Warning, this is long.
Go figure, I manage to go 6+ years with nary a package-delivery mishap, and karma had to bite me.
Hubby and I decided to order a specific book off of Amazon for our neice for Christmas. This book is one our own daughter (one year older than Neice) completely fell in love with when she checked it out of the library, and has checked out at least twice since. We managed to find an awesome price on the Marketplace for a used "good condition" copy, and noticing that there was another one around the same price and condition, we decided to surprise our daughter with a copy as well for her upcoming birthday. So we make the purchase. Two orders, two separate sellers. All's well and good. This is back in late November.
With the hustle to buy the rest of our Christmas gifts and order a few more things (resulting in a week straight of packages coming to the apartment), we completely forget about the books. Until this past weekend, that is. We were out all day on Saturday and thus not home to receive packages. Our apartment management finally got around to putting a security panel on the courtyard gate to keep people from reaching through and opening the locked gate from the inside (key access only from the outside), which has unfortunately locked out our mail carrier until he gets a key from the housing office. This means that instead of leaving a package inside our rear stairwell like he usually does, he had to leave a Missed Package notice in our mailbox because he won't leave packages on the outside steps and doesn't have a key to the front stairwell. Because we didn't check the mail when we got home that night or the next day, we didn't get the notice until Monday.
Various things kept me from going to the post office Monday, and I forgot the slip when I went Tuesday, so I ordered a redelivery for Wednesday. Collected the package, to find one of the two books we'd ordered. Reminded of the purchase, we wondered where the other package was, and immediately headed to Amazon for tracking info. Of the two, only one had tracking information, and it had been shipped FedEx, not USPS. Also, thanks to the packing slip included with the book that arrived, we confirmed it was the purchase without tracking, which we assumed had been sent media mail. Further investigation of FedEx's tracking information revealed that they had left the missing package with the local post office...on the 7th. By this point, it was the 15th.
So yesterday I headed to the PO with a printout of the FedEx tracking info to find out what happened. Long story short, they couldn't find it at the post office but did check the system and it came up as "delivered" on the 8th. Now, the mail carrier usually comes about the time I'm headed out to pick up Oldest at preschool, so half the time I'm out the door before he delivers packages. But he usually leaves a slip in the mailbox (we got none), or leaves the package with a neighbor/inside the stairwell if the neighbor opens the door. No dice there either. I was given a phone number to call this morning while the carrier would still be at the PO so we could ask him directly about it, but this PO is notorious for not answering the phones, and this morning was no exception. The last time I had to call, I just put my phone on speaker and let it ring and ring and ring until someone finally answered (over an hour, I believe), but their system has since been changed and now shunts callers back to the automated menu after a set amount of rings. So we can't annoy them into answering, and it's now well after the time when the mail carrier heads out. If I'm lucky, I'll catch him when I head out to pick up Oldest, but I'm not holding my breath.
And to top it all off, we're leaving this evening for a near-week-long vacation, and thus won't be here in person to handle any of this. I suppose we can continue calling, or see if Amazon can put some pressure on the PO to resolve this, but at the moment it seems we're out of luck if we can't catch the mail carrier (who is pretty awesome, normally, so I'm holding off blaming him completely until we get his side of the story).
And of course now I'm stressing out, and I don't handle this kind of not-knowing stress very well. Makes me twitchy and liable to snap at people.
Go figure, I manage to go 6+ years with nary a package-delivery mishap, and karma had to bite me.
Hubby and I decided to order a specific book off of Amazon for our neice for Christmas. This book is one our own daughter (one year older than Neice) completely fell in love with when she checked it out of the library, and has checked out at least twice since. We managed to find an awesome price on the Marketplace for a used "good condition" copy, and noticing that there was another one around the same price and condition, we decided to surprise our daughter with a copy as well for her upcoming birthday. So we make the purchase. Two orders, two separate sellers. All's well and good. This is back in late November.
With the hustle to buy the rest of our Christmas gifts and order a few more things (resulting in a week straight of packages coming to the apartment), we completely forget about the books. Until this past weekend, that is. We were out all day on Saturday and thus not home to receive packages. Our apartment management finally got around to putting a security panel on the courtyard gate to keep people from reaching through and opening the locked gate from the inside (key access only from the outside), which has unfortunately locked out our mail carrier until he gets a key from the housing office. This means that instead of leaving a package inside our rear stairwell like he usually does, he had to leave a Missed Package notice in our mailbox because he won't leave packages on the outside steps and doesn't have a key to the front stairwell. Because we didn't check the mail when we got home that night or the next day, we didn't get the notice until Monday.
Various things kept me from going to the post office Monday, and I forgot the slip when I went Tuesday, so I ordered a redelivery for Wednesday. Collected the package, to find one of the two books we'd ordered. Reminded of the purchase, we wondered where the other package was, and immediately headed to Amazon for tracking info. Of the two, only one had tracking information, and it had been shipped FedEx, not USPS. Also, thanks to the packing slip included with the book that arrived, we confirmed it was the purchase without tracking, which we assumed had been sent media mail. Further investigation of FedEx's tracking information revealed that they had left the missing package with the local post office...on the 7th. By this point, it was the 15th.
So yesterday I headed to the PO with a printout of the FedEx tracking info to find out what happened. Long story short, they couldn't find it at the post office but did check the system and it came up as "delivered" on the 8th. Now, the mail carrier usually comes about the time I'm headed out to pick up Oldest at preschool, so half the time I'm out the door before he delivers packages. But he usually leaves a slip in the mailbox (we got none), or leaves the package with a neighbor/inside the stairwell if the neighbor opens the door. No dice there either. I was given a phone number to call this morning while the carrier would still be at the PO so we could ask him directly about it, but this PO is notorious for not answering the phones, and this morning was no exception. The last time I had to call, I just put my phone on speaker and let it ring and ring and ring until someone finally answered (over an hour, I believe), but their system has since been changed and now shunts callers back to the automated menu after a set amount of rings. So we can't annoy them into answering, and it's now well after the time when the mail carrier heads out. If I'm lucky, I'll catch him when I head out to pick up Oldest, but I'm not holding my breath.
And to top it all off, we're leaving this evening for a near-week-long vacation, and thus won't be here in person to handle any of this. I suppose we can continue calling, or see if Amazon can put some pressure on the PO to resolve this, but at the moment it seems we're out of luck if we can't catch the mail carrier (who is pretty awesome, normally, so I'm holding off blaming him completely until we get his side of the story).
And of course now I'm stressing out, and I don't handle this kind of not-knowing stress very well. Makes me twitchy and liable to snap at people.
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