Today, we can see how incredible the length it has come. From printing postage, tracking your parcel, up to the moment it has been delivered to your door is now transparent to customers and can be seen in their system.
Can we reroute USPS Package ?
It used to be that you could reroute your package by marking an incorrect address label to the correct one, unfortunately, the United States Postal Service no longer offers the rerouting of the package. They had recently suspended one of their most popular services that are part of their Package Intercept Program; rerouting your parcels to a different address.
But why did they remove that feature?
The USPS did not disclose any formal statement regarding the removal of this feature, but the US Postmaster General Louis Dejoy announced last 2021 that there will be major changes in the operations of the agency. These include a lesser number of late and/or extra deliveries, some permanent and temporary increases regarding the price, and the slowed mail service, as well as the rerouting of packages.
These changes are necessary due to the rising gap between USPS’ operational costs and generated revenue. USPS operations are funded only by their generated sales, for they are an independent agency. And the package rerouting service can be expensive operations even though a customer pays $15.25 per package reroute – they probably still lose money from it due to the time and labor it costs.
What are the other options?
Since a package cannot be rerouted anymore to a different address under the USPS website, the agency gave two other options in exchange for the previous feature; Hold and Pick-up and Return to Sender.
Hold and Pick-up
The name of this feature speaks for itself, hold your package at the USPS site or the local post office where you shipped it and then be picked up by you. Just make sure that your package is not yet marked as “Out for Delivery.” If it already is, it’s too late for this option. This alternative costs $15.25 excluding any additional applicable postage.
If you are using the Business Customer Getaway, you will have access to Delivery Instructions, together with the Hold for Pick-up, and this feature is free of charge. To be able to do so, go to your USPS Tracking; look for Delivery Instructions on the tracking your package feature and you will see what services are available including the Hold for Pick-up. Once your package is on hold, you can then go to your local post office to pick up your parcel, or have it reprocessed for delivery to the correct destination.
Return to Sender
This option is can be used if your package is already out for delivery. This means that the agency cannot put your parcel on hold anymore at your local post office for you to pick up because the courier had already been shipping it. What you can do in exchange for that is to mark your package Return to Sender. The USPS will then stop the delivery process to the indicated address and send it back to you. No need for you to go to the USPS site to pick it up.
If, however, you just mislabelled the parcel or input the wrong address on a minimal level, for example, house number, you could still have it corrected but it will take some extra steps and extra payments, too.
Despite these two options, USPS still has policies regarding only which items are eligible for these intercepts. They have posted on their website that the USPS Package Intercept is not guaranteed and that conditions may apply.
Eligible for this intercept is the; packages whose girth and total length do not exceed 108 inches and the domestic USPS mail services with USPS tracking and/or service barcode. On the other hand, packages such as USPS Marketing Mail products and periodicals, those that are redirected to a PO Box, items addressed to Commercial Mailing Receiving Agency, and non-mailable items or marked as may contain hazardous cannot be reprocessed under the intercept.
Conclusion
USPS has removed the reroute of the packages, it no longer allows reroute of the package. in their intercept to at least reduce their springing operational costs. But the customers are still given options such as Return to Sender and Hold for Pick-up. Just make sure that these options are applicable to your package. And although mishaps such as wrong mailing addresses are not 100% avoidable, you could still use a little more rechecking before shipping your parcels to avoid such inconvenience.
