USPS Shipping Notice - Update

There was some updated information that came out last week regarding the backlog situation at USPS. Higher level officials at several large sorting centers have admitted that there is still a very large backlog of holiday season mail parcels at many post offices, and that they are prioritizing new mail for processing and digging into the December backlogs as time and capacity permits. This means that new parcels shipped via USPS are being delivered more or less on time, with some spotty delays at post offices (like ours) that are still operating at above capacity. Orders that remain unsorted from back in December may take several more weeks to get sorted out and routed for delivery. My guess is that when the shipping crush hit mid-December, post offices and sorting centers dealt with it by just throwing the extra mail into trailers where much of it has stayed since then waiting for sort. So I have to continue to ask folks to be patient for both old and new postal shipments, especially if their tracking is showing no movement for long periods of time at a particular post office or sort facility.

The pandemic has shifted so much purchasing capacity online so quickly that it has created all kinds of logistics issues across the country. I was told by a logistics manager at a big trucking company we work with this week that truck freight is queing across the country and that there are currently 6 trailers of freight for every truck driver. Before the pandemic we were using two primary distribution sources to bring in new manga. Now we are using five sources. Unfortunately for Anime Home Video product the supply chain is based on single points of source depending on who-ever the studios use to distribute the product to market, and whatever stocking and shipping methods those sources use, and this varies widely for each company.

It's keeping us on our toes getting materials into our warehouse, but so far we're doing OK. :-)

USPS Shipping Notice

As we are about the break for the long holiday weekend, I wanted to post a notation regarding the situation with USPS. As of today there are reports of millions of parcels that are being delayed due to both overwhelming capacity shortages, and workforce losses due to the pandemic. Yesterday the USPS reported that nearly 20,000 postal workers are currently out due to COVID. This has created a historic backlog at USPS facilities around the country.

We can't even get Priority Mail parcels across town inside our own zip code right now in less than 5 or 6 days. Our regular postal carrier says the local PO here is so jammed they don't think they will be able to get out from under for weeks. This is the story in most of the rest of the county as well.

Needless to say a lot of parcels are going to be late this year.

If you have been trying to track a package from our facility, it is only showing 'acceptance' but no other scan data, rest assured it definitely went into the postal system. None of these parcels are being scanned normally. Some parcels are not being scanned at all between shipment and delivery. We currently have several hundred USPS economy parcels in limbo with many being up to several weeks in transit that have not yet been delivered, some not yet being sorted. USPS is so loaded down all of these parcels are sitting in trailers at the local or regional sort hubs waiting their turn for routing. Economy shipments have been de-prioritized over priority shipments, and even those are way behind. Some early economy shipments from around the Black Friday time frame clearly went into trailers to wait for sort capacity to become available, but it never did. We have in-bounds from vendors that shipped USPS economy mid-Nov that still haven't arrived, and it's clear some of these 10-14 day economy packages may take up to 2 months to be delivered.

But I think most of these parcels will finally begin to move after Christmas as capacity becomes available again. I know the folks at USPS are working very hard. For the rest of us, we will just have to be patient and wait for them to clear up this historic backlog. For new orders on the store, think about choosing our UPS or FedEx Ground options for shipping unless your not concerned about delays in transit. In any case, there is nothing we can do about the USPS issues at this point, and I sincerely apologize to anyone who felt like they ordered early enough but still did not get their order before Christmas. We worked very hard to get everyone's order shipped as quickly as possible and it's disappointing to us that some of those parcels still may not arrive on time. 

But rest assured, those Anime parcels will arrive soon enough, and we'll look back on all this someday and laugh and remember when the pandemic reminded us all that Christmas is about more than just getting stuff in the mail.

We wish all of you a safe and Merry Christmas. We'll see you back on Monday!