With USPS, there is a post office just six blocks from my condo, and I have a P.O. box there.

A lot of places will not ship to PR, or they charge higher shipping than they do to deliver to Iowa, so when I'm down there I have stuff shipped USPS to my place in Iowa and it gets forwarded to PR. I honestly don't know why those places charge more, it costs me less to send a package myself from Iowa to PR than it does to send a package from Iowa to my son in NYC. But they do. Anyway, the story, in October I bought a set of strings on line and or course it was free shipping to Iowa, but not to PR, so I had them sent to Iowa. They started out in Missouri, which for those of you who are not familiar with Midwest geography, is the state right below Iowa. They went from Missouri to somewhere in Washington state, then to Reno, then to Iowa, where for some reason it said that there was "no secure place" to leave them. I was really confused by that one, and I wondered if they were going to send them back instead of forwarding them. But then they left Iowa, went to San Diego, and seven days after that, they showed up in my P.O. box in San Juan. Total, eleven days. Usually it is three days from Iowa to PR by USPS, so I don't know what was going on with that. I'm still a USPS man though. They got there, and that is what counts.