TOTALLY RANDOM POST II

[moose eater]

My new passport made it from the SW USA to Los Anchorage's sorting center in about 30 hours.

Umm.... WOW!!

Granted, it's not here in the Interior yet, so there's plenty of time for the postal service to lose it still.

 

[moose eater]

And that was via standard priority mail.

Yet the buggers have lost or missent at least a half-dozen priority mail packages for me in the last 18 months or so.

 

[moose eater]

The post office sorting center had a -chance- to be REALLY successful.

Instead, they missent a valuable restored dash cluster (instrument panel) for a vintage vehicle that I'd just put HUNDREDS of dollars into restoring, and 'misplaced' my passport that had been on track to break a record for time involved in delivery from the SW US to Interior Alaska.

That old lyric from the Grateful Dead's 'Uncle John's Band' strikes again; "When life looks like easy street, there's danger at your door...."

I grew to hate Murphy's presence in my world decades ago. His apparent affinity for me gets REALLY old. Now I just want the fucker to be floundering on the floor hemorrhaging.

And a note to the person at the sorting center who flipped me some really lame (read: dishonest) excuses and untruths to make the complaint go away re. their mishandling of the items... If you didn't appreciate my tenor when at your counter the other day, did you really think lying to me would be the best way to prevent me from coming back into your sphere to confront the lies? My stat policy is that when folks flip me dishonesty and bullshit, I nearly ALWAYS make the trip back to ask them why they would be so fucked up and self-defeating (masochistic) as to do that.

 

[sdd420]

I have a package from Michigan that went to Denver then was sent to Connecticut then New York before being directed to me in Washington state. It is ridiculous

 

[moose eater]

I have a package from Michigan that went to Denver then was sent to Connecticut then New York before being directed to me in Washington state. It is ridiculous

Last year or so I sent 2 $100 bills to a forum member who was short on his rent, and it was sent in a larger cardboard Flat Rate USPS Priority Mail 'envelope.'

He's in Southern California, which, per postal routing, is a straight shot from here in Alaska.

Time was tight, and it needed to get there in the (relatively customary) 3 days in order for him to avoid the late fees. He's on a limited income as it is and has health issues as well. Time was fucking IMPORTANT.

30 or 31 days later it was found in a mail bag in Florida with a hole punched through it. Fortunately, the hole missed the envelope with the 2 Benjamins in it.

I believe he incurred the late fees, which might've consumed the majority of the $200 I'd sent to him.

I had a smaller flat-rate USPS small box (the VHS size and shaped box), and it -might've- had contraband in it. Can't recall for sure as there've been so many of these similar instances. It was (I think) during COVID.

Someone thought a particular USPS semi-trailer was empty, but it wasn't. It contained a whole lot of mail containers that hadn't been unloaded at the sorting center in Oklahoma. They parked it out in a yard, that as I understand it, had a WHOLE LOT of similar trailers. A sea of postal trailers.

When a whole bunch of people ended up asking, "Where's my mail?!", the trailer was eventually found in that sea of trailers.

I could probably tell another half-dozen to dozen similar anecdotes of this sort of thing.

I joke with others, saying that once upon a time, the frequency of this sort of thing was far rarer, and one could send contraband through the mail with confidence, providing proper steps were taken; tin containers to block x-ray or gas chromatography swabs, etc., and making the package look 'normal' (No excessive duct tape on the outside, no bizarre addresses made up that defy the computer's knowledge, etc.) But anymore, one (especially those of us who are wound a bit tight to begin with) almost need to abuse sedatives to do this sort of shit.

 

[moose eater]

As of today, the USPS still can't tell me where my vintage restored instrument cluster is, though from an insider at the PO that I have access to, who has a greater sense of conscience and honesty than the average worker, apparently, I was informed of issues that USPS Tech Support failed to inform me of, though they already knew the same info and simply 'failed' to share it with me. Assholes..

Yes, my USPS Priority Mail package was instead sent out of the Mid-West by an idiot near Detroit by someone who labeled an entire container as 4th Class Ground Advantage, rather than the USPS Priority Mail it contained. (I could tell that before they admitted it, just by looking at the routing and tracking that I DID have access to on my own; maybe they thought my cluster needed a grand tour of the US?)

I've told them that the way my mother raised me, incompetent or injurious individuals ought to be required to send a personalized apology letter on their own and compensate for any losses and damages out of their own pocket.

The mis-labeled ENTIRE container of mail wasn't caught by anyone until it reached the Pacific NW, and since then, it's who-knows-where. They don't.

The best hope at this time is that the moron who proficiently identified the container as 'mis-shipped' in the PNW -might- have gone ahead and put the thing on the barge anyway, even after noting it was priority mail. The barge is another 2-1/2+ days out of Anchorage as I type this.

So, there are now 2 formal investigations occurring in