USPS (or is that USBS?) random delivery times

[Heliodromus]

I've got reasonable faith in the USPS *eventually* delivering the mail, but the emphasis there in on the "eventually" ...

I'm currently waiting for a registered mail package (coin) coming from Germany. It passed through US customs in New York, and was last scanned 5 days ago arriving at the local hub, 15 min from where I live. Since then it just shows daily updates of "in transit to next facility". In the meantime I've had other registered international mail arrive at same hub *after* this package and get delivered to me next day.

I just got back from local post office to ask what was going on - how can it be "in transit" on a 15min journey for 5 days - and the best they can offer is "it's covid, some go fast, some go slow". It also turns out the daily "in transit" messages are system generated and mean precisely nothing. The package is presumably still sitting at local hub where it was last scanned, waiting to recover from covid.

My daughter just received a package from Los Angeles that unexplicably took over a month to traverse the country. Perhaps they've reinstated the mule train mail delivery system ? 

[Victor]

I sent a package to Florida from Tennessee using USPS Priority Mail Express and it took 8 days, with no explanation. Luckily the buyer understood. Once I mailed a package to someone that only lives two and a half hours from me and it took over a week...for some reason it actually went to Mississippi. Though I have had a few slow deliveries, I am pretty satisfied with the thousands that have made it in a fairly timely fashion.