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Why use crap USPS?

I ordered a kit a week ago exactly and it's not showing any delivery whatsoever with the tracking number, yet everything I've bought off Amazon has came on time within the 5-7 day grace period to fix this phone. Probably not ever ordering a kit from this website again because USPS is like the worst shipping ever, I would've paid for UPS or FedEx, especially if I would've gotten a tracking number and gotten my stuff in on time.

So what the heck? What's with shipping? Will I ever get my package? Why USPS?

Answer this question I have this problem too

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Hey Austin, sorry that you had a bad delivery experience. USPS has been very inconsistent with battery shipments lately, and we're taking steps to minimize the impact of that. We have a page before checkout warning people that USPS has been known to get heavily delayed packages, but we have to toe the line of telling people "USPS is terrible, and you should choose another option!" and presenting their options as accurately as possible. In the end, USPS is _usually_ the cheaper, faster choice. UPS has a similar timeline, but is usually twice as expensive to ship. When presented with the choice of shipping at checkout, most people choose the cheapest option. We'd love USPS to step up their game, but all of this happens in their processing center in Goleta which we don't exactly have a direct line to. I'm going to direct your message to our folks in CS and they'll get everything sorted out for you.

All the best!

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3 Comments:

@soria Please update your profile with an iFixit so we recognize you. Then we don't feel bad about chiding you ;-)

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Yessir. Hard to keep track of my iFixit/Pro/Meta profiles sometimes.

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Thanks, now I recognize you ;-)

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While I can't answer where your package is,

I can tell you from experience USPS is the better!

I live in the city and any package thats left at ones door grows legs and runs off! USPS has access to our building and internal mail boxes unlike UPS or FedEx, so they can secure the package within the building and even put it into our mail boxes if it's not too big. Some building even have large package boxes as well.

I always insist on USPS delivery.

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Yea, USPS is pretty good. I don't know what this guy's talking about. USPS always comes earlier than the others.

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USPS has been messing up a lot of battery orders recently. Like, a LOT of orders. It's because of new Li-ion battery rules and because they are gun shy to ship batteries, when they see the big red sticker saying that there's a battery, they sometimes just sit on it for weeks. Unfortunately, there's no rhyme or reason as to which orders they do that to. We've added a page before checkout saying that USPS has been causing delays for some battery orders, but it's almost universally cheaper, and the expected dates look the same, so nobody is changing over to UPS shipping.

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@pccheese it depends on what method of shipping and where you are on the list of drop off. The only one that I've found that's extra reliable is UPS am delivery. That stuff comes on time! Everybody else just gets to it, when they get to it

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@soria - Alex, Yes, batteries are a problem with all of the carriers.

This gets into how they ship them by truck, ship or plane. The FAA won't allow them to ship more than a handful of batteries in a standard plane (with passengers) which is how USPS ships most of their long distance stuff in the states.

FedEx & UPS have their own dedicated planes so they have a bit more latitude on what they will take. Otherwise, you have trucks or ships for everything else. I do believe USPS has a deal with UPS to co-share the shipping as well now.

I think the FAA is about to change things again! As now they are talking about having people stow their laptops in baggage! You won't be able to carry on most laptops or tablet onboard.

Why that matters is that will likely preclude USPS from shipping batteries altogether by plane.

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@danj The bigger issue for us is the inconsistency. If it was always a delay, or a case where it's just not allowed at all, we could pursue other avenues. We're currently shipping out replacement batteries via UPS whenever they get stuck, but that's creating a whole lot of work on our side. Hopefully whatever happens gets us to a stable place.

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iFixIt has pretty much fixed this, pun intended. They sent a package via UPS for quicker arrival and I will return the USPS package, for I did not know about the USPS battery shipping delays, but I had a team member of iFixIt send me the link and a brief summary over the battery shipping issues to read and I completely understand now. The USPS shipping is now marked at 11 days, technically 4 days over of its estimated delivery time of "5-7 days" and the package is still marked as "In transit" and has yet to be updated on locations or stops since the date of June 6th, when it was sent out apparently, 10 days ago.

But thank you iFixIt for helping me with this and helping me understand, will be more hesitant with buying Lithium batteries now and having them shipped unless I've got the spare time to wait...

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I'm glad you got the battery you needed. Also, if buying batteries in the future, I'd recommend paying the extra bit for UPS. It really does avoid 99% of the issues.

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Austin Lilly will be eternally grateful.