I'm not a fan.

I've now received 2 rods shipped this way, and neither came in their expected timeline. I have another on the way at the moment. It left Texas, made it less than an hour away from me in 4 days of transit. Now it's back in Texas, even further west than where it started. They've been moving the rod around the country for 2 weeks at this point.

I know Ground Advantage is cheaper, but at what cost? I have a 7'+ graphite rod spending weeks in the care of USPS bouncing all around the country in a cardboard tube. I'm not saying it's 100% going to show up damaged, but the chances grow exponentially higher the longer it remains in their custody. How many damaged rods and frustrated customers before their is no cost savings in using USPS?

I'm receiving product from Japan quicker than product from Texas. Halfway around the world is quicker than 4 states away. Makes zero sense.

Just my .02, but I would be very cautious with USPS Ground Advantage. It has consistently sucked for me.

I bought about $60 worth of “stuff” from Mudhole a few weeks back. My wife ordered some stuff from Temu the same day. Her order came before mine did. My product arrived at the delivering post office in HSV on a Saturday, it wasn’t delivered until Thursday.

I blame AI 🙃

Been there before, had a package that finally made it 30 miles from home after multiple stops only to go 600 miles away and start again. Over 2 weeks for a 25 dollar bracket for a transducer. No wonder USPS can't make a profit.

UPS only if I'm shipping anything these days. USPS is a complete joke.

I'm sure there are thousands of very dedicated folks working for USPS.

However, they might not be part of the services provided in this area apparently.

USPS here is rarely an Advantage.

I prefer UPS (and that's saying something), FedEx and even DHL.

When the option is available, I will almost always select & pay for a 'fast' delivery time.

And that depends on what they are charging, what I'm ordering,

and which provider is handling it.

Rods & Reels ALWAYS come at least 'second-day air,' sometimes even 'next day'

if it's early in the week and not close to the weekend.

I figure the less time they have it - the better.

YMMV

A-Jay

The only thing worse than the bait monkey are the delivery gorillas.

I ordered a rod back in February and it was shipped USPS. Tracking said it was supposed to take 4 days to ship but it took 30 days. Had a couple of packages make it to my local distribution center and tracking say out for delivery, then the next day it’s in another state. Fed Ex is just as bad. Ordered a couple of Mustang PDFs and they were shipped separately. Received one of them 3 days later but never received the other one. I called Fed Ex and they lost it so I had to get a refund.

Just now, LonnieP said:

I ordered a rod back in February and it was shipped USPS. Tracking said it was supposed to take 4 days to ship but it took 30 days. Had a couple of packages make it to my local distribution center and tracking say out for delivery, then the next day it’s in another state. Fed Ex is just as bad. Ordered a couple of Mustang PDFs and they were shipped separately. Received *** days later but never received the other one. I called Fed Ex and they lost it so I had to get a refund.

None of them are perfect. I’ve had bad experiences with USPS, UPS, and FedEx. Reliability seems to vary greatly by region.

For my business, I ship across the country constantly. My experience has been:

FedEx - cheaper for heavier items (applies to me). I’ve had 2 issues with them over the last 4-5 years. Both involved forklifts and neither was fun to resolve. But we’re talking 2 shipments among hundreds, so it’s a pretty high success rate. They also make the estimated delivery time most consistently for me.

UPS - can’t seem to deliver on time, but they’re easier to deal with when there are issues. Their insurance claims process is the easiest by a LONG shot. But have had MANY priority overnight packages show up late.

USPS - Priority and Express or bust. Every other service they offer is asking for trouble. For smaller packages, I’ll use Priority Mail.

This is why I don't buy rods online

Carry them out of the store myself and haul them home myself to ensure viability

As my buying pattern would have it, I had shipments this week from USPS (Ground Advantage), FedEx (2 day), UPS and Amazon.

Every single one was delayed beyond the initial estimated date (after it started moving). Ground Advantage is the worst offender, but the others aren’t spectacular either.

