small annoyances

[edenfalling]

I ordered a thing from Amazon last week, and according to USPS tracking it was delivered around 4pm on Sunday.

This is probably even true. The problem is that it was delivered to someplace other than my house.

So today I called the USPS (had to use the national 800 number since nobody at either local post office bothered to answer their phones, rrrgh) and, after fighting inconclusively with the voice recognition system which persistently refused to understand my street name, I got transferred to the line with actual human people... and then they said it would be ~an hour until anyone was free and would I like to get a callback instead of just sitting on hold.

I took the callback option, and was duly contacted. So now I have a case number and my local post office is going to look into the situation and presumably email me to explain how they fucked up and whether they can fix it or whether I'll just have to tell Amazon that the USPS fucked up and I need them to send me a replacement. *sigh*

The stuff I've been ordering from Etsy has all arrived just fine. I am inclined to think the problem is that the Sunday delivery driver is not familiar with my house, whereas the other packages have gone through the regular Monday-to-Saturday mail carrier, who knows what's what.

Comments

[violsva]

I'm impressed - when I was working in shipping I never managed to figure out how to talk to a real human being on the USPS phone system.

[edenfalling]

Apparently the secret is to live on a street whose name is phonetically very similar to another, more major, nearby street -- the system kept trying to parse my street as that other one and when I told it NO for the third time in a row it gave up and called in an actual human for help.

You'd think they'd install an option to verbally spell one's street name to prevent glitches like that, but I guess they haven't closed that loophole yet.

[redwolf]

You spoke to a human at USPS? Wow? I only managed to rate a human from border farce when they called back in confusion over why I was asking them to release something different to what they're attempting to steal.

I have the phonetic street name thing too. Usually it's not an issue. Last Friday was the first time I've have the parcel delivery guy at the front door with a parcel for other street. I guess he's new. Or the sender typoed the address.

I have other parcel issues, so I send everything to Mum's place. This was not a problem until DHL let their work experience kid organise the parcel run. Mum's house is on the corner, but it faces the wrong street. This has never been an issue for 40 odd years. It seems that work experience kid, instead of asking the driver who knows the area, plotted out the delivery run using Google Street View. He refused to delivery the parcel stating the house didn't exist. Seems Street View managed to catch the neighbours house at the point it had been bulldozed and DHL moron was too stupid to realise corner house was the one he actually needed to delivery to and not the vacant lot. I spent way too long arguing this point with the idiot before he decided to delivery it to a local parcel collection point instead. Idiots!

I don't know what they're like now and my experience has been from an overseas address, also prior to the explosion of third party retailers on Amazon, but Amazon have been pretty good about replacements for me. Good luck tracking down your shiny object.

[edenfalling]

The two issues I occasionally run into are delivery drivers who try to drop off packages either several blocks away on my street (by losing a digit from my house number) or at the correct house number but on the wrong street (that phonetic similarity striking again).

Technically I write my address wrong -- I use ####X Whatever St. instead of #### Whatever St, Apt. X -- because that's how I have it on my drivers license to save space, but I have never run into a human who didn't understand what I was doing there even though it gives computers conniptions. I wonder if the Sunday delivery service uses a different sorting algorithm from the normal weekday service?

[jedibuttercup]

That happened to me last year. I tend to get things delivered to work because I live in an apartment block where only USPS will deliver; UPS will just stick a note on the door and send it to the nearest non-USPS postal place that's only open 8-5, which means lots of shenanigans trying to get my package. Easier to just have all services send to my work, since you can't choose which your seller uses. Anyway, so I have my amazon settings firmly checked for NO WEEKENDS OR HOLIDAYS.

So of course I ordered something on ~Dec 27 last year, and one of their holiday/weekend delivery folks not only ignored those settings, but decided "not taking it back" when they discovered of course the office was closed (on NEW YEAR's DAY), and just marked it delivered. After much arguing with USPS, Amazon finally just resent the books. And then, three weeks later, the owners of the house behind my office came back from vacation and came over scratching their foreheads, because a package addressed to me had been left on their back porch! *facepalm*

[edenfalling]

*headdesk* Yeah, that sounds about right.

At my job, we receive a LOT of packages every day, since that's a courtesy service we provide for our tenants -- the idea is that all the packages come to the rental office where they can be checked in, securely stored, and the tenants notified by email, instead of disorganized mountains of packages just lying around in the building lobbies or on the sidewalk outside the smaller/older building doors. Because of that, we have notices VERY CLEARLY POSTED on every building at the door and/or mailbox saying "Do not leave packages here, all package deliveries for [address] come to [other address]."

Our regular delivery drivers are very good about this, but every now and then we get a fill-in driver (or, recently, an entirely new shipping company, aka LaserShip) who cannot seem to read for beans. And then packages get lost. And tenants get mad. And we get really annoyed. *sigh*

Anyway, the USPS never responded to my case file, but they did successfully find and deliver my lost package yesterday afternoon, so things worked out fine this time. :)