Frustrating Delivery Times

JimM

I am a little frustrated with fullfillment and delivery times. I recently placed and received an order from Costco.com and from 2 from Smugmug. Here is how it stands....

Smugmug Order #1: (5) 4x6 prints
Ordered: Wed 9/13/2006 12:53 PM
Date email says it shipped: Fri 9/15/2006 12:13 PM
Received: Friday 9/22/2006
Shipped from Georgia

Smugmug Order #2: (5) 4x6 prints
Ordered: Thu 9/14/2006 1:26 PM
Date email says it shipped: Fri 9/15/2006 5:49 PM
Received:Wed 9/27/2006
Shipped from Georgia

Costco: (2) 20x30 prints
Ordered: Friday, 9/15
Date email says it shipped: Sun 9/17/2006 11:10 PM
Received: today, 9/20
Shipped From Maryland

All were shipped standard USPS shipping to the same home address in Michigan. Shipping costs were higher from Costco $5.78, but they had to come in a tube. SM shipping was $1.75 each.

Thoughts? :dunno Should it really take over a week for (5) 4x6's to get to me?

ivar

JimM wrote:

I am a little frustrated with fullfillment and delivery times. I recently placed and received an order from Costco.com and from 2 from Smugmug. Here is how it stands....

Smugmug Order #1: (5) 4x6 prints
Ordered: Wed 9/13/2006 12:53 PM
Date email says it shipped: Fri 9/15/2006 12:13 PM
Received:not yet
Shipped from Georgia

Smugmug Order #2: (5) 4x6 prints
Ordered: Thu 9/14/2006 1:26 PM
Date email says it shipped: Fri 9/15/2006 5:49 PM
Received:not yet
Shipped from Georgia

Costco: (2) 20x30 prints
Ordered: Friday, 9/15
Date email says it shipped: Sun 9/17/2006 11:10 PM
Received: today, 9/20
Shipped From Maryland

All were shipped standard USPS shipping to the same home address in Michigan. Shipping costs were higher from Costco $5.78, but they had to come in a tube. SM shipping was $1.75 each.

Thoughts? Should it really take over a week for (5) 4x6's to get to me?

Hi Jim, the shipping you selected can take anywhere between 3 and 14 days. our lab ships it, the USPS moves it from A to B.... We have no control over it. I wish I could speed it up for you, but I can't, sorry. You can select the priority mail, which takes between 3 and 4 days. It's $4.95

JimM

ivar wrote:

Hi Jim, the shipping you selected can take anywhere between 3 and 14 days. our lab ships it, the USPS moves it from A to B.... We have no control over it. I wish I could speed it up for you, but I can't, sorry. You can select the priority mail, which takes between 3 and 4 days. It's $4.95

I know. It is still frustrating that the Costco prints (ordered two days later) shipped standard USPS still beat the prints though. It would be interesting to know how other USPS times work for people. In general, I see my SM prints in 2-3 days (for the shipping). These two orders are the exception.

ivar

JimM wrote:

I know. It is still frustrating that the Costco prints (ordered two days later) shipped standard USPS still beat the prints though. It would be interesting to know how other USPS times work for people. In general, I see my SM prints in 2-3 days (for the shipping). These two orders are the exception.

Be careful not to compare apples and pears here, it sounds from your first post, you have selected a different shipping method for both shippings.

Most orders ordered with the 3-14 days shipping, make it alot closer to the 3 days, than to the 14 days. But the 3-14 days is what USPS tells us. I guess it's just bad luck, that that mail bag misses a train or a plane? I am not sure, we would have to ask the USPS.

SteveM

ivar wrote:

Be careful not to compare apples and pears here, it sounds from your first post, you have selected a different shipping method for both shippings.

Most orders ordered with the 3-14 days shipping, make it alot closer to the 3 days, than to the 14 days. But the 3-14 days is what USPS tells us. I guess it's just bad luck, that that mail bag misses a train or a plane? I am not sure, we would have to ask the USPS.

Yeah, I'll have to agree with that theory. At an event, a customer and I were talking and he mentioned he placed two orders from me on the same day, one for a batch of 4x6's and another for two 8.5x11 magazine covers. They both reported being shipped out the same day and he recieved the 4x6s within a few days, but the 8.5x11's took an extra 5-7 days. If EZ Prints shipped them on the same day, it's gotta be USPS.

