RobbieTunes

So hard, the post office I tried to burn down went out.

francophile 

Dang, y'all, get a room.

pastorbobnlnh 

My apologies to everyone who has posted or read this thread. I had no idea that sharing my experience would offend and upset. I tried my best but obviously some members have taken offense so I humbly delete my response to conspiratemus1 and ask RobbieTunes to consider deleting his. Again, my apologies to everyone I've offended.

Mad Honk 

Well PB,
Seems like this thread has derailed like most do. And the facts get turned inside out and the opinions start going to the top of the heap. It always seems to go this way on forums. Too bad that it happens. Aber schade, MH

tricky 

Not sure why you got jumped on after for sharing your experience and voicing your opinions and frustrations in your first comment.

Everyone's on pins and needles in this country. Hopefully tensions with our countrymen, USPS, and this forum calm down after this election, but I have my concerns. Maybe all this existed before and it's just the veneer of civility has worn thin.

Anyways, here's hoping this rare German stem makes it's way back through the global mail system and shows up on Randy or Francophile's doorstep.

DiegoFrogs

About a year ago I bought a 2-bike storage rack for my apartment from a well-known, river-based internet retailer.

The building I live in has security at the door 24/7 and an electronic locker system for delivery. If anything is too big or the lockers are full, security takes the package and notifies us.

First time it was registered as delivered with a cryptic code. Security, building management and the locker owner/operator had no idea what happened.

Seller sent a replacement. A different carrier than the first. This time USPS had it listed as "out for delivery" for days on end. Eventually they just told me it was lost. Security, building management and the locker owner had no idea what happened.

Seller sent a replacement. A different carrier than the first and second. Much like the first time, a cryptic delivery code. Security, building management and the locker owner had no idea what happened.

I got a refund and, months later, bought the same item from Home Depot, delivered there and picked up in person.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, 11 months after all the delivery attempts. I'm coming out late on a Friday night, mildly under the influence. The guard stopped me, saying something about "a bunch of packages" she has for me, and that turned out to not be any sort of euphemism... Sure enough, three identical packages, none of which do me any good since I only have 2 bikes! Nobody responsible wants to talk to me about what went wrong or why nobody could be arsed to look into it when I contacted them through so many means each time.

Aside from this, these locker systems have been very good for me. I get a text and e-mail with a code, punch it in and I can see a picture of myself collecting each package online. I just hope I can repair any damaged reputation I might have with that large retail giant.

Cougrrcj

I did my 33 years as a carrier, retiring in 2013 - and the USPS downhill slide started with the 'buy-out' in '92!

Sorry this post isn't 'on track'

(Cue the Rod Serling voice) "We now return you to your previously scheduled interweb post..."

-- but at least they've tracked your shipment - to the wrong country!

FedEx isn't any better - I had ordered a car part from a mail-order place just 30 miles away - normally next day delivery. Ordered and shipped on Wednesday, should have been here Thursday. . Nope, not this time. It went from Akron to Richfield (suburb of Cleveland where the FedEx Ground distribution center is), then on to Buffalo NY where it sat over the weekend (FedEx Ground didn't work on weekends back then)... Then Monday it went to Rochester NY the next day, then Tuesday to Albany NY. Someone in Albany must have noticed the error and it was FLOWN on Wednesday to their FedEx Express hub in Columbus OH, trucked up to Richfield (again) on Thursday, and then finally delivered on Friday. Ten days, for what should have been next day. It least their tracking worked! I was following it daily - that's how I knew where it was!!

RobbieTunes

Write “Return to Sender” on each box?

I wonder if the retail giant will send you 3 shipping labels?

bark_eater 

I recently had a USPS package that I was tracking take a left turn and get "delivered" to an address 50 miles away. No one would talk to me because it was "delivered". It was a used book brokered through amazon, so the seller just sent me a refund, verses trying to find the item.

RobbieTunes

Same issue with Amazon
Finding the venue to even report it is difficult

bark_eater 

I filed some sort of report form, but they didn't really have an option for a simple package getting misdirected. It was funneling me towards "Does this package contain cremated human remains?" if not, piss off. I "kid" you not...

RobbieTunes

Perhaps this can help explain it.:
The US Postal System was so good for so long, we now consider it more than it actually is. People took our mail and delivered our mail and while they were really just material handling, they made it personal for us. Times changed, and the system changed, and what worked before does not work now, nearly so well. Tons of factors, just tons. "...really, really beautiful" or "...really, really horrible" factors.

