12/08/2009

Is the US Postal Service an eagle or turtle? Regardless, mail early.

Fail: Timing  


CostCo sends coupon self-mailers every 3 to 5 weeks. In my personal experiences, they consistently arrive in my mailbox about a week before the coupons are effective.  In fact, I occasionally see customers trying to use coupons at the store before they are valid.

So when the coupon mailer with coupons valid December 3-20 arrives in my mailbox on December 7, something is clearly wrong.  It means that CostCo missed a weekend of high-volume Christmas shopping by either mailing late or allowing the USPS to deliver slower than usual.  The address panel even has a request “Postmaster, please deliver between Nov. 28 and Dec. 1, 2009.”

I can only guess what happened, and my guess is that the US Postal Service is delivering standard rate mail slower than usual because of the holiday volume of packages, priority mail, and first class mail.  Regardless of why the mail is late, late delivery is a Fail.

Learning: Prepare for the holiday season and compensate for prolonged delivery times by mailing early.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Did anyone ever think that maybe the mailhouse did not give it to the post office in time for delivery??? standard mail is standard mail and travels as such regardless of what a mailer prints on it for delivery dates..Professional mailhouses and mailers know the timeframe and need to plan accordingly.. not blame the postoffice for over promising their customer and blaming usps. i see it all the time in my industry