Steve
http://www.downriverphotography.com

Baldy

The USPS is making us crazy... Generally we see pretty fast deliveries but every day we get at least one customer who says it took 10 days to get their first class mail. We ship about 500 orders a day but I am sure not every customer complains...

pat.kane

Baldy wrote:

The USPS is making us crazy...

Likewise.

The good -- two day deliveries via regular USPS Priority Mail from Southern California to 1) New York (Saturday to Monday) and 2) Minnesota (Sat/Mon).

The bad -- just last week I shipped a Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 lens to my sister, who lives just 200 miles away. I shipped Tuesday morning via USPS Priority Mail expecting it to be there Thursday. It took a WEEK! Even worse, the tracking system never showed it leaving the local post office, so I thought it was stolen.

Go figure... 3,000 miles in two days and 200 miles in seven days.

JimM

pat.kane wrote:

Likewise.

The good -- two day deliveries via regular USPS Priority Mail from Southern California to 1) New York (Saturday to Monday) and 2) Minnesota (Sat/Mon).

The bad -- just last week I shipped a Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 lens to my sister, who lives just 200 miles away. I shipped Tuesday morning via USPS Priority Mail expecting it to be there Thursday. It took a WEEK! Even worse, the tracking system never showed it leaving the local post office, so I thought it was stolen.

Go figure... 3,000 miles in two days and 200 miles in seven days.

Wow, that is crazy.

JimM

Just another update, still no prints. Very frustrating USPS. I am interested to see the postmark on them when they show. I am prone to having uphappy customers from this.

dogwood

ahhh, tales from the usps
Yeah, I know many of us love having mail delivered daily to our homes, but the USPS has a lot of catching up to do when it comes to reliability. I routinely end up with my neighbors mail in my mailbox (or mail from the other side of town-- same street, different zip, different quadrant) and their tracking system is pretty much useless compared to UPS or Fed-Ex. Then there's the visits to the local post office where it often seems like everyone is out to lunch all at once and one clerk is dealing with a line of 10-20 people-- and that's at 10 a.m.

My favorite, though, is the locking mailbox I purchased and bolted to the outside of the house to prevent stolen mail. Some of the carriers just stuff the mail in the slot so it's half hanging out rendering the locked box useless. God forbid the carrier actually make that extra inch of effort to push the mail into the box...

Oh yeah, and there was the recent news that a local USPS maintenance worker had lost his universal mailbox key-- but the USPS waited two months to tell the public about it! So for two months, thieves were stealing mail from those supposedly secure corner mailboxes before the locks were changed.

Okay, okay, I'm sure we all have stories like this. Guess you could read Charles Bukoski's book about working for USPS while you wait-- it's a good read.

Andy

JimM wrote:

I am prone to having uphappy customers from this.

Well, Jim, we all would get frustrated, yeah? But the simple fact is, we have no control over the USPS. They tell us, 3-14 days. Economy shipping is just that, the least expensive, and no tracking. And so we publish that in the shopping cart, 3-14 days.. We do offer priority mail, and 2nd business day, and first business day... Your orders have been six days and five days, respectively. I expect that you'll get them soon. We do a lot of orders, and truthfully, hear only very few stories about orders that go to the longer end of that range.

DJ-S1

pat.kane wrote:

Likewise.

The good -- two day deliveries via regular USPS Priority Mail from Southern California to 1) New York (Saturday to Monday) and 2) Minnesota (Sat/Mon).

The bad -- just last week I shipped a Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 lens to my sister, who lives just 200 miles away. I shipped Tuesday morning via USPS Priority Mail expecting it to be there Thursday. It took a WEEK! Even worse, the tracking system never showed it leaving the local post office, so I thought it was stolen.

Go figure... 3,000 miles in two days and 200 miles in seven days.

Pat, this is one of my pet peeves. Regular USPS First Class mail is clearly 3-14 days delivery. But then they made Priority Mail, and marketed it heavily as "2-3 days". The fine print is that it is average 3 days from post office to post office only. That's not the same as guaranteed 3 days to my house.

