I think the first mistake was him ordering something off an ad on Facebook. It was a special kind of knife he likes, and had owned before, but it "disappeared" from the house before we were packing to move north. (Yeah, we're pretty sure how, who and why. Other things took that same hike at the same time. )
This order was from a company in Italy, and he sent his payment online, something less than $40. I tried not to tell him he should have looked for one through a reliable company, meaning a large firm which had safeguards when something doesn't show up, isn't what's ordered, or arrives dead when alive was specified. (Plants! I'm talking plants! I don't order live animals...... any more!!! Those honeybees were a long time ago, and arrived from Sears just fine. Anyway, that used to be a thing!) The reliability of feedback is a reason I used to spend so much time and money on eBay, because the people on the other end of your transaction give you a rating, and when things go wrong, the world can see it. If they've made 5 transactions and had a 40% approval rating, forget it.
He got a tracking number after a few days, in an email saying it was on its way. Tracking international orders can be interesting, especially when you see how long it takes your package to clear customs, even what port they enter through. You can see what company takes over the delivery job after it clears, what route it takes to get to you, when it's expected to show up so you can be sure to watch for the package. Sometimes you can watch while it goes wildly astray.
Most shipping companies give detailed information, especially the US Post Office. The number attached to your package is a huge, long one, and for the last ten years or so has always started with a 9. When I'm shipping out packages, say over the holidays, I can send several at one stop at the counter, and find the last numbers increase by perhaps 40 or 50 between quickly handled packages. Every number in the entire system goes through that system, so in the time it takes your clerk to accept the next of your packages, perhaps a full minute, all those other packages have entered the system from over the country. Before you leave you get a receipt strip with full info on every package. Every address and tracking number will be on it. Once home I can email each recipient, send them the tracking number, and we both can follow it through the system. Last year one package took a long detour, but we could follow it, hopefully laugh a bit, but know it was where, and hopefully guess when it might finally arrive.
The Italy package's email gave a short tracking number which had no relation to the US postal system numbers. We waited for more info, and waited some more. I was sent outside several times to check both our porches to see if it had somehow magically appeared. It hadn't, of course, or I wouldn't be bothering with this story. What kind of story is "Hey we bought something and it came, no problems"?
Well, besides short, I mean. Really, really short.
After a few weeks, he got an email claiming his package had just been delivered! Out I went. It wasn't there, not on either of our two porches. I checked our locked mail box. Not there either, nor was there a key inside to access the separate large lockers for big packages. It simply wasn't here.
He emailed the company back - no package arrived - could they provide any more info on where it was delivered to? Nope. It was delivered. Period. End of their story.
We tried their tracking number again. Usually one can simply google the number, needing no further information, and get some kind of reply. It will mean something somewhere on the planet. Parts numbers get the same treatment, so if all you have is a serial number, Google can tell you what it is and have a list of places who sell which replacement parts. Money rules the system. Nope, the number meant nothing.
After checking with the local post office, and giving them time to check with our route delivery worker, the post office had no information, nor ideas of where that kind of a number might mean something. You know, like was it a UPS number? DHL? FedEx? No, no, and no earthly idea.
At their recommendation he contacted the Italy source again, and oh my goodness, they'd given us a wrong number. (Ya think?) This time there was an actual USPS long number, even starting with the usual 9, along with their assurance it had been delivered. Because, you know, back when they had claimed it had been delivered, it had been. Even though it hadn't.
He called the post office with the new number. They checked on it. Yes, it had been delivered, through them since it was sent within our 5-digit zip code, so out on one of their trucks. But the name was different and the address about 7 miles north of us, judging from the number of the road given, though they did not give the precise address on that road, way out in the boonies, nor customer name. They were not providing any further information.
That was fine, since it obviously wasn't our package. We have no intention of heading out to their address and demanding our package from them. It seems like a fast track to an arrest for harassment, best case.
The originating company was contacted again. That's if one can claim to be "originating" if nothing originated from there. They stood firm: They had sent something to our zip code, so obviously it was our package, and while they appreciated our polite patient inquiries to this point, would we please quit annoying them? (Or something to that effect.)
Steve is resigned to being scammed. He plans to put something to that effect on Facebook for the person or three who will read about the failure to send his package, though likely it won't be anybody who has interest in whatever they advertise there, or needs to be warned away from their version of "business practices." If he does eventually decide to try to order one again, it will be through somebody different, like some seller on eBay or Amazon or at least has a connection they wish to protect to another large company who can do lots of business relying on each other's reputations.
* * * *
But really: Best, most innocent possible case, do people in Italy think a single five-digit zip code refers to a single address? There are who-knows-how-many addresses in our zip code alone, including those for people who use the post office itself for their mail delivery. With the 4 digit tail on the end for just our little mailbox, that's 9 digits, so just under a million possible addresses any single post office delivers to if all the numbers were used.
They aren't all used, of course. Or at least not yet. The first two digits designate a large area - or smaller if it's geographically compact like in a city. The next three designate post office locations within that area. Being rural, and having the knowledge from memorizing a lot of local zip codes over a lot of years, they are assigned by town names, alphabetically. Here a particular town "c" falls in -012, an "f" in -025, and "s" towns in the -070s since we have a lot of towns starting with "s" around here. St. Paul divisions all fall after 551, while Minneapolis ones fall after 554. Our Phoenix suburb started with 85, and already after a year I find I have to start chanting the full address to come up with the rest of the zip code. The 4-digit tail refers to only our box, whether standing out along the road, attached to our house, or in a wall of boxes in a building.
Just in case you think those numbers are so confusing, especially if from reading this in another country, that you think the post office would deliver something within a zip code to person 1 at address 1 when it's addressed to person 2 at address 2 miles away, and consider it a valid delivery when they've had a history with each being at widely different addresses and no information to the contrary, well, pardon me for claiming either you are an idiot or you think we are inept idiots who would make/accept such a misdelivery. ESPECIALLY when a package has a tracking number!
Not saying we can't be idiots, mind. We just choose different ways.
No comments:
Post a Comment