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Comment by jhugo | Hacker News Reader

The linked article focuses on New Zealand because it's from a New Zealand publication, but service is actually being suspended to 22 countries.

It would probably be better to link to the USPS notice directly, which is mentioned but unfortunately not linked to in the RNZ article: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...

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If you keep going down the page, you get actual narratives about the problems. For Australia, for instance, Australia Post has closed the office that handles incoming mail. New Zealand is more vague, but is basically turning down mail processing due to COVID restrictions.

USPS implies it is because of COVID restrictions. NZ Post is accepting mail, but there is a shipping capacity crunch and very little air cargo capacity.

Another way to look at it is USPS did not anticipate a crunch by buying capacity in advance.

NZ Post allows us to ship packages from the US to a US warehouse which then ship to NZ. This is still operating with delays. Amazon seems fine with deliveries not being delayed at this point.

International AirMail mostly travels in the holds of international passenger planes - those are just not flying - package deliver to NZ (DHL/Fedex/UPS) is mostly OK, but plain old mail, not so much

I count four widebodies between Auckland and California (LAX/SFO) in the air just as a random check on FR24 as I write this, so there's certainly capacity for some mail if USPS want to buy it.

Do people in NZ normally buy stuff through the US Amazon website? Is that because there are more options/better pricss?

Amazon just isn’t that good here. The shipping is either impossible and requires you to use a third party service which gives you a US postal address, or shipping is outrageously expensive.

It’s one of the things that happens when you live too far away I guess.

Last few orders I made was something like 8.99 for some random shoebox size of items (worth maybe 50-100 usd). So basically far from expensive. NZ local shipping is probably half that price.

The cost of living here is very high. Goods, especially electronics, cost a lot more than the USA. Electronics costing 50% more here than in the USA is common.

I disagree with the comment left by lostlogin, I have found most products on Amazon ship to New Zealand, including products sold by third parties, though I would agree fewer independent stores are shipping to New Zealand. I think this is partly due to prices increases from the likes of Fedex and USPS.

Amazon Australia ships to NZ but the product selection is very poor.

AusPost has a similar service which I've found to be basically useless since most of the packages I want to use it for don't come from a retailer and instead are sent by family.

The asterisks for Australia and New Zealand indicate that mail sent using "Priority Mail Express International" (the service that essentially the entire rest of the world outside the US calls "EMS") is still going through. If anyone really needs to get something from the US to those two countries, at least it's an option, and IMO it's much more reliable than typical mail.

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/international...

Afghanistan

Guadeloupe

New Zealand*

Tajikistan

Australia *

Laos

Reunion (Bourbon)

Timor-Leste

Bhutan

Libya

Saint Pierre and Miquelon (Miquelon)

Turkmenistan

Brunei

Martinique

Samoa

Yemen

Cuba

Mayotte

South Sudan

French Guiana

Mongolia

Syria

How much of this has to do with Australia and New Zealand maintaining closed borders?

Outside of Australia and New Zealand, I can understand most of these (gee, I wonder why Afghanistan?), but what is going on in Samoa that prevents mail delivery?

Very few flights due to COVID and no vaccines.

Saint Pierre and Miquelon is less than 20 km from the coast of Newfoundland (Canada). It shouldn't be that hard to get stuff delivered there.

Also Samoa is right next to American Samoa, which is a U.S. territory.

American Samoa has had tight border restrictions, including from the US mainland.

Samoa even more so, given they had a high death toll from a measles epidemic there two years before covid struck.

More directly, Samoa is only allowing one cargo flight per week right now and it doesn't go to American Samoa.

That doesn't make much sense. USPS can just deliver to France and let them deal with it. Or drop it off in Canada and they can forward it.

There's a ferry that runs between St. Pierre and Newfoundland a bunch of times every day. It's still running. Regular flights to St. John's, Newfoundland, even Paris, France are still happening.

I don't understand this at all -- it's not like USPS was literally flying a plane to St. Pierre, was it?

I am Canadian and I just learned about this, wow

People always think Canada has only one international border: with the US. But in reality, Saint Pierre et Miquelon is so close to Newfoundland that there is no international water between them. So in addition to our land and maritime borders with the US, we have a maritime border with France. Also one with Greenland (Denmark), but that's too arctic for anyone to care about.

When Prohibition was active in both the US and Canada, St. Pierre & Miquelon was the place buy smuggle booze into Canada (and the USA).

In recent times, it was the source of tax-free, cheap Canadian cigarettes and Canadian booze. Neither of which the local French population consume, but are more than happy to sell it to Newfoundlanders visiting :-)

I doubt that "too hard" is really the issue here. yeah, if USPS wanted to figure it out, i'm sure they could. but what actually happens is that the USPS contracts somebody else to figure it out for them, and that contractor charges USPS a price for that.

if the price is worth it, USPS pays. if the price isn't worth it, then USPS stops delivering there.

I guess the closed borders mean significantly less flights into those countries, therefore significantly less room in the cargo holds for mail. My guess is cargo planes are still flying in goods, but they cost a lot more so that USPS has decided it's losing too much money...

As far as I know, passenger flights find out the weight of their passengers and luggage, and then sell the remaining space/weight allowance for cargo, I wonder if that's how most overseas mail are delivered. For time-critical or heavy stuff this system is a bit random, obviously, so if you want to deliver something heavy you'd buy space in a cargo plane instead...

French Guiana is where ESA launches rockets from. Anybody willing to bet if JWST is going to get a tiny little extra delay because the US can't get paperwork down there?

Australia has to do with Australia Post and the backlog. They've closed down intake for October, to try and clear the backlog, and introduced new customs requirements.

Domestic delivery for Australia Post is backlogged significantly[1]

There's reports that AusPost's parcel facilities have so many packages to process, that they're queued up outside (in some kind of undercover area) waiting to be processed.

I only have anecdata to support this, but my own parcels from even one or two suburbs away have taken over a week. A parcel from Newcastle to Sydney sat for two weeks in one of the major parcel facilities with no updates, presumably in the aforementioned pile-up.

A parcel from Germany showed being processed outbound in Germany in late April, and then complete silence until it turned up in an AusPost facility in early September.

It's all very random, though, and not consistent - two packages from the same seller in Melbourne sent two weeks apart arrived in reverse order one day apart - one taking one week, the other three. They passed through the same processing facilities in tracking.

I've now given up having any idea how long things will take to arrive.

[1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-01/expect-parcel-delays-...

there was an announcement earlier this week saying domestic delivery will be delayed in some areas as well. if i recall correctly, this is due to some internal changes and not entirely due to the pandemic.

Originally linked article: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/452764/united-states-pos...

The list has been updated to include New Zealand but service to many of these countries has been suspended for quite a while.

I was about to ask "why Timor-Leste?" but answered my question by checking the state dept page:

> Country Summary: Timor-Leste has seen isolated instances of police responding to protests with force and the use of tear gas. Stone throwing attacks on vehicles can occur during gang conflicts and periods of unrest. Gender-based violence is high in Timor-Leste, and sexual harassment is fairly common.

https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/...

That's not normally a reason to suspend delivery. It's Timor Leste's postal service's problem to do the final delivery.

I can still send mail there from the UK (which seems to have no restrictions) or Denmark.

https://www.postnord.dk/en/service-interruptions/reopening-o...

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