Tag Archives: post office

United Parcel Service: Going Halfway Is OK By Us

10 Mar

March 10, 2014

mail innovations logo

The United Parcel Service (UPS) has a brilliant new delivery plan that is guaranteed to save them a fortune. It is ridiculously simple. They take your package and do not deliver it. Genius! They call it Mail Innovations and despite the name, it is not innovative. What other service does that? Why, the United States Post Office, that’s who!

And that’s the problem.

I ordered a book from Barnes and Noble on February 20th. As a member, I get free 1-3 day shipping. Great! So far, so good. This was a Thursday and on Friday the 21st I was informed by email that UPS had picked up my package and the estimated delivery was Monday, February 24th. When it did not arrive on Tuesday I followed the link they sent me and tracked it. Or to be more accurate, I tried to track it. The trail led to a dead end.

On Friday the 21st, the UPS not only picked up but delivered my book… to a US Post Office sorting facility in Staten Island, and not, as you would expect, my home in Brooklyn.  It turns out that UPS has a shipping service called Mail Innovations in which they pick up your package, zoom it across country, and deliver it not to you, but to your local post office, and they make the final delivery.

Sound stupid, right? I live in a large apartment building and UPS trucks stop here at a set time every day, sometimes twice a day. We are actually part of the UPS’ regular route.

And also, you may have realized that my local post office is not in Staten Island, another borough on the other side of Gravesend Bay, across the Verrazano Bridge, and most definitely not 8 blocks away.

Mail Innovations is an unholy alliance. UPS has generally been reliable, and the post office has been as dependable as your average election year promise. I always have trouble getting deliveries from them and usually go to the post office to complain. No good can come of Mail Innovations.

So when the book did not arrive on Tuesday I knew I had to go to the post office. I tracked the package on the post office site and they had the package arriving in Staten Island and, for the next three days, nothing. No movement. And on Wednesday, still no movement. This was four days of limbo, and so far I had been waiting five days for my guaranteed 1-3 day shipping. (I did not count Sunday.)

Average US Post Office facility.

Average US Post Office facility.

I went to the post office with a printout of the tracking, such as it was, and what did I learn? Nothing. They looked all over the post office and it was not there. They then sent me to the automated machine to track it and it spit out the same information- nothing for three days. This was, I must tell you, the same information they found when they looked it up themselves.  They then told me to call an 800 number and I could get more information.

No I could not. The 800 number was automated and even less help then the post office tools. I then wrote a complaint on the website, sent an email to my local post office to complain, and lo and behold, the next day all kinds of shipping info became available. None of it good. After it finally left Staten Island, it arrived in Brooklyn, bounced around three different zip codes and two sorting facilities, and twice was in a nearby (but not my zip code) post office before bouncing away to the edges of the borough.

And then, on Saturday, March 1st, over a week after it left UPS and was handed over to the post office, my guaranteed 1-3 day delivery package was delivered to me.

Mail Innovations, like a chain, is only as strong as its weakest link. And as usual, the US Post Office is the weakest link.

Thanks a lot UPS.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

(NEW!) Going Postal 2014!

2 Jan

NEW January 2, 2014

I have the laziest mailman.

Now a few thoughts may be racing through your mind:
1- “No, I have the laziest mailman.”
2- “Isn’t ‘lazy mailman’ an oxymoron?”
3- “Get on with it, Mr. Blog.”

My household gets packages delivered a couple of time a week. (Is it drugs? Are we getting illegal drugs? C’mon, I would not admit to receiving illegal drugs through the mail in this blog. Wink wink.) We know what time the mail comes and even if we have to rush out of the apartment due to fire we stay inside and brave death by smoke inhalation because if we miss the mailman, we’ll have to the post office to pick up the package and who wants to go there? The post office is the home base of… postal workers!

Well my mailman has gotten lazy lately and instead of, you know, delivering packages and doing his job, he just leaves a slip in the mailbox and makes me go to pick it up.

That is not this story.

My brother had sent me a package for my birthday, December 11th. The estimated delivery date was December 8th. I only knew about this later. Well, the 8th came and went, no package. The 11th came and went, no package. The 20th came and went, no package, but by now my brother decided to track the package. “What,” you may ask, “did he wait nine days for?” Good question. I have no idea. Anyway, he went to Amazon, where he ordered it, and found that they shipped it via FedEx. They claimed that they tried to deliver it on the 8th but no one was home. LIE! I was home all day on the 8th and I would have gotten the package had they tried to deliver it. Which they did not. FedEx further said that they left it at my local post office, which is where the fun begins.

Good job on FedEx, by the way. Tools.

Did my post office:
1- Try to deliver the package? No.
2- Leave me a slip telling me they had the package and I should pick it up? No.
3- Put I in a big pile of boxes and forget about it? Yes. Surprised?

So the next day my brother and I trekked down to the post office to get the package.

famous american mailmen

Depending on your sensibility, please pick either the POLITE POLITICALLY CORRECT sentence or the BLUNT BUT ACCURATE sentence.

POLITE POLITICALLY CORRECT: The demographics of my neighborhood have changed over the years, so that there is a diverse array of languages spoken here.

BLUNT BUT ACCURATE: No one around here speaks English anymore.

I went to the post office and, after a not too long wait, a miracle in itself, I was at the window and explained to the woman on the other side that FedEx left a package here for me a week ago. I gave her my name and address.

She asked for my tracking number. I told her I only had the FedEx tracking number. She said “tracking number!” I told her it was a FedEx number, not from the post office. She said “tracking number!” so what the hell, I gave it to her.

She left and went to look for the box. After almost ten minutes she came back and said something to the effect of “knad weh [quj’hvuipoh guiah,” which, with some gesticulations and doodles, my brother and I correctly interpreted to mean “this is not our tracking number.”

I was very angry- no, let’s be honest, I was pissed off. She then, with the same sort of proto-English and gestures, told me to put the information into the computerized postal kiosk and get the information from there. I already knew the outcome but for the sake of owning the moral high ground I did so and of course, it did not recognize the tracking number.

I went back to the window and explained it all to her again, emphasizing that it WAS NOT A POST OFFICE TRACKING NUMBER. She then, and I swear this is true, took out a ruler and used it to write the numbers in a nice straight line. Next, using the ruler, she grouped them in sets of four. Lastly, counting with, yes, the ruler, she came to the conclusion that there were, and I’ll translate it for you, “not enough numbers.” This tracking number had 16 numbers while the USPS tracking numbers use 18.

You know why there were not enough numbers? BECAUSE IT WAS NOT A POST OFFICE TRACKING NUMBER.

But, being a brave little brain cell, she went back to look for the package again and, believe it or not, almost another ten minutes later, she found it and hold on to your hat, it was in a stack directly in my line of sight. I was looking at it the whole time.

But wait! There’s more!

When FedEx passed it off to the post office, the post office added their own tracking number. They created that number by taking the 16 FedEx numbers and adding 2 more to the end.

In other words, the postal worker had:
My name
My address
The first 16 out of 18 tracking numbers

So why was it so hard to find the box?????? Did she see it but, with only a 99.9% match of information, decide it was not the right package? What is so special about the last two numbers? I can only assume that that woman is a total and utter ass.

I got the package and as I left she tried to tell me that next time I had to have the right tracking numbers. I wasn’t sticking around to listen but I was pissed off so I turned back and yelled (yes, I raised my voice) “none of that explains why this was sitting here for a week and no one tried to deliver it or even let us know it was here!”

I hate the post office.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Newer Entries →