My husband sold a musical instrument several months ago to
a man in another state. They made a deal and the man put a
certified check in the mail. My husband was confident the
man was honest, and made a plywood case to cover the instrument case, packed it carefully and sent it off. The
man called, he had received it. But our check did not come.
He sent us copies of the papers showing he had sent it via
priority mail. Fast forward...he called every day to see
if it came, and ended up sending us another check by putting
it in a small box and sending via UPS. Yeah, we got it in
2 days. The original check showed up over two months later.
No more priority for us.

I mailed something EXPRESS mail today and they "guaranteed" that it would arrive by tomorrow by noon. I certainly hope so as it was a business letter and it cost me $18.30 to mail!!

Think you need to talk to the post office. I THINK you can get your money back.

you can get DC on first class...and it usually arrives faster than Priority!

I find that priority is no quicker than first class unless I go to the main PO, which is located next to the airport. Now I live near a major metro area so this may make a difference. But when I go to my local small town PO I just say, what is cheapest and go with that.

Parcel post is more expensive than 1st Class and Priority is not usually any faster than 1st class.

Did they change the rules, and start offering delivery confirmation for First Class (FCM)? I haven't checked into this detail in a few years... I'd been told by our local Post Office that they did not want to offer delivery confirmation for FCM because then everybody would want to know if "Aunt Minnie" got her birthday card, if the bank got their payment, etc. etc. - which would be (understandably) too much work for them to do.

Only online: https://www.paypal.com/shipnow

I had something sent to me priority......and the tracking system kept telling me it hadn't been sent by the sender yet!!!! One day, 4 days or so after it was to have been sent, I wrote the sender and asked why she hadn't sent it. Left the house, went by the mailbox and it was there! Later in the when I got home, I checked and the tracking system STILL said it hadn't been sent. And they wonder why the PO has problems, eh!

USPS had some major issues the beginning of this year, regarding scans on packages and tracking. Depending on how your package is handled - where it goes - it may or may not show up in their system. Typically, for us, if the package is scanned when it is picked up, we will see this acceptance scan, then we will see it go through our regional sorting center, and then we *may* see it go through a destination regional sorting center and/or a local Post Office, and then if the carrier remembers to scan it upon delivery, we will see that it has been delivered.

But... if the carrier forgets to scan the package when he/she picks it up ... or they forget to scan it enroute, or if USPS has problems with their software/computers, you can wind up with a big nothing in terms of tracking.

It's usually not much of a problem for domestic shipping; the package will be delivered in about 3 days, whether or not it has been scanned along the way.

But for internationals, that was a HUGE problem for us in January! It takes 2-3 weeks for those packages to be delivered, and in the meanwhile we had lots of worried and upset international customers who thought we had never sent their packages. I must have spent several DAYS worth of time on the phone with various USPS folks, trying to achieve resolution of this problem. (Not to mention the hours spent e-mailing and reassuring our international customers!) And we did get it all worked out, so things are running smoothly again.

(big sigh of relief)