Post Office Follies !!!

[Tojo72]

I'm sure all of us have had fun with the post office.A friend of my wife tried to send her a package from Charlston SC to Union NJ,well the package made it to the Union post office,but for some reason they thought that they needed to deliver it to Charleston and off it went.
Our tax dollars at work

[deafpanzer]

And you can not demand for refund for poor service? LOL

[sturmbird]

back when I was taking some seriously high powered meds to fight Agent orange issues, I had a prescription mailed to me. This stuff was grossly expensive (about $3,000) and worth three to four times that on the street. The package had a chip in it, and could only come from two sources (very hard to come by). My prescription at the house was good for about five days when I started looking for it in the mail. It never showed up, and we went into the Memorial Day weekend. I got deathly ill from the lack of the meds, and went to the VA Tuesday figuring they were closed. The doctor that looked at me was in shock, and brought in another doctor. He immediately wrote another prescription, and they filled it within the hour. My regular doctor called me the next morning to tell me he wanted to see me ASAP. I went in that afternoon, and he was very upset over this. Had the VA start a tracer on the box. It shows up in the mail when I got home! He said the local post office sat on it for nine days! I could have died.

So I called the doctor to tell him it finally showed up. That's when I found out they had a chip in the box, and knew they failed to deliver it timely! I asked to return it, but they couldn't take it back (Federal law). The tax payer ate the $3,000. I kept it anyway, and sure enough he had me do another round. After that he had me go up to Indiana University (all my doctors are from IU anyway). I wonder how many other times the post office has pulled a stunt off like this and got by with it!
gary

[dierk]

Privatising the service (as Germany has done) is no guarantee for a better service: a friend from Russia sent me a parcel last year. DHL, owned by the post office, is in charge of delivering international parcels, deposited it in the local customs office (who will keep it for two weeks before returning it to sender)
DHL promptly sent me a letter informing me where I can pick up the parcel...a day after it went on it's return journey - that it was already on the way back, I only found out after having driven across town to customs.
Spent most of the day on the internet and the phone, traced it down to a depot near Leipzig (so it was still in Germany) that had an address, but no phone/email (would you believe it!) Spoke to numerous people at the 'DHL help line'(HA, what a misnomer) only to be informed 'once it's on the way back, there's nothing we can do' - more like 'there's nothing we can be ar$ed to do, cause that would involve actually doing something for our pay'
The upshot was that my friend had to pay to accept the return (as well as the hefty initial postage) and hasn't currently got enough spare readies to send it again...

[sturmbird]

Jan 20, 2018 4:37:36 GMT -5 dierk said:

Privatising the service (as Germany has done) is no guarantee for a better service: a friend from Russia sent me a parcel last year. DHL, owned by the post office, is in charge of delivering international parcels, deposited it in the local customs office (who will keep it for two weeks before returning it to sender)
DHL promptly sent me a letter informing me where I can pick up the parcel...a day after it went on it's return journey - that it was already on the way back, I only found out after having driven across town to customs.
Spent most of the day on the internet and the phone, traced it down to a depot near Leipzig (so it was still in Germany) that had an address, but no phone/email (would you believe it!) Spoke to numerous people at the 'DHL help line'(HA, what a misnomer) only to be informed 'once it's on the way back, there's nothing we can do' - more like 'there's nothing we can be ar$ed to do, cause that would involve actually doing something for our pay'
The upshot was that my friend had to pay to accept the return (as well as the hefty initial postage) and hasn't currently got enough spare readies to send it again...

