Shipping Exceptions and COVID-19, OH MY!

We live in a most remarkable time. The impacts of COVID-19 are affecting the way we all live and work. AT TapeandMedia.com, as an essential business, we continue to stay open and operate in a safe work environment and exercise every safety measure out of an abundance of cation in accordance with WHO and CDC guidelines. We are shipping orders every day and work hard to ensure that our customers are continuing to receive the products that they need during these trying times. These safety measures have impacted our shipping carriers and their delivery times, we would like to inform you as top what these impacts are in order to set a proper expectation for you as to how it will affect the delivery of your order.

Below are the statements issued from our carriers, we post this in order to set a reasonable expectation with our customers so that they will understand that we are all doing the very best we can in these difficult times to deliver the products you need to you in as timely a manner as we possibly can

As of March 24th, 2020 UPS suspended their service guarantee(UPS Money-back Guarantee.) As per their website: 

As always, our highest priority is to help ensure the health and safety of our employees, customers, and suppliers while meeting our service commitments. Here’s what you can expect from us:

• Constant monitoring of our air and ground networks to address potential sources of disruption in our air and ground networks.
• Compliance with applicable government regulations related to the containment of Coronavirus.
• Careful guidance and information being provided to our staff across the globe regarding the best ways to prevent the spread of infection, based on guidelines from the World Health Organization (WHO). Please also see the FAQ below.
• Ability to track your deliveries worldwide on ups.com.
• Where available, you can sign up for the free (UPS My Choice) which enables you to provide more specific delivery instructions such as where to leave deliveries, where to redirect them and the ability to receive delivery notifications.

The US Postal Service issued this on their website:

The United States Postal Service is proud of the work our more than 600,000 employees play in processing, transporting, and delivering mail and packages for the American public. We provide a vital public service that is a part of this nation’s critical infrastructure. The Postal Service has a dedicated Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Command Response leadership team that is focusing on employee and customer safety in conjunction with operational and business continuity during this unprecedented epidemic. We continue to follow the strategies and measures recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and public health departments. The CDC has information available on its website at https://www.coronavirus.gov that provides the latest information about COVID-19.

To reduce health risks for our employees and customers and to safeguard our operational and business continuity, the Postal Service is doing the following:

• Ensuring millions of face coverings, including masks, gloves and cleaning and sanitizing products are available and distributed to more than 30,000 locations every day through our Postal Service supply chain. We also have opened up local purchasing authorities and sourcing options so that our employees can access additional supplies within the communities they serve. We have expanded our national sourcing of supplies and services to ensure that increasing demands are met.

• Requiring that non-public facing Postal Service employees wear face coverings while at work, when proper social distancing cannot be achieved or maintained.

• In the local and state jurisdictions where there is an ordinance for the mandatory use of face coverings, we are voluntarily aligning by requiring that our public-facing Postal Service employees use face coverings.

• Requesting customers use face coverings while in our retail facilities located in jurisdictions that have implemented orders requiring use of face coverings by individuals within those jurisdictions.

• Reinforcing workplace behaviors to ensure that contact among our employees and with our customers reflects the best guidance regarding healthy interactions, social distancing, and risk minimization. We have implemented measures at retail facilities and mail processing facilities to ensure appropriate social distancing, including through signage, floor tape, and “cough/sneeze” barriers. We have changed delivery procedures to eliminate the requirement that customers sign our Mobile Delivery Devices for delivery. For increased safety, employees will politely ask the customer to step back a safe distance or close the screen door/door so that they may leave the item in the mail receptacle or appropriate location by the customer door.

• Updated our cleaning policies to ensure that all cleaning occurs in a manner consistent with CDC guidance relating to this pandemic.

• Updated our leave policies to allow liberal use of leave and to therefore give our employees the ability to stay home whenever they feel sick, must provide dependent care, or any other qualifying factor under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. We have entered into agreements with our unions to provide 80 hours of paid leave to non-career employees for issues related to COVID-19, and have expanded the definition of sick leave for dependent care for covered employees to deal with the closures of primary and secondary schools across the country.

• Leveraging localized continuity of operations plans that can be employed in the case of emergencies to help ensure that the nation's postal system continues to function for the American people. With a longstanding history of quickly adapting its operational plans to changing conditions, the Postal Service maintains steady communications with mailers during natural disasters or other events that require emergency responses and advises residential customers and business mailers with regard to postal facility disruptions that may impact delivery in an affected area via its USPS Service Alerts webpage at: https://about.usps.com/newsroom/service-alerts/. 

FedEx has put this statement out on their website to address the impacts to their supply chain interruptions due to Coronavirus:

FedEx service updates related to COVID-19

• Due to the crucial role we play in moving supply chains and delivering critical relief, FedEx is considered an essential business and may continue to operate under state of emergency and shelter in place orders recently issued in the U.S.
• FedEx has suspended our money-back guarantee for all FedEx Express, FedEx Ground, FedEx Freight and FedEx Office services effective immediately until further notice.
• We’ve suspended Signature Required for most shipments.

• To help mitigate the spread of COVID-19, we’ve updated store hours and available services for FedEx Office and other retail locations.

• Prior to shipping, check if the recipient business is open as some of them may have closed temporarily. 

• Take care of deliveries to your home with FedEx Delivery Manager