A Guide to USPS Shipments, Tracking & Arrival Dates

Shipping with USPS is a great economical choice when you'd like to save money on shipping charges and have a bit of time to receive your order. Unfortunately, this shipping method can come with some frustrations when it comes to USPS tracking and when it might arrive. These cautions are explained during checkout in our "Standard Shipping" section (show below for reference), but in case you skipped over these warnings, here's a refresher course on what to expect with USPS shipping:

Posters are shipped in long tubes or triangles. Because of this, they cannot go through most of the USPS automated conveyor belts and require manual handling throughout much of the journey to you. This means they take much longer than normal or priority mail. Additionally, they are not scanned at most of the hubs, all the way from pickup to final delivery. It's normal that you might not see a single update in tracking from the time the package is picked up until it's out for delivery to you.

During checkout, you're shown an 'arrives by' date for USPS and warned that while 90% of packages shipped USPS will arrive by this date, another 10% could take up to 10 days longer depending on your location and how USPS handles the package to you. As noted during checkout, never choose USPS as your shipping method if you need your prints by a certain date or like to check on tracking for reliable updates. The "arrives by" date quoted during checkout and shown on your order confirmation is the best estimate of when your order will arrive.

The 'arrives by' date is met 90% of the time by USPS, but it is not guaranteed, and we cannot begin a reprint or reshipment for you if it is missed. This is also explained in our TOS that you agree to during checkout. When you need a guaranteed 'arrives by' date, we suggest you choose UPS.

Keep in mind that we are explaining that USPS tracking is inaccurate because of the nature of the shipment. The USPS system does not know that this is a cardboard tube (odd shape) and so their system is generating inaccurate tracking and arrival information believing the package is standard mail. This is why the only date to focus on is the "arrives by" date we quoted during checkout that can be found on your order confirmation.

USPS has 15 business days (3 full weeks or 21 days) from the shipment date to deliver. If 15 full business days (3 weeks) have passed since the date we show it was shipped, you can contact us for a reprint. We are unable to assist or answer further questions about USPS concerns until this period as lapsed, as experience has shown 99.9% of the time even late shipments arrive within 3 weeks, and if we were to start a reprint for you before that, your original shipment will still arrive before the reprint.

Unfortunately it can be quite common for orders shipped via USPS to have inaccurate tracking information due to USPS carriers inconsistency in scanning packages throughout the journey from us to you. Although we warn you of these issues with USPS during the checkout routine and in our Terms of Service, sometimes it's missed and you might ask about it after we ship. Here's additional details to help:

We often have customers report that a shipment shows "label printed" for several days or even a week after we've shipped the package, and often think we haven't shipped the package at all. Look at the below example of a common USPS tracking scenario:

This customer placed an order on January 8th and we actually printed and shipped the order the same day, on January 8th. USPS typically picks up from us at 6 pm every day, and even though this says "USPS Awaiting Item", they did pick it up on January 8th. However, you'll see above that for 9 full days, (from January 8 to the 17th), the tracking would only show "USPS Awaiting Item" even though they had it. This is because USPS typically does not scan packages at the receiving or intermediate hubs. You'll next see the package was scanned on January 17th and delivered that day. The customer had a quoted "arrives by" date of January 19th, so it arrived early and nothing was ever wrong with this delivery - it wasn't late, it was actually delivered early, even though the customer felt it never shipped for 9 days. This is a great example showing that USPS does not reliably scan a package at each step, which results in these inaccuracies. In virtually every instance the package is going to magically appear in the USPS system many days after we ship it and it's always delivered on or before the arrives by date you were quoted.

This can be common with USPS because our unique cardboard tubes cannot go through the automatic sorting systems and are manually processed.

It's helpful to remember that during checkout you're given a variety of shipping methods with a quoted "arrives by" date of when your package is expected to arrive, and warned before checkout that USPS tracking could be innactute.

As noted during checkout, USPS Priority Mail for posters is not the same as traditinal Priority Mail that arrives in one or two days. This is because the USPS must manually handle our cardboard tubes and they do not meet the ONE and TWO DAY Priority Mail standards. If USPS tracking is showing estimated arrival dates that are earlier than you were quoted, it is because their tracking system does not now the package is a tube. You were quoted an "arrives by" date during checkout for this shipping method, and your package will arrive by that date, not the date quoted by USPS.

We've found that in virtually every case your package will arrive by the quoted "arrives by" date and it's helpful to not focus on the USPS tracking information and instead expect your package by the date you were quoted. You can find this date on your order confirmation.

It is never recommended to choose USPS Mail for an order that you need to arrive by a guaranteed time or that you wish to watch the tracking progress. As our shipping screen states, USPS is a great and economical choice when you have time and patience to receive your print via a slower method at the cheapest price. If you need accurate tracking and faster delivery, we highly recommend UPS.

Once in a while we get a customer, that, even after all of the above feels this is just unacceptable. Trust us that we are as frustrated as you. We try to offer a balance of cost savings and shipping speed by offering USPS as a cheaper shipping option to the cost conscious, and it's equally frustrating to us to hear "but i needed these by a certain date" when we try to do everything possible ahead of time to warn you that USPS is not the option to choose in these situations. We suggested UPS but you chose USPS anyway. Please understand we cannot control USPS and asked you to choose UPS before getting frustrated and unhappy that what we warned could happen is actually happening. 😭

Here is what is explained on our site during checkout before you placed the order: