This is a tale of the pitfalls of our delivered-to-your-door economy (Wallingford edition). I know there are many such weak points in our voracious retail fulfillment cycle. One only has to scan the likes of local Facebook groups, your connected doorbell app, or that always reliable purveyor of bad news and paranoia, NextDoor, to see multiple accounts of packages disappearing from the porch or the mailroom. My story is not quite so criminal or insidious. I don’t think there were any overt evil-doers involved in this episode. But I am still missing an item that should have been delivered to me.
I had purchased a pricey camera on eBay a little before Christmas. I’m leaving on a trip soon, and being an avid amateur photographer, I was looking forward to taking this camera with me. I purchased it in plenty of time before my travel. I tracked its USPS shipping progress across the country, and on the day of scheduled delivery, I made a point of being at home in case I needed to sign for it, and to preclude having a package sitting outside unattended any longer than necessary. On the scheduled delivery day, an odd indication popped up on the USPS tracking: “Addressee Unknown”, and a notation that the package was being returned to sender. Alarmed, I messaged the USPS Informed Delivery site: Hey! I’m not unknown!
The next day, New Year’s Eve, the tracking changed to “Out for Delivery”. I breathed a sigh of relief. That, however, was short-lived, when the tracking status changed to “Delivered”. And not just delivered: “Signed for”. As I had been sitting not far from the front door all day, I could attest that nothing had been delivered, much less signed for (the full tracking, before it vanished, noted that “E.H.” had signed for the delivery—that’s not me).
These developments initiated a long, frustrating string of interactions with USPS, at the local level, and up the food chain all the way to Washington D.C. As far as USPS was concerned, their role was fulfilled: the package was delivered and signed for. As far as I was concerned, I was totally unfulfilled since it was delivered and signed for—but not to/by me!
There was a long and circular series of interactions between me and the USPS website. It shouldn’t be too much of a surprise who was the victor in those skirmishes. Ultimately, I exhausted my options via online USPS customer service. The website told me I could write (as in, hard-copy, snail-mail write) the Office of Consumer Advocate in Washington D.C. Which I did. Meanwhile, I made two trips to the post office in the U District, asking to speak to a manager. I wanted to request that the carrier simply go back to the address where my package had been delivered and speak to the unsuspecting recipient and, perhaps, hopefully, recover it. Both times, the clerk at the counter provided excuses: he/she was in a meeting…he/she was too busy. I left notes.
I finally did receive a call back from the 98105 post office. The supervisor/manager told me that he would speak to the carrier to determine what happened. He promised he would call me back, and true to his word…he did. Not with good news, however. He told me that the carrier said there was no name on the package, and that the address was not mine. That information confused me, because all of the tracking info had been directed to me at my address. The supervisor/manager told me he could not provide the delivery address, in case I decided to “go postal” (my words) and confront the recipient. I guess I understood and couldn’t really argue with that, given the current climate of discourse in this country. I had seemingly hit the wall with my issue.
But I decided to lob one more Hail Mary pass (to employ the overused sports analogy). I wrote a letter to the recipient, pleading to his/her good nature, sealed it in a stamped blank envelope, then sent that to the supervisory person at the U District post office with whom I had spoken. I included a copy of the note I had penned to the mythical recipient of my camera, so the USPS person could see that I wasn’t being belligerent or angry. I just wanted to correct the misdelivery. How about this? I asked the USPS supervisor. You write in the address of the delivery and send it. I won’t know who or where. The letter I wrote would be delivered. I provided all of my contact into. The person who read it could decide what to do. In my magical world of goodness and decency, we would make contact. He/she would return the camera. Life would go on. Faith in humanity would be restored (see how little it takes for some of us?).
Well…that didn’t happen. Just this past week, as I was going through my mail, I found the unopened, unaddressed stamped envelope nestled in with all of usual junk mail and bills. No comment, no explanation. But none was needed. And that was the ignoble end to my lengthy and frustrating quest.
I guess you could say that I was screwed over by supply-chain issues. It’s hard to blame the woefully understaffed USPS, even though their customer service options were bureaucratic and unsatisfactory. Maria Cantwell’s office said they would look into this on my behalf, but it seems hard to believe that with uncredentialed IT interns shutting down half of the federal government’s function in D.C. while we sleep, anything will come of it. The reality is this: there is a risk inherent in all that convenience we enjoy with Amazon and other online retail providers. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn’t. Hopefully for you, when it doesn’t, it’s with the toothpaste or the cheap t-shirt you ordered—not with the camera you hoped to take on a long trip.
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