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Some who sent holiday gifts weeks earlier this year found that they did not act early enough because Christmas arrived with their gifts stuck in traffic.
The United States postal service said on its website that it was “experiencing unprecedented volume increases and limited availability of employees due to the impacts of COVID-19”.
Austin Race of Grand Rapids, Michigan, placed an online order on November 30 for a cast collector model of a NASCAR race car. He had not reached his father after the Post Office passed his neighborhood on Thursday night, although he was notified on December 8 that he was sent by two-day priority mail.
His gift was in Opa-locka, Florida, the last time he checked the tracking number, about 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) south of where he ordered it in Mooresville, North Carolina. Race, 21, resigned himself to telling his father that he would have to wait a little longer for the gift.
“I understand the situation, but it is still a little frustrating,” he said.
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Joanna Goldstein ordered Christmas ornaments online on November 17 for her 10-year-old son’s football coach and friend of his son. She realized that it was long enough to arrive from a store about 80 miles (128 kilometers) from her home in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Everything looked good on December 11, when she received a notice from the postal service that the ornaments had been received in Columbus, Ohio.
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But then the package made a journey through the distribution centers in Warrendale, Pennsylvania, Grand Rapids, Michigan and Lansing, Michigan, before apparently getting stuck in Detroit.
On Wednesday, she received another warning that delivery would be later than originally planned. Your son was angry, but Goldstein is taking it in stride.
“I was frustrated last week thinking, ‘Come on, come here’, but now I’m just laughing at it,” she said.
She told her son that the ornaments will be hung on the tree next year and that they will have a story to tell about the long journey they took during the pandemic.