Reselling News: USPS Slows Ground Advantage to Alaska and Hawaii to 10 Days or More

A buyer in Anchorage or Honolulu clicks the same Buy It Now button as a buyer in Ohio. Since October 1, the package you send them is on a much longer clock, and the notice that changed it came out as an informational PDF, not a seller banner.

What USPS changed on October 1

In an informational notice posted to PostalPro on September 25, the Postal Service reset its delivery expectations for packages going to and from Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, plus Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau. The change took effect October 1.

Here is what moved:

• Ground Advantage between the lower 48 and all of those places now carries a 10 day or more expectation. USPS says most transit days were adjusted and some will run significantly longer than 10 days.
• Lightweight Ground Advantage is going by surface now. Packages under one pound used to ride a mix of air and surface. Regardless of weight, they will now primarily move by surface transportation, which USPS ties to keeping hazardous materials off its air network.
• Priority Mail to Alaska, Hawaii, American Samoa, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands moves to a 2 to 4 day expectation. Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the Freely Associated States move to 2 to 6 days. Both were previously capped at 3 days. USPS says the actual transportation for Priority Mail should not change, so this is the promise catching up to real performance.
• Priority Mail Express is untouched.

Value Added Resource flagged the notice on October 3.

Why a clothing seller should care

The under one pound line is the one that hits resellers. A folded tee, a pair of jeans, a hat: that is exactly the light Ground Advantage package that used to catch a plane some of the time. Now it goes primarily by surface, and the published expectation for it is ten days or more.

Longer transit is where the "where is my order" messages, the item not received cases and the lukewarm feedback come from. None of that is your fault, and all of it still lands on your account.

The holiday math does not close

USPS published its recommended holiday shipping dates on September 22, three days before this notice. For Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the territories, the suggested Ground Advantage cutoff is December 16. Add the new 10 day minimum expectation to December 16 and you land on December 26. The Priority Mail date for those places is December 18, and that service is still promised in days, not weeks.

What to do this week

Pull up an Alaska or Hawaii ZIP in the USPS service commitments tool and see what it now quotes from your own ZIP. Then decide your rule before the first gift order comes in. For anything bought as a Christmas present and headed off the mainland, plan on Priority Mail, and if the item is cheap enough that Priority wipes out the margin, set that expectation with the buyer up front instead of in a case later.

Shipping policy that holds up when the carrier quietly moves the goalposts is one piece of the larger system we build inside The Income Lab, alongside pricing and handling time.

Hero photo of the Pahala, Hawaii post office by Ichabod, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.