Sometimes, things don’t go as planned in the delivery service world. Packages are misplaced, mishandled, and misdelivered. As a package forwarding company, OPAS tries its best to be proactive in these situations. With USPS, these issues can happen frequently. We know very little about an incoming package until we receive it at our facility. Most often, these mishaps boil down to three categories:
Delay
With constant changes in policy and shipment operations, packages sent through USPS can become delayed. Some days at OPAS, we receive no packages from USPS. Of course, in these cases, we get double the packages the following day. In addition to random days where there is no USPS delivery, currently, USPS has an official policy in Portland that every week on Tuesdays, they will not sort and deliver packages to any package forwarding company.
Misdelivery
Your package doesn’t always end up where it needs to be. At their sorting facilities, USPS will often missort packages, sending them to the wrong addresses or other companies! (This happens with a very small percentage of packages delivered by USPS.) OPAS often has to track down packages that have been misdelivered by USPS, securing their location by contacting other package forwarders in the neighborhood to see if they have received the misdelivered package.
Scanned as delivered, but not at our location
When USPS marks a package forwarding company’s package as delivered, they only sorted it. USPS has decided that because the volume to package forwarders is too great, they cannot scan each package at the time of delivery. Based on this decision, the final package scan occurs when USPS makes the final sort. At this point, USPS declares the package delivered, but it still needs to be moved to the loading docks, loaded to delivery vehicles, and delivered to the correct company. In reality, the package, when marked delivered, will take one day or more to reach our facility.
How OPAS Tries To Accommodate
OPAS tries to accommodate these issues in a variety of ways. We have created and maintained relationships with other package forwarding services in the area so that we can easily contact those companies regarding missing packages. If we find that a package is misdelivered, we will message all of the neighboring companies to try to locate the package.
Our customer care team maintains contact with the customer to give full transparency while we work to locate the missing package. (In a small percentage of cases, the package is somewhere farther away). One of the many ways that OPAS stands apart from other package forwarding services.
Every day, we receive packages from USPS that are not for OPAS. These misdelivered packages are given back to USPS for redeliveries which can occur sometimes with shipments from USPS.
When shipping orders with USPS, it is important to keep in mind these factors. Due to COVID-19 and budget cuts from the government, the USPS has faced a lot of obstacles over the last year.
We completely understand the frustrations and stress that occur when packages are not secure and OPAS tries to accommodate your needs to the best of our ability so that your package forwarding experience can be easy!
