A month after the holidays, some people still get Christmas cards in the mail

A month after the holidays, some people still get Christmas cards in the mail

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Americans did holiday shopping online with record numbers, flooding the system with what the USPS said was a ‘historic amount’ of mail and packages. As a result, packages, tickets, and other mail items sometimes take longer than a month to reach their destination. The USPS has so far delivered more than 1.1 billion packages during the holiday season, a record number, CNN said.

But at the same time, the postal service is facing other problems. More than 39,000 employees out of 644,000 tested positive for Covid-19, a USPS spokesman told CNN, representing about 6% of its workers.

ShipMatrix, a software company for shipping operations, found that hundreds of thousands of packets experienced delays of at least a few days, and some lasted even longer.

Customers in states such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and New York also experienced some of the biggest delays due to heavy snowstorms in December, ShipMatrix reports.

“During the high season, the Postal Service, together with the wider shipping sector, came under pressure over service performance in various categories, as it achieved a record of volume, while also overcoming the shortage of employees due to the continuous increase in COVID “19 cases, winter storms in the Northeast, as well as ongoing capacity challenges with air transport and trucks for moving historic volumes of mail,” the USPS said in a statement to CNN.

Facilities still work due to backlogs

In Philadelphia, the packages were ‘up to the ceiling’ last month, Nick Casselli, the local American postal workers’ union, told CNN.

“I’m been in the post for 35 years, I’ve never seen what I see,” he said.

There were so many incoming packages that the postal workers could not process them in time, Casselli said.

'Perfect storm' with high package volume, while employees deliver COVID of USPS deliveries before Christmas
One month later, the processing continues, and residents in cities across the country have talked about waiting for late holiday mail.
Kim Deyo in Pine Grove, Pennsylvania, told CNN’s subsidiary that WNEP mailed a package to her mother in another part of Pennsylvania on Dec. 14. It was supposed to arrive later in the week, but instead it went on a joyride: from Jacksonville, Florida, to Tallahassee, and back to Pennsylvania.

Ten days later, when Christmas rolls around, the package has not yet arrived. It finally arrived after the holidays, Deyo said.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, James Seaman told CNN subsidiary KJRH this week that he was still receiving Christmas holiday tickets that were originally sent out a month ago.

“You can not rely on getting your mail in time now,” Seaman told KJRH.

And it’s not just gifts or tickets. Bills are also affected.

In Pennsylvania, Kevin Thorne told CNN subsidiary WPVI last week that his entire block still had not received their electric bills.

“I’m never late for my bills, they’re going to make my bills,” he said.

And this despite the fact that the processing plant in Philadelphia employed more than 280 employees for the holiday season, USP spokeswoman Naddia Dhalai told WPVI.

The USPS is not the only one experiencing delays – FedEx and UPS have also warned customers about possible shipping delays.

“Record high volumes of e-commerce orders, COVID 19 closures and weather conditions could cause deliveries,” warns FedEx’s website. In March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, UPS suspended its service warranty indefinitely, guaranteeing money back at some shipping times, “in light of overall uncertainties about the coronavirus.”

Things will eventually be back to normal. As the USPS moves through the massive holiday supply, the service expects ‘improvements in performance’, the USPS said in a statement to CNN.

CN P. Paul P. Murphy contributed to this report.

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