First Class Mail On-time Delivery Is Still Down but Holding

On Thursday, the USPS provided Congress with what appeared to be positive news: new service performance data showed that despite a surge in mail volume, there was a slight increase (0.18%) in on-time delivery of First Class Mail service from the prior week.

The USPS said 86.15% of First-Class Mail was delivered on time the week of Oct. 3.

But according to Government Executive, on-time delivery of First-Class mail remains far below its 2020 high point of around 93% before the novel coronavirus pandemic took hold.

It would have been helpful to have gotten performance data on packages, aside from those sent First-Class, but the attention is on election mail because of the pandemic.

But even then, the accuracy of package delivery data is being questioned – the Washington Post reported that postal workers are providing false delivery scans on packages – see the AuctionBytes Blog.

Note that according to the USPS Office of Inspector General, the Postal Service delivered about 6 billion packages in 2019, doubling its volume over a decade.

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/.