I sent my son $200 cash in a birthday card when he was in college. Dumb, I know. He never got it. How did someone know? I went to the Post Office in my 4,000 person town. The Postmaster took an interest, for no reason other than a piece of mail did not get delivered, and he owned that. He said "send another, and we'll track it." No bar code, just another card. I sent $200 more. Seems that the post office put the college mail in a cart, on a dock behind the fenced-in annex, which was picked up by a college employee, who then separated it by dorms and then someone else, not a postal employee, put it in the dorm mailboxes. They watched the guy pick it up and take it to his home. They found my original card, with the $200 in it. The miscreant hadn't gotten around to opening it yet...They returned it to me, not my son, because I was the customer; my stamp was the purchase of the postal services for that piece of mail. My son had to satisfy himself with the 2nd $200 I sent. I think I bought bike parts with the returned money.

I mailed a large box of Christmas presents to Houston. They went to New Orleans first, for some reason. I got blamed for ruining Christmas. I asked for a trace, they found it, and a Houston postal employee personally took the entire box to my relatives in Houston, the day before Christmas. It's not the people.

I still give a Christmas present to my newspaper carrier, and my mail carrier. I just don't see why not.

Lemond1985

I think the problem for me, is when some package or letter gets lost in the system, the postal employee only cares about whether he followed all the correct procedures to the letter, or not. The fact that the package did not arrive, frustrating the entire purpose of the transaction, is completely irrelevant to such a person. I find that infuriating, and that's why I don't do business with them any more, if I can possibly avoid it.

francophile 

I felt similarly for a long time. But after I had to file a claim with UPS on three different occasions and all were denied for "insufficient packing", when one of those items used a manufacturer's actual packaging they ship all of their products in, I gave up. FedEx has only damaged one frame shipped to me, my Bertoni, in which they somehow managed to snap off half a top tube cable guide, they snubbed the shipper for insufficient packaging (BS), seller ended up returning half my purchase cost, on a mint bike already sold BIN cheap, crazy it was virgin, virtually unridden and took this damage. I was pissed.

I always shipped DHL and continued to do so until they stopped domestic service. I was pretty lost when that happened. I only got into using USPS a few years back when my eBay sales picked up, in the days before all of the feedback extortion and ghost mailing nonsense got way out of hand. Generally speaking they've been pretty solid, and - knock on wood - up until today, after hundreds of packages shipped through them, I've never once had to file a claim. I think it says a lot, I have accounts with all three major carriers and have equally used them all.

USPS usually costs me half as much (or less) to ship 90% of things in the USA. They made the international shipping process so easy, I couldn't say "No". I admit, I'll have reservations when this is said and done. For our neighbors to the north, I usually try to find someone with family near the border that can pick up. I've sent a few things that way in the past to fellow BF'ers. But it's not always possible for anyone more than an hour north of the border. With Covid, that prospect has become all but impossible anyway.

I think I would use them again for international shipping, but if one of the other two big vendors reservations

rhm

I had that problem with eBay. I wanted the part in question, saw that it was "out for delivery" so i waited an extra hour at my office. It didn't turn up. I checked the tracking again, saw it was now "delivered." Oh, great. Checked the other offices on my floor; no one had my package.

After waiting a few days i opened a case on eBay. Ebay investigated, saw the package had been delivered, and closed the case.

So, apparently, if the package is delivered, that's the end of it. No one could tell me where it was delivered, and i couldn't prove it hadn't reached me, so end of story.

Ebay customer service said someone else in your office must have taken it. I argued no, there is no one else. Well, you can't be sure of that. Yes i can! the office is one room, with one door, and one person in it (me). Well, whatever, says eBay: it was delivered. Case closed.

Never did find the package.

RobbieTunes

And he told you this? It may be protocol to help determine what went wrong.

I’ve had mail stolen, twice. The 2nd time, I caught him. He agreed not to press charges after I agreed to same.

I sent stuff to my brother in Philly, twice, via Sears. It’s Philly, of course it didn’t get there. When the Sears employee used my Sears card to buy stuff they caught her.

I’ve had it erroneously delivered to a neighbor one block over, a preacher. After the UPS driver took me over to his house, he found it. Miracle.

Amazon now sends a picture of it, delivered.
Imagine how many dishonest people have to act for that to be their protocol.

robertorolfo

I had this happen a couple of times with items being delivered to my office in Manhattan. Marked as delivered, but nowhere to be seen. Fortunately, however, the items always magically appeared a few days later, with no explanation. Where my parents live on Long Island, however, they have had only impeccable service.

As others have mentioned the scale and scope of the work they are doing these days, with e-commerce being what it is, in truly mind boggling. Like any big organization, there are so many people involved that there are bound to be some careless or apathetic apples in the bunch. I used to live down the block from the local post office in my Queens neighborhood, which was also a "hub" location, and there were some interesting things to observe for sure. But, in my experience, the "private" carriers aren't any better. In a heavily populated area like this, you are going to see plenty of low men on the totem pole that eventually get beaten into submission by the large number of packages they deal with every day, and the less than respectful customers that are also in the mix.