Only Express Mail is guaranteed, but I had to dig though the USPS site before I found this disclaimer about Priority Mail:

Estimated Delivery Time:

• Typically one to three days to most locations in the US. (Specific delivery standards can be found when postage is calculated ) This is not a guaranteed service.
• Date of delivery is not guaranteed. Delivery by a specific date at a specific time is not available.
• Estimated delivery time begins on the date postmarked.
• Priority Mail can NOT be tracked or verified as to the delivery status unless one of the extra services was purchased at time of mailing.

(note the bold in the quoted text is their emphasis not mine)

So they won't even guarantee it will take less than, oh let's say 2 weeks. Or 3 weeks. There's no guarantee period.

dmc

dogwood wrote:

... Okay, okay, I'm sure we all have stories like this. Guess you could read Charles Bukoski's book about working for USPS while you wait-- it's a good read.

I agree, going into the post office feels too much like going to the DMV.

I live on a typical California residential street (house every 60'), and each house has a mailbox on a post by their driveway. From the street you have the curb, the sidewalk, then the mailbox.

I noticed the mailman would drive up to the mailbox in front of each house, shut off the engine in the mailtruck, take one step out of the truck to the mailbox to put the mail in. then back to the truck, start it up, drive to next house, shut off the truck, etc. Every single house! You could hear this truck starting up, moving forward, shutting off, etc for 1/2 hour while he is in the vicinity of my house...

I asked him why he shuts it off at every house.... mailman says the rule is he can't leave the truck running while unattended...(while technically, that makes sense, but come on, one step out of the truck?)

I wonder how many starters those trucks go through.

pat.kane

DJ-S1 wrote:

Only Express Mail is guaranteed, but I had to dig though the USPS site before I found this disclaimer about Priority Mail...

I ended up finding that info as well as I wanted to know the ground rules when I went back to the Post Office to locate the missing package. I expected two days, three at the worst. Once that had passed, I let the thought simmer over the weekend about the lens being stolen. When it had not arrived on Monday, I started calling pawn shops to see if they had any lenses in stock.

The other interesting thing I found was that you can't report lost mail until something like 21 days later. That definitely wasn't going to sit well with me. Fortunately, it didn't come to that as the lens arrived on the Tuesday, one week after I shipped it.

JimM

Update, I received the first order today. 7 days in shipping. I edited the first post to reflect this.

mercphoto

Its not just Smugmug. I've seen long delivery times from Exposure Manager as well in the recent past. I believe they also use EZ Prints. Coincidence? Dunno.

JimM

The other one did not show up on Saturday, maybe today. Remember SM said it shipped on the 15th, today is the 25th. This is just frustrating.

JimM

Still no. This is 8 days the post office is open. I know this is not SM's problem, but I think this is going to hurt future business for them. If it takes 10+ days (plus 2 to print) I am going to forget I even placed an order before I receive the photos. So far I have been happy with the print quality of Costco. Right now I am leaning toward using Costco for my personal printing and still driving customers to my SM site for client orders.

It is too bad there is nothing you can do about this SM. Maybe you can work out special pricing with UPS ground for "regular shipping"?

Andy

JimM wrote:

Still no. This is 8 days the post office is open. I know this is not SM's problem, but I think this is going to hurt future business for them. If it takes 10+ days (plus 2 to print) I am going to forget I even placed an order before I receive the photos. So far I have been happy with the print quality of Costco. Right now I am leaning toward using Costco for my personal printing and still driving customers to my SM site for client orders.

It is too bad there is nothing you can do about this SM. Maybe you can work out special pricing with UPS ground for "regular shipping"?

Hi Jim,

We do many many thousands of orders per week. The number of USPS foulups is a small, small percentage. I'm so sorry that this has happened to you. If, after 14 days, the order is not there, we'll happily reprint it and ship it to you express mail or even 2nd business day. Just holler to the help desk and we'll take care of it.

USPS tries hard, but they are not guaranteed nor are they perfect. We wish they were, and wish we could control them even!

renstar

Andy wrote:

USPS tries hard, but they are not guaranteed nor are they perfect. We wish they were, and wish we could control them even!

Is it possible to get ezprints to switch to fedex? Then at least we could have tracking information. I presume smugmug gives them a lot of business, so that could give some leverage. -Russ

Andy

renstar wrote:

Is it possible to get ezprints to switch to fedex? Then at least we could have tracking information. I presume smugmug gives them a lot of business, so that could give some leverage. -Russ

Hi Russ, we have Fedex already.

