Thursday, April 21, 2016

Why I tell anyone wanting to mail me something "don't send it via USPS"

Wife ordered a box of gothery from some online shop (overseas, I think). Instead of sending it via FedEx or UPS, they sent it via registered mail. Wife got notification that the item was out for delivery, today.

Wife waits all afternoon for the postie to show up. He does, but, "no package." She asks him if he had any packages waiting in his truck and is informed that there was a package that had a bad code on it that was back at the substation - that she could go down and check to see if that was her package.
Wife walks down to the substation. Upon asking where her package was, they informed her that it had been delivered around 14:00. Wife had been sitting out on her sun-chair on the front porch from about 13:30 to nearly 16:00. No package had been delivered. So, she asks _where_ it was delivered to and who signed for the supposed delivery. She's informed that they won't be able to know until the carrier gets back to the station.

As it stands, Amazon already has it in their records to not use any shipping methods that leverage USPS. Thus, no USPS-direct nor things like FedEx SmartPost. They agreed to this notation after the third so-shipped multi-$100 order disappeared without a trace.
All of my bills and important documents are either delivered via email or are sent in concert with an email notification of pending delivery.

Simply put, if things are sent via USPS, there's about a 70% chance that they'll arrive ...or, at least, arrive on time. Usually, when they arrive late, it's because they were mis-delivered and the recipient was nice enough to bring it over or was nice enough to give it back to the postie on his next trip. But mostly, they just disappear, never to be seen again.

Seriously: how fucking hard is it to deliver mail. Is it really so fucking hard to read the entire goddamned address?