I do a fair amount of shipping for my job, and I've had issues with just about everyone (and don't even get me started on moving companies/furniture delivery companies/last mile logistics providers). Some of the damage I've seen to products has been truly incredible, as in it's hard to imagine how something could have been mistreated so badly unless it was intentional.

iab

Entertaining thread, thanks to everyone.

My .02. **** happens. While one can be frustrated in the moment, after some time, that frustration goes away. I have taught myself to cut that time way way down. Lost damage bike/frame/part? Honestly, who gives a ****? It is a hobby and should bring you joy, nothing else. Face it, any money lost was being pissed away on a luxury, was it really "lost"?

Billions of packages/letters are shipped every day. Why dwell on the exception? It's absolutely no fun.

robertorolfo

Wait, what charges could he have brought up? Are we missing part of this story?

conspiratemus1

We aren't so backward that the mail stagecoach gets robbed regularly. I've imported ~70 C&V items this year, about 3/4 from the U.S.,, most from eBay but some directly from the retailer's own on-line store. Not a single thing has been lost and only one failed to meet the estimated arrival date. The one thing that was late was "delivered to Canada" but not "in Canada", i.e., held in Customs as I explained earlier. Before it arrived, I e-mailed the seller to explain that's why I hadn't left feedback yet -- I thought it used to be that for small sellers, eBay didn't release money until the recipient left feedback. He thanked me but said, "Oh, Canada never loses anything. I'm sure it'll turn up soon", which it did about 3 days later. Sure, if you export hundreds of packages a month, you might start to see a few losses. Whether they'd be lost at a higher rate than shipping hundreds a month domestically, I wouldn't know.


Now, granted, it is more of a nuisance to ship to foreign countries, more paperwork and you have to go to the post office (at least we do). So we expect and accept that you will charge more for shipping to us.

But it's not for fear of loss that Canadians with access to U.S. addresses will try to get you to ship there. Rather, it's because we can then smuggle the goods into Canada without incurring the Harmonized (fed+prov.) Sales Tax, a type of VAT, which applies on all purchases brought in or mailed in legally, just as if they were purchased in a Canadian store -- in Ontario this would be 13% of the Canadian-dollar value and typically exceeds what would have been charged in duty before NAFTA (or USMCA or whatever it's called now.) Canadians used to drive over the border all the time for cheap gas, cigarettes, and liquor, (doesn't even have to be duty-free to be cheaper); a quick side trip to the post-office or mail-box store would be no trouble. The usual dangers to you of shipping to an address that's not the same as the credit-card billing address are underlined.

mgopack42 

My guess is that there might have been some form of corporal punishment, or exuberant persuasion involved in the conversation!

conspiratemus1

Hospitals have a list of "Never" events: Exceptions that must never happen, and need never happen. Operating on the wrong patient, operating on the wrong body part, and accidental transfusion of mis-matched blood are three examples. (Deliberate transfusion of mis-matched blood can be necessary to save a life, and is actually safer than a sloppy attempt to provide matched blood.) Things that we wish never happened but still do, sometimes with serious harm, are either not fully preventable by the current state of knowledge or would require so much process control that necessary patient care would be delayed. (e.g., requiring two nurses to double-check every drug given to a patient would break down if there is only one RN on duty at night in a nursing home, say. So we teach the one nurse to be really really careful, with checklists and the like. But robot drug-dispensers do reduce errors, because we invested in that technology to improve safety.)


A long way down the list of priorities that society needs to fix is making it impossible for a postal worker to toss a package addressed to Canada into the China bin. Canada is America's #1 trading partner, China must be #2 . It's a good bet that half the foreign-destined mail flowing into JFK is going to one of those two countries. That it doesn't get mixed up more often tells me the system and its operators do, as you say, work properly almost all the time. When it doesn't, that's what insurance is for.

rhm

Horror stories asides, I am sure either francophile or @randyjawa will get the stem, probably before Christmas. If not, i will send Randy mine as soon as i find a suitable (English, 1950’s) replacement. The bike will be finished before the last snowfall is plowed from the streets of Thunder Bay.

bikingshearer 

This is far more likely a management issue than an employee issue. It is possible to encourage employees to use judgment and initiative to solve a problem for a client or a customer. It is also possible to systematically beat that kind of thinking out of each and every employee. In far more places than not, the employees reflect the mindset of the system put in place by management, for good and for ill.

Lemond1985

The though has crossed my mind. But I think if a customer started doing that, it might not be received very well.