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Comment by seizethecheese | Hacker News Reader

We do just in time shipping on top of the post office, so have visibility here. We're definitely seeing mail being delivered more slowly, with more delays. At the same time, it's a question of degree, not a major dismantling of the post office. I'd guess 90% of our packages are still arriving within a day of when they were supposed to.

For context, I run bottomless.com, YCW19. We're shipping hundreds of packages from dozens of locations around the US every day.

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You can do a great public service by publishing a metric of postal mail delivery timeliness from across the country.

Major bonus points if you include numbers from before the slowdowns.

That sounds like a great way to piss off someone high up in the post office/local delivery people at the post office.

I would be reluctant to post such a thing under my name - only aggregated and anonymized data.

Agreed. We are thinking about it. I really don’t want us to get involved in a partisan debate, but presenting the facts might inform the discussion overall.

Hey, newish customer here. I’m in the 10%—my bag is somewhere halfway across the country, and USPS hasn’t posted an update in a week now. I’ll need to supplement with Instacart, which kinda breaks the abstraction.

I totally appreciate that USPS isn’t in your control.

Cost isn’t really a constraint for me, but running out of coffee is. I just checked and I don’t see a way to switch to FedEx or UPS for an additional charge. Is that something your team is exploring?

I don't want you to be without coffee either, but can't help but wonder if switching to UPS is exactly what Louis DeJoy wants you to do?

Point taken. I have been buffering supplies since February, and anywhere else I can support shipping delays with a bit of additional planning, but coffee and eggs are I think the two places in my lifestyle still coupled to just-in-time delivery. I have caffeine supplements stocked as a backup, but that misses out on the ritual.

It’s been an interesting year, kind of like playing Factorio but in real life.

Sorry for the delays. We can't control it, but we still are responsible for your overall experience.

Generally we monitor this and send replacements if coffees get stuck. We will probably do this automatically soon. I understand this still isn't ideal.

We definitely are looking into allowing a FedEx option. We have a pretty complicated product, so it is nice to use a single shipper for now, though.

One thing that could help is picking coffee directly from a roaster that is close to you. If you tell me where you live, I can send you the best roasters for a consistent experience.

Thank you, that makes perfect sense. I hadn't considered optimizing for location. I just saw in the settings where I can choose a roaster, so I reduced the selection to those much nearer my location. And I did indeed receive an email about a replacement—very slick and very appreciated.

Thanks!

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