USPS hasn’t been to bad for me. Had poop bait was supposed to get delivered on a Friday and got delivered on a Tuesday. “3 days early”

But as mentioned I pick my rods up locally.

I’m in Pennsylvania.

I have had Amazon show a package was out for delivery a few times , and it never showed up till a day or to later.

The USPS has been nothing but problems for me.

I've had multiple times when they refused to deliver because they said the box was too heavy. If they accept the package, the need to deliver it.

I've also had numerous instances at work where they said they could not deliver the package because the business was closed. Never mind that I run hotels that are always open 24 hours a day.

I have had exactly the same experience as @AnonymousSoreMouther as I ship/receive both for work and personally. I'll add one more thing;

For FedEx and UPS I typically must have work items shipped to home. I work for a major university and our main building hours are clearly posted and clearly not nights or weekend, but they don't care. I had a $4000 'signature required' delivery left on our doorstep on a weekend by FedEx. Fortunately I had email notification so I drove in and grabbed it before it was stolen by college kids. UPS is worse. We documented with our surveillance cameras a UPS driver stopping his truck in front of our building, sticking his cell phone out the door of his truck to take a pic of the front of our building, and then submitting an "attempted delivery / door locked no answer". He did it THREE TIMES in three days.

USPS delivers reliably to our building during our open hours and never leaves packages outside or lies about delivery attempts.

I strongly suspect, however, that all of this varies as to WHO is working for which entity in your area.

Had a set of tires left under my mailbox by Fedex. Can't see the house from the mailbox. Had a box of avocados stuffed in my mailbox by USPS that took me 5 minutes to finally get it out. Amazon is the most reliable for me.

Update on the shipment.

I called USPS and they took a bunch of my info and will get back to me.

Next I called the shipper to discuss. Apparently I’m not their only customer with this issue. They’re trying to figure out with USPS why a large amount of shipments are exhibiting the same behavior. They’re escalating on their end to management to discuss re-shipping my order via FedEx and will get back to me.

I guess whatever the issue USPS was having, they’ve somewhat resolved it, because I have another rod coming via Ground Advantage and it’s out for delivery from my local post office. Doesn’t do anything for the rod stuck in San Antonio for the last week and half, but at least it’s shouldn’t have to deal with this twice.

This whole thing wreaks of bean counters making decisions. “We can add six figures to our bottom line by switching shipping methods”. You can, sir. You can absolutely do that. And now that you have a large amount of product bouncing all over the country and not getting to your customers, was it worth it? How many packages are you going to have to send again? How long will it take to settle with USPS for all this missing product? There’s always a way to cut cost and add a bit extra to the bottom line. But NEVER customer facing. Consumer experience must trump everything else in today’s market. Otherwise, you’re risking market share to your competitors.

I miss the good ole days when a company’s CEO was the guy who designed or knew the product best, and they figured out how to run a business because they had to. Now, if you have an MBA and can operate a spreadsheet, you can run companies that offer products you neither use, nor understand. It’s all just numbers on a balance sheet. What do you care if it takes a month for your customer to get an order if it means your bonus grows by a point?

I think after this experience I may take the advice of others above and only buy rods locally. This is a hassle.

Well that's what happens when you cut 10,000 jobs in one month, and 3.5 billion annually from USPS - which affects tens of thousands of more related jobs. They warned us this could happen.

We were told it was fake news, yet here we are.

Any USPS "service" is the very worst thing to select for shipping. Avoid at all costs. UPS is well worth the money, and it's really not that much more considering USPS raising their prices. A few bucks more to get my stuff on time and in the proper condition? Yep, well worth avoiding the headache.

They’re all equally bad anymore. I’ve had a UPS package from San Diego “in transit” for the last 2 weeks - made it as far east as Kansas, was orbiting Pluto or something for a few days, and finally made it to Phoenix this morning.