Shipping and Murphys Law

[dfmacliam]

At least they shown you the itinerary.. Kilt came out with stamps from all over the country..lol dang that Mr Murphy and his Law......lol

[The Wizard of BC]

I don't want to hijack this thread but thought some of you would like to hear of a similar experience of one of my Kilts.

I shipped a Kilt to Austin TX.
I sent the owner his tracking no. and following it myself everything seemed to be going fine.
Finally the tracking said Delivered. So I figured OK, unless I hear from him with a problem all is well.

Three months later a customer from Stockton CA comes into the shop with a Garbage bag. Inside the bag is this terrible mess of dirt, tire tracks, cardboard, fabric, and tape.

It seems that the customer from Stockton was driving home one evening and saw a box laying in the road being run over by every passing car.
He said that he thought it looked similar to the box his Kilt had come in with the Canadian flag tape so he stopped and picked it up.

You guessed it. It was the Kilt that was supposed to have arrived in TX three months before.

The customer in Texas had never contacted me to inquire about his Kilt and I thought the Kilt had be delivered.

Don't you wish that that box could talk?

[sydnie7]

[snip]
Don't you wish that that box could talk?

It might finally answer the question of why the kilt crossed the road!

(or tried to. . .)



Maybe USPS is contracting out to airline baggage handlers? I've had some bags travel and be treated like that!

Great stories all.

[BroosterB1]

Don't you wish that that box could talk?

Is that what you would call Road Kilt? <ducking and running away>

[hospitaller]

You guessed it. It was the Kilt that was supposed to have arrived in TX three months before.

The customer in Texas had never contacted me to inquire about his Kilt and I thought the Kilt had be delivered.

Don't you wish that that box could talk?

Yeah, so, what was the end of your story?

Did you delivered again, what did the customer say of all this?

.

[gilmore]

And the USPS customer service people are the worst! Indifferent, rude, insulting, full of excuses for shortcomings. It seems that having government jobs that they can't be fired from, they just don't care, for the most part. I have yet to encounter even one who accepted responsibility for a problem and went out of his way to help.

Correction: USPS is no longer exactly a governmental entity.

[RockyR]

And the USPS customer service people are the worst! Indifferent, rude, insulting, full of excuses for shortcomings. It seems that having government jobs that they can't be fired from, they just don't care, for the most part. I have yet to encounter even one who accepted responsibility for a problem and went out of his way to help.

Agreed... their CS skills over the phone are virtually non-existant and GETTING to a live person is a challenge in itself!

The ONLY 2 things that I will say in DEFENSE of the Post Office is this:

1. 99.9% of the time, they have delivered our packages with no nproblems (which is more than I can say for DHL, FedEx, and UPS). One of my favorite sayings... 'if you don't make a mistake, you don't need good customer service to fix the problem'. The issue becomes that .1%

2. They're much less expensive than their competitors (from what I've been quoted from each company). When sending a couple dozen packages a day, that really adds up.


BTW... for what it's worth, I've found a good way to get results is to go to your local post office and speak (NICELY... realize it wasn't THEM that made the mistake) to the clerk or postmaster. Having them help you wade through the sea of red tape will sometimes yield FANTASTIC results. Generally, they're a little better at helping than the phone maze you have to go through to get information about a lost package you already know from their website... hahaha

[gilmore]

....BTW... for what it's worth, I've found a good way to get results is to go to your local post office and speak (NICELY... realize it wasn't THEM that made the mistake) to the clerk or postmaster. Having them help you wade through the sea of red tape will sometimes yield FANTASTIC results. Generally, they're a little better at helping than the phone maze you have to go through to get information about a lost package you already know from their website... hahaha

That hasn't been my experience at all.

I have had more than one thing mailed to me that wasn't delivered. All my politeness resulted in was being shuttled from one person who knew nothing and refused to take responsibility to another, again and again.

The worst was a misplaced registered letter that contained a check I had written and was being returned to me. The original carrier falsely said that I wasn't home when he tried to deliver it. Then it just disappeared at the post office. No one could locate it, nor was anyone particularly interested. I was advised to call all sorts of people myself to track it down, all of whom were both clueless and uninterested. I wound up haivng to put a stop payment on the check and make a bank to bank wire transfer, a much more expensive proposition.

[The Guy in the Kilt at UC]

And the USPS customer service people are the worst! Indifferent, rude, insulting, full of excuses for shortcomings. It seems that having government jobs that they can't be fired from, they just don't care, for the most part. I have yet to encounter even one who accepted responsibility for a problem and went out of his way to help.

Correction: USPS is no longer exactly a governmental entity.

I suppose all this will change when they adopt kilts in the uniform code?

[Graywolf]

Since this thread seems to be tales of woe with deliveries:

Sent a package UPS from VA to MASS.
After two weeks with no repsonse contacted vendor to whom it was sent.
No package.
Tracked package to Mass. Inquired - package had been damaged. It was being returned.
Tracked package back to Richmond. Waited two days. NO package.
Inquired. Damaged package had been damaged and returned to MASS.
After two days inquired -package had been disposed of. The story was the package had been disposed of when first damaged and never retruned to Richmond - some employee was tinkering with the system to make it look like it was travelling back to VA, to cover up the damage.

Gave up.