Shipping woes

Soocom1

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So i ordered a number of items through ebay.

For the last three years or so i have seen a very noticeable drop in quality of service with the various delivery companies including the postal service.

But this past week just takes the cake.

Now granted i am working with a P.O. Box and the post office likes things neat and tidy.

But I have never had any problems with delivery of items that have the physical address rather than the P.O. Box. I assume this is due to the people int he local office knowing who I am.

OK, so far so good.

Well three weeks ago I ordered an item from the Ukraine. Because I purchased several different items at the same time, one of which refused a P.O. Box, I used the physical address.

Well the part from the Ukraine came in, and was actually in the post office being handled by the personnel.

Suddenly the tracking system says that there is a delivery problem and the address is wrong.
Voila.. No notice of delivery, no curtsy aspect, nothing.
They slap undeliverable on the package and send the thing right back to the Ukraine.

I try an intercept notice and they in turn put INTO THE PO BOX that they cannot deliver because of the WRONG ADDRESS and the carrier according to the post office DOESN'T KNOW THE ADDRESS!
So how did they know where to put the notice?

Keep in mind this has NEVER happened before (at least to my knowledge, but now I wonder)

Then with some of the other carriers, they transport them from one end of the country to another. FedUp plays this game of transporting packages to Commerce City CO, (I am in NM) and parking the various packages at that lot for 3-5 days doing nothing, while regular transport trucking is shipping stuff up and down daily.

In one instance, it was sitting in CO Monday morning, and later that day, moved it to Texas, then BACK to CO in the same day.

In another instance, they actually shipped it to Albuquerque, then shipped it BACK to CO the next day, then BACK to Albuquerque the day after that.

Is it me or is it the poor education, lack of couth, ethics and morals or just good 'ol Beelzebub doing this?
 
Don't get me started lol

I live in a condo complex and my carrier is so bad we actually have clips attached to the mail shed so people can hang up mail that isn't theirs that got put into their box. I have called our postmaster several times about it.

I needed a replacement social security card and guess what happened to it when it got delivered? That's right, it got put into somebody else's mailbox. They opened it, saw what it was, then taped the envelope back up and taped it to my door.

I sold a Nikon D40 on ebay around the holidays. A day after it was sold the buyer showed up as "not a registered user" so I had no way of contacting them. The tracking showed it never arrived. If it never arrived, I will need to refund the buyer. I put in a ticket with USPS. According to the tracking number, it got to a post office within 5 miles of its destination then the local postmaster called me and said the code he was getting back about it means there wasn't sufficient address information on the package. I said, "How can it get within 5 miles of its destination if it didn't have the address on it?" He said, "That's a really good question, I have to do some digging on this."

So, he got back to me and said there was nothing he could do, he's talked to the carrier on that route, everybody in the post office, yadda yadda, the package is just gone, it vanished and we don't know how or why. He told me to file an insurance* claim So I did, and the response I got was, "We can't complete your claim because we have determined the package was delivered." So I call the local postmaster back and tell him about that and he said that probably what happened was the package was delivered but the carrier forgot to scan it when it was delivered. UGH...

Me: I thought you talked to the carrier?
Him: The holidays are crazy and he couldn't remember if he delivered it when I asked about it.
Me: Why didn't you just have him knock on the guy's door and ask if the guy got the package?
Him: Yeah that would been a good thing to do.
Me: *facepalm

Use the USPS at your own risk and always, ALWAYS, get insurance. Or better yet, just pay a little more and use a better carrier.

*as a side note, the insurance claim process is a hassle too. You can't do it online. You have to have some secret "customer affairs" phone number, then they mail you the claim forms and you mail them back certified and you wait. I hate the USPS.
 
I have a PO Box too... What changed is that 'The' Post Office, not ours locally, has our Postmaster put a sticker on the envelope that says to notify sender and it won't be delivered if there's no PO Box number, yadda yadda.

I've used what was always considered to be our dual address, street and PO Box. What seems to cause problems for all of us here is the Post Office dropped that and just uses the PO Box. What they don't seem to consider is that we need to use both for mail and other deliveries, service to your home (utilities), etc.

We haven't figured out a good solution here... I don't buy much that uses the Post Office for shipping and often shop online where shipping is UPS or FedEx (and not their SurePost and SmartPost). Unless it's a small package/envelope that will fit in the PO Box. I haven't done much internationally...
 
Well they did it a second time.
But this time I had requested before they sent it out for delivery that they hold the package and I would pick it up.
they still rejected it.
 
hate the USPS.