Actually DHL is not that bad of a shipper. May be the largest international shipper in the world. The issue was probably in the way the paper work was done. They are extremely strict, and once the order starts to move only the "originator" can make a change. Even then he or she must do it in person. You cannot make the change via computer or telephone. In a shipping office, the originator must have a certification and only that one person can make the change. This happens all the time.
My youngest son is a certified international shipper, and there's only about 125 of them in the United States.
gary

[dierk]

[quote author="sturmbird" Actually DHL is not that bad of a shipper. May be the largest international shipper in the world. The issue was probably in the way the paper work was done. They are extremely strict, and once the order starts to move only the "originator" can make a change. Even then he or she must do it in person. You cannot make the change via computer or telephone. In a shipping office, the originator must have a certification and only that one person can make the change. This happens all the time.
My youngest son is a certified international shipper, and there's only about 125 of them in the United States.
gary[/quote]

They may not be 'that bad a shipper' in the US where they have to compete against UPS/FED-EX, but here in Germany, where they dominate the market, they are one of the worst.
I worked in logistics myself for many years, both domestic and international shipping, and we always found a way to keep the customer happy.
I've had several occasions where I've had an email alert from DHL telling me my shipment would be delivered on Saturday. After hours of waiting and checking the DHL tracking website, eventually a notification that 'a delivery was attempted at 15:31, but the recipient wasn't in' would pop up. But there wouldn't be a card in the letter box to back this up, and nobody rang the door bell.
On Monday, when the actual delivery was made, I was told by the driver "oh, that never left the depot on Saturday" So, they will even falsify tracking info.

[sturmbird]

Jan 21, 2018 3:55:26 GMT -5 dierk said:

[quote author="sturmbird" Actually DHL is not that bad of a shipper. May be the largest international shipper in the world. The issue was probably in the way the paper work was done. They are extremely strict, and once the order starts to move only the "originator" can make a change. Even then he or she must do it in person. You cannot make the change via computer or telephone. In a shipping office, the originator must have a certification and only that one person can make the change. This happens all the time.
My youngest son is a certified international shipper, and there's only about 125 of them in the United States.
gary

They may not be 'that bad a shipper' in the US where they have to compete against UPS/FED-EX, but here in Germany, where they dominate the market, they are one of the worst.
I worked in logistics myself for many years, both domestic and international shipping, and we always found a way to keep the customer happy.
I've had several occasions where I've had an email alert from DHL telling me my shipment would be delivered on Saturday. After hours of waiting and checking the DHL tracking website, eventually a notification that 'a delivery was attempted at 15:31, but the recipient wasn't in' would pop up. But there wouldn't be a card in the letter box to back this up, and nobody rang the door bell.
On Monday, when the actual delivery was made, I was told by the driver "oh, that never left the depot on Saturday" So, they will even falsify tracking info.[/quote]

DHL is not the big guy in the USA. They are the big guy out of the states. I always thought it was FedEx or UPS, but my son informed me that DHL was the big one. When you cross an international border things get testy (they all pretty much use the same set of rules)
gary

[jpc1968]

My wife is a rural mail carrier. You would not believe what she goes through. Everything is rush rush rush and now with Amazon, they can't hardly keep up. My wifes route load has doubled because of Amazon. Mistakes are made and people do get in trouble and even fired. She has to sort her mail every morning and put in her case in the slots of peoples address, which for her route is over 800 addresses that she has to memorize. Then she has to pull it all down and put in big plastic trays in order to haul out to her car, (not a little red white and blue vehicle, our car that we have to buy and maintain ourselves) and then load anywhere from 50 to 100 packages (80% of which is Amazon) and then she has to set in the passenger seat and drive her rout from the seat opposite the steering wheel for 5 hours. So the next time you see a mail carrier bringing you your mail, consider ALL the hard work they and how much they bust their a$$ to get it to you. And for those of you that think UPS and FED EX are better, both carriers take their packages and drop them off at your local Post Office for the mail carrier to deliver. So if you pay extra for UPS or FED EX to hurry and ship it for you, just ship it with USPS because 9 times out of 10, they will deliver it any way and it probably would be cheaper. So if your carrier is a rural route carrier, next time you get in your car, sit in the passenger seat and reach your left arm and leg over to steer and do the gas and brake from there.

[Tojo72]

Just an update,package still not recieved,their working on it.