I live in Northern California near Sacramento. I sold a book through Amazon.com to someone in San Diego. I shipped it to her the next day via Media Mail with delivery confirmation service attached. This is what I saw in the tracking update this morning:

Acceptance, March 19, 2010, 5:04 pm, Grass Valley, CA 95945 (keep in mind, Grass Valley/Sacramento are about 6-7 hours north of Los Angeles via the I-5 freeway)
Processed through Sort Facility, March 21, 2010, 1:30 am, BELL, CA 90201 (keep in mind, Bell is in the Los Angeles metro area, about 2 hours north of San Diego)
Processed through Sort Facility, March 23, 2010, 1:51 am, DES MOINES, IA 50395

Another book I sold was sent from the same post office to Palm Springs, CA-about 2 hours east of Bell/Los Angeles. Guess where THAT is right now? You got it. Des Moines.

DES MOINES? IOWA??? Nearly 2, 000 miles and two days to the east?? WTF??? And to think there are a lot of packages making that excursion and other similarly ridiculous diversions across the country! Talk about a waste of fuel, time and money! How about THIS idea: Why not put a major regional sorting facility somewhere even remotely NEAR the West Coast, in the same time zone, even???

This is on top of the fact that the Postal Service:

1) Yanked out all of the stamp machines nationwide. The result? Now folks have to go to the post office during business hours and get in line or go to a busy supermarket or an ATM somewhere in town just to buy STAMPS.

2) Has developed the most convoluted, confusing and tricky postage and shipping rate structure, which is a huge turn-off.

3) Removed 24-hour self-service postal shipping stations from the lobbies of smaller but still-busy post offices. The result? See #1 above.

4) Decided to shut down the Olivehurst, CA sorting facility -which consistently gets excellent scores for efficiency- in favor of moving their resources south to the West Sacramento, CA (45 miles south) sorting facility-which consistently gets poor scores for efficiency. The result? Increased delays in mail for everyone in the Foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada and more burden of work on an already poorly functioning facility.

And the Postal Service still feels the need to cry "woe is me" and jack up rates on an annual basis to make up for their lack of common sense? They need to make a serious overhaul, starting from the top on down, or else the Postal Service will die a slow, painful death.

The post office between benton, Louisiana and thermopolis, wyoming. I recently mailed out two boxes to my mother containing baby items for my sisters little newborn baby girl, including new items and some of my son's outgrown items also family heirlooms. It was in a 10 gallon aquarium box filled with 20 pounds of baby items. One box made it there days later and the 14th of April. They were mailed out on April 11th. To this date the other box is still missing. I have contacted both mail recovery centers and been told there is no record of this box. I have contacted the postal inspector, the postmaster here in benton and the inspector general with no luck. No one seems to care that this box is nowhere to be found. My only thought is that it has been stolen, as it is not where it should be at my mothers house nor is it in the mail recovery center where I was told undeliverable mail would go. I have contacted everyone and with no luck. So be warned if you want your package to make it to wherever make sure you insure it or mail it UPS. DONT TRUST THE POST OFFICE. They don't care.