We have USPS for Economy (First Class Mail).
We have USPS for "express" (Priority Mail)
Fedex for 2nd business day and
Fedex for 1st business day

SteveM

Andy wrote:

Hi Russ, we have Fedex already.

We have USPS for Economy (First Class Mail).
We have USPS for "express" (Priority Mail)
Fedex for 2nd business day and
Fedex for 1st business day

No FedEx 3-day Select? That's usually what I use if given the option. It's a direct competitor for Priority Mail, which I also usually have really good luck with. FedEx is also quite a bit easier to argue/complain to and take much more responsibility than the gov. Just a thought.

Andy

SteveM wrote:

No FedEx 3-day Select? That's usually what I use if given the option. It's a direct competitor for Priority Mail, which I also usually have really good luck with. FedEx is also quite a bit easier to argue/complain to and take much more responsibility than the gov. Just a thought.

Thanks. We've been having such discussions with EZprints. It's a bit more involved than flipping a switch though, and no promises ...

renstar

Andy wrote:

Hi Russ, we have Fedex already.

We have USPS for Economy (First Class Mail).
We have USPS for "express" (Priority Mail)
Fedex for 2nd business day and
Fedex for 1st business day

That'll learn me to not actually check. But i did mean what the above poster requested, for 3-day or even fedex ground instead.. much more reliable in my opinion. Good to hear you are in discussions though, hope it comes out good for us and you all.

sirsloop

I did one order USPS and that's probably the last time I'll ever choose that. It printed quickly, but took over a week from GA to be delivered. Its worth it to spend the extra few bucks on ground for us east coasters, and maybe even the 2nd day if you are west coast. I just hate waiting forever for stuff

The last order I placed (173723) has been in processing for a week now...I hope John Young was able to get that resolved... I've got the frames and mat board cut and ready!!

JimM

Mail hasn't shown up today yet, so I will keep everyone posted. I did receive this as a private message that I thought should be shared...

You're not the only one that's upset with slow delivery times. I quit using smugmug because of that. I'd like to support them, but I won't put up with the slow delivery when shutterfly delivers ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY to me via first class USPS in no more than 3 or 4 days shipping time. Personally, I think the issue is the shipments from SmugMug are being shipped as 'bulk' or 'media mail' and not standard first class mail. I hear them constantly say it's not their fault and not up to them how quickly it arrives...but I don't think that's right. There's NO WAY they are using standard first class mail. And no, I'm not talking about Priority...that's something altogether different. I think the speed goes like this: media/bulk mail = SLOW, first class = reasonable (a few days), priority = always by 2 or 3 days.

Anyway, I feel for you. I know the feeling. I just wish they'd force their lab that they're contracted to use First Class at a minimum. I don't care what they say...there's no way their standard shipments are going first class. If they were, they'd be arriving in no more than 4 days. Like I said, I pay standard first class with shutterfly and they're all the way over there in CA and I never get them later than 3 or 4 days in shipment (usually by 3 days).

3rdPlanetPhotography

NEVER use their standard mail... you'll forget you ordered anything by the time you get it. I wish they'd just do away with that option because EVERY customer has complained to me.

sirsloop

USPS mail costs $1.75... I wouldn't expect any miracles for that amount of money. I don't see how you could complain about transit time at $1.75 shipping costs! I doubt anyone else even offers a shipping method that cheap/slow, shutterfly probably starts out at 5-10 bucks and ground shipping.

I used USPS once and though to myself "wow this is taking forever", so next time I paid more to have it shipped faster. Some people don't care how long it takes as long as it arrives in one piece...

JimM

Just as an update to the saga, they did not show up yet.

Guess I learned my lesson. Funny thing is, all of the other prints I have ordered through USPS they have arrived in 2-3 days. Just not these two orders.

JimM

THEY ARRIVED!!!

12 days in transit.

The prints look great.

Strange, on the Costco site they say standard USPS shipping should take 3-5 business days. Also strange, I am waiting on another Costco order that says it shipped on 9/20/06 (in which case, today would be the 5th business day).

Guess September is not my month for mailing photos through the post office.

JimM

September was not my month for shipping at all. Another order I placed through Costco shipped 9/20/06 and I have yet to receive it. They already overnighted me replacements which came fine, but the original order sent through USPS is nowhere to be found.

I don't think I am shipping anything USPS anymore.