Rant on shipping

[reb]

Mom received a postcard that said it has been 31 years since your last dental visit... the kicker is the name on the postcard was not Mom but previous owner!

I was taught to use the notation "Care Of" when sending mail to a non-resident...

That might have saved me some hassle a few years ago. I sent a check to a name I didn't recognize, but to the PO Box of the woman who sent me the bill for the fruit I ordered. The bureaucrat who runs our local post office held that letter until I happened to ask about it. The same bureaucrat puts mail in my box addressed to someone else, but with my box number.

 

[Jstpssng]

To explain why some emails are received saying item mailed when they aren't mailed yet. I mail many items daily. I put them in my mailbox and the mailman picks them up when he passes. On Saturdays he passes about 11 AM. When I get orders online I usually mail them within 30 minutes but if the orders come on Saturday after 11 the mailman will not pick them up till about 4 PM on Monday. They sit in the post office to be scanned until Tuesday and then tracking marks them picked up. When they pay with PayPal, then PayPal will email them as soon as I print the label that they were mailed so they might get the letter saying they were mailed on Saturday but tracking will show they were picked up on Tuesday even though I mailed them 30 minutes after I received the order.

That's one reason. The other apparently is because if the vendor lists it as "shipped" they can take the money from my CC. It's not at all uncommon to see an order marked "shipped" which doesn't actually appear at the depot for a week or more. i.E., place an order on Saturday the 3rd; it might set in que until Monday the 12th before actually getting shipped. That's one reason that I sometimes use PayPal... somebody took my money for repair parts for an old outboard, then I never heard another word. I can be pretty tolerant about waiting for things... until you take my money. Then I want something in return. At least give me an actual shipping date; if you can't do that. take the time to answer my emails. That particular vendor was probably a small back room type business and was just swamped with orders; but when they didn't even acknowledge my emails two weeks after taking my money, I went to my higher power... PayPal. My order shipped the day after that and all was good, yet with a little communication they could have done what they are good at, and I would have known that I just had to be patient.

 

[Doofy]

Today we received a Christmas Card from a good friend that forgot to add our names to the address. It was just addressed to Mr and Mrs.

 

[Jstpssng]

Today we received a Christmas Card from a good friend that forgot to add our names to the address. It was just addressed to Mr and Mrs.

That's one advantage of having mail service which is still delivered by dog sled Sorry, I couldn't resist. Sometimes the typical stereotypes are too hard to pass up.

 

[goeduck]

Today we received a Christmas Card from a good friend that forgot to add our names to the address. It was just addressed to Mr and Mrs.

I recall my Mom sending mail to her Mom (my grandmother) with just the Grandma's name, city and state. No street address or zip code. It always got there. But then it was a big family in a small MN town where nearly everyone was related and everyone knew everyone.

 

[3Ts]

When we lived in Florida we received a letter addressed to someone we did not know. The house number was wrong, but the street name and city were right. We were the only ones who lived on the street. All we could tell was that it was mailed from the New England area from the post mark. So ???
We opened the letter. From it's contents we were able to narrow down where it should have been addressed to, so we packaged up everything including the opened envelope and a letter explaining what we knew. We received a nice letter in reply thanking us for forwarding it and that we did indeed figure out the right address. Turns out it was her mom who was getting up in years and having trouble with places.

 

[Jstpssng]

Many years ago when I was a wee lad, I visited the post office for some reason. Business was in a lull, and I remember the postmaster showing me the letter which he was processing. It had all sorts of words in a foreign language, and he pointed to a foreign zip code while explaining that it was the only reason he was able to process it, otherwise it would have landed in the dead letters file.

 

[ultrarunner]

I've seen letters sent General Delivery and every trip to cabin included a post office stop... later, learned post office no longer holds indefinitely so stopped going.

We know the family two streets over... share house number and zip code and half of each respective street names...

Would think with same letter carrier it would be caught.

 

[goeduck]

I would think with technology that if a delivery person delivered a package to the wrong address it would set off alarms in the truck. With GPS they know where the truck is (in coverage areas) and they know the package delivery address. I would think if the two did not match, it would sound an alert.

 

[dragoneggs]

Amazon set up for a Last Mile delivery center in nearby Bremerton WA this year. 950 stalls for vans. Facility at the end of a small airport here (Bremerton National Airport)

quite an impressive facility. Will be flying 737s into that 'podunk' airport soon!