Sellers Should Check with Local Post Office for Wednesday Pickups

The USPS provided an update to its service alert regarding tomorrow’s day of mourning for former President George HW Bush (December 5, 2018). Here are the new details it added to today’s alert:

Updates from USPS Service Alert:

– Delivery Destination Units (DDU) – Will accept drop shipments at our Sunday Peak DDU offices only.

– Priority Mail Express Mail – Will be delivered as addressed for delivery on December 5.

– Package Pickup – We will conduct scheduled commercial mailer pickups. We will not pickup from Contract Postal Units (CPU) and large volume residential shippers should work through their local Post office for arrangements.

– Caller Service / Remittance Mail – Is available for pickup at plant locations only.

(Note: you can see the original postal alert in Monday’s Newsflash article.)

The Package Pickup information is a bit surprising – we had seen one or two sellers write on industry discussion boards that their local Post Offices were offering them package pickup tomorrow, and it’s good to see that acknowledged.

The Post Office is in an unenviable position. Suspending service won’t stop the flow of holiday packages, and carriers who have Wednesday off may see an avalanche of mail on Thursday waiting to be delivered. Hopefully holiday shoppers will be sympathetic.

eBay and Amazon promised to go easy on sellers who may be dinged because of delays.

Amazon
Amazon will not penalize sellers for late delivery in case the promised delivery date was 12/5 or 12/6, since sellers cannot do anything for shipments already in transit, and Amazon will remove defects from their metrics. And Amazon won’t penalize merchant-fulfilled sellers for standard shipments with ship date as 12/5.

eBay
eBay will automatically protect your Seller Performance and your late shipment rate will not be impacted for USPS shipments during this closure (any defects incurred will removed and correctly reflected in your monthly seller evaluation).

But such promise may not be entirely reassuring to sellers who’ve experienced postal disruptions in the past.

Sellers said eBay’s system was showing this morning that they were required to ship packages tomorrow for items ordered today. “This is one of those times when sellers need to be on their toes,” a seller said. “If the ship by date is not adjusted and a seller has shipments hanging tomorrow, Cassini will see you as not having sent out your items and you will be diminished in search. I will mail out everything I can today and adjust my handling times accordingly for any orders that come later.”

A letter carrier posted on the AuctionBytes blog post about Wednesday’s mail delivery suspensions and said, “we were just told we are working tomorrow to deliver Amazon, Priority and First class small parcels.”

Visit the AuctionBytes Blog for updates and to comment. We ask that you keep us up to date with what you’re experiencing during and after Wednesday’s disruption to mail delivery.

And if you’re looking for information about the life of our 41st President, you can see the Wikipedia entry or visit the website of his presidential library at Bush41.org.

Ina Steiner

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). She is a member of the Online News Association (Sep 2005 - present) and Investigative Reporters and Editors (Mar 2006 - present). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com. See disclosure at EcommerceBytes.com/disclosure/.