I had a four-week battle with USPSt on a Nikon 85mm f/1.4 AF-D lens... as SOON as USPS tracking told the "buyer: that the lens had been shipped, his PayPal payment was invalidated within about an hour. I called him, and told him that e-Bay showed his PayPal as having been declined for the $575, and that I had put a "stop delivery/return to sender" order in. Instead of immediately returning the parcel to me, it got stuck in what one USPS person called, "a feedback loop". Several times the parcel was re-routed to within 150 miles of me, then it was flown back across the country...31 days after the nightmare began, then finally got to package back to me.I watched this on-line and filled out on-line specialty forms, which was a hassle,and which took a lot of time and effort to complete.

At one point,on the third go-around as I recall, I called the USPS in the city that had the package,which USPS listed as "ready for delivery" and spent about 10 calls, none of which were answered....I was really afraid USPS would by accident, deliver the package to the scumbag who had tried to scam me out of the item by using USPS tracking to his advantage. It was an eye-opening case of just how badly-managed the day to day operations of the USPS have become.
 
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Not surprised. I spent/wasted about 8 hours on my ordeal because the local guy didn't think to just knock on the door and ask my customer if he got the package. When I was asking just as a customer, nobody lifted a finger but when that insurancey money was on the line, you bet your ass they figured it out with the quickness. It's a joke.
 
Well they did it again.
The third in a series of packages I was suppose to receive was shipped back.

I did write a letter to my Rep. but I expect no results given the political ideology of this person and how the Gov. seems to look out for itself.

I honestly do not know what to do with this bunch.
 
I came here to post that I just had another as well. I sold a board game on ebay and the tracking shows it wasn't delivered, just like the last one. Well, this time I was able to message the guy and he said he got it safe and sound. The tracking stills shows that it wasn't delivered. smh
 
I came here to post that I just had another as well. I sold a board game on ebay and the tracking shows it wasn't delivered, just like the last one. Well, this time I was able to message the guy and he said he got it safe and sound. The tracking stills shows that it wasn't delivered. smh
Failure to complete paperwork/computer work is a problem that has become endemic.
 
Failure to complete paperwork/computer work is a problem that has become endemic.

Totally agree. The thing that slays me about the post office is they have ONE JOB. Delivering mail and packages and they can't do it right. I realize things happens and no company will be 100% perfect, but dang, having trouble 10-20% of the time? That's been my experience. And the mistakes get magnified when the mail is something valuable like, you know, my social security number!!!! lol
 
Failure to complete paperwork/computer work is a problem that has become endemic.

Totally agree. The thing that slays me about the post office is they have ONE JOB. Delivering mail and packages and they can't do it right. I realize things happens and no company will be 100% perfect, but dang, having trouble 10-20% of the time? That's been my experience. And the mistakes get magnified when the mail is something valuable like, you know, my social security number!!!! lol
dont laugh.
The USPS screwed up a delivery because one currer was on vacation and one of my CC bills (still with the numbers on it in those days) wound up in the wrong box.
Not by accident, but because the replacement who put the mail in apparently didn't like doing his job so it got shoved in a separate box with other's mail.
well, go figure.
The CC got hacked and I wound up with a bad cc number when they said I tried to purchase about $800 worth of herbs in New Jersey.
 
All I know is make sure you're using your PO Box number.

We've been notified that if it's not on mail or packages, they will be returned. (Ours puts a sticker on it to give you notice to notify the sender or change your address with them.)

I find the tracking to sometimes be accurate but often seems to be at least a day behind; a small package will be at the Post Office but doesn't show it's here yet.

I guess there are advantages to small towns; once I had something go to a Post Office in another small town (because online I used to get the 'did you mean _____?' and I'd think nooo...). Their postmaster called me and when I said what my zip is and where I lived she said oh! I can send it to your post office. Which she did.

Then again the big city can be an advantage in getting something mailed out fast; a neighborhood where I did home visits has the main complex there and the 24 hour Post Office. Not that it was open all hours but somebody was in there doing something because those mailboxes got the mail picked up every hour.
 
I came here to post that I just had another as well. I sold a board game on ebay and the tracking shows it wasn't delivered, just like the last one. Well, this time I was able to message the guy and he said he got it safe and sound. The tracking stills shows that it wasn't delivered. smh

This was almost a month ago.

Just thought I'd update this. At the same time I wrote the recipient, I wrote the post office to get the ball rolling in case the guy didn't get the package. Well, the post office wrote me back yesterday (!!!) that they got my request and haven't located my package but they are working on it. In an ideal world, I would just hit "reply" and let them know he already got it, but I know it won't work that way so I'll just let them figure out that they already delivered it. Imagine the person hours that have to be wasted because some carrier didn't scan the package when it was delivered... Unreal... And I guarantee nobody thought, "Well, why don't we just go ask the intended recipient if he got it." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

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