Tracking Mail

Campus Mail receives many calls from departments confused over the delay in receipt of a certified or registered item they are waiting for. They went into the U.S. Postal Service web page to track a piece of mail using the tracking number provided to them by the sender. The message comes back saying it was received in New Haven on a specific date. Why don't they have the package?

The date the package arrives in New Haven is not the date Campus Mail receives the package. The date shown is the day the package arrived at the New Haven U.S.P.S. terminal and it is still in the U.S. Postal Service system. Since signatures must be obtained along the way, the receipt may be delayed for a day or two even after arriving in New Haven.

When a certified or registered item is received at Campus Mail, it is given priority status and is delivered on the very next delivery to your building and a signature is received by the Campus Mail driver.

Getting Your Money Back

Your package is mailed out and they told you it would be there by a specific time -- guaranteed! Depending on the service, a late delivery could refund part or all of your shipping cost.

For mail centers with a high volume of overnight deliveries, there are services that will track deliveries for you and help you obtain refunds.

For example, for a small monthly fee, OnTimeAudit will track up to 200 packages a day. OnTimeAudit claims that if you ship five packages a day, you can get $1,300 in refunds every year! The service uses your shipping database to find out when your packages were scheduled to be delivered and compares it to when they actually arrived at their destinations. You check your reports online to see what shipments were late, the refund amounts and detailed information on delayed or undeliverable shipments. You print out this report and submit it directly to FedEx or UPS. OnTimeAudit only covers these two carriers that ship 75% of all express packages, but it may soon add others.

To use this service, you need to have shipping software from FedEx or UPS installed on your computer, plus OneTimeAudit's own software, downloaded from its Web site.