I had the same experience buying a cat water fountain on Amazon. They sent it via their own courier in the retail box, which is thinner than a cereal box, instead of putting it in a shipping box. It arrived busted open, missing pieces, and with the fountain cracked down the side. They wanted it returned before they’d replace it, too, so I taped the crap out of the box and sent it back. They sent the replacement the same way. I gave up and asked for a refund after that, went and bought something else at PetSmart or Petco.
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They track a bunch of metrics for each post office, and the management seems to get upset when those metrics are bad, enough to take it out on customers. The PM for a small retail post office near me would get very upset if anyone dropped off a package with the wrong origin zip code on the label (e.g. their home zip instead of the post office’s zip). Those reports probably factor into those metrics, but with nobody acting on the individual responses to improve them.
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Target CS was great about the experience tho. I sent the rep pictures while we were on the phone of the box and he issued a replacement right away and said he’d try to intercept the dispatch and request it in a better box. The replacement shipped via FedEx instead of UPS and in the original dual pack Lego box with just one removed. Arrived in good shape.
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Seller has said they will make it right if it doesn’t show up in 2-3 days.
It’s only $12 but I am so sick of my local mail delivery.
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My husband sends out a lot of small packages as part of his Etsy business, and receives a lot of them as well. These are generally packed in a 9x12 Tyvek envelope. More and more frequently we have been seeing packages circulating all sorts of places they shouldn’t be (including heading out to some random place after making it to the local delivery zip code). Here’s the interesting thing: after the required minimum time has passed we file a missing mail report through the postal website. Almost immediately the “lost” package is correctly routed and it gets correctly delivered within a couple days.
I have a theory about what’s happening: somehow the package experiences a bad scan that sends it into an endless loop of circulation. When the missing mail report is filed, it flags the package to be routed off the automatic sorting system into a manual sorting bin where actual human eyes have to look at it. They take one look and say “Oh this package goes to Missouri, not Montana” and send it on its correct way.
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Everything turned out OK, it was just, “one of those, moments”. A while back, I ordered a $13,000.00 item from Amazon. I have stuff sent to work because there is always someone around during business hours to receive and Amazon said that someone HAD to be there to receive this one. No problem, right? I get to work at 8:00 and check to see when it was coming, and it said it was delivered at 5:00am! Amazon has never delivered anything before noon any other time, and Amazon has our business hours noted. I went to the front desk and our receptionist said it was outside the front door when she arrived at 7:00 and she brought it in. The Amazon delivery log said it was handed to the receptionist.
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My wife read me something she read online the other day. It said, “If liars’ pants really did catch fire, the news would be a lot more entertaining to watch.”
My response was, “Life would be lot more interesting and we would have a lot less liars.” Sometimes it is just too easy for people to lie for their own convenience; especially if there is no direct cost to them.
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I had swimming trunks with flames and the at-the-time girl my boss was with took great pleasure in proclaiming “liar liar pants on fire” every time I wore them. It was fine, she was nice. (My boss, not so much…)
I left them in Hawaii. No idea how, I’m not careless like that.
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Cudo ate my laptop charger this morning. Ordered a new one from AMZ, was in my garage 3 hrs later.
Still no wiper bladed the USPS says were delivered on Saturday.
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I think you’re right.
On the USPS tracking page, there’s also a “Text & Email Updates” section where you can sign up to have all scan events emailed to you.
On more than one occasion, a package has gone without any scans for days (longer than it’d take to drive even coast to coast), but about a day after I sign up for email updates on that package, it suddenly gets scanned and sent along to wherever it was supposed to go.
I came to the same conclusion, and whether it’s superstition or not, I now always sign up for email alerts when a package I’ve shipped to a customer seems to be missing. They’ve gotten delivered shortly after 100% of the time I’ve done it. I imagined the same thing, that when I sign up for alerts on a package with no scan activity in days, someone gets notified and they go find and manually sort that package.
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I am subscribed and the notifications are often simply false.
I have confronted the local PM and also the next station up and they all deny it, despite me having evidence.
When it works, it works - I ordered something this morning that was delivered 3hrs later, and the notifications were fine. Still no sign of the wiper blades that were supposedly delivered on Saturday.
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Had a lost eBay package a few years back. Just so happened to be a graphics card at the time. Wasn’t actually lost according to USPS. They claim it got delivered. I don’t know where ‘cause it wasn’t my house.
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The sort scans on the way to your post office aren’t going to be false even if your local mail carrier is lying about delivering things. The packages have to reach your PO before they can use their hand scanner to mismark them.
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Nope. Simply not true. I had hard evidence of that on multiple occasions, and brought it to the attention of the local management - who just shrugged it off.
As I stated earlier, I was part of the IBM “mail quality” team for several years. The scanning was simply inaccurate, many times. Whatever system they used was just plain broken. Probably still is, but they shut down the program a couple of years ago. I am not exaggerating when I say I was supposed to have received probably over 100 certified mail pieces in that time, that were never delivered to my door. The carrier would tear off the card. I would get emails from IBM asking if I had received them, as the card was never returned.
This is my local experience, but it applied when I was still married, at my ex’s place. The carriers there would not even drive up to the house, they would toss packages out on the street.
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I think we’re having a miscommunication. I’m talking with cynd11 about mail that’s getting lost at the sender facility or a sort facility. If your carrier is tearing off cards or marking packages as delivered without delivering them, that means it made it all the way to your local post office already.
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I replied directly to your previous comment. I can only share my experience.
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You could have a banana plantation on the slopes of Mt. Erebus!
When my replacement Pro arrived on July 23 by UPS—- I literally put my hand in the box and touched the machine.
After touching the machine through that side —-I immediately thought this machine is going to be total garbage.
Don’t judge a book by its cover. The inside was in pristine condition after I finished opening the box. I did send this picture to support to show how the Glowforge Arrived.
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Looking how Glowforge’s packing engineering has evolved over time has been an education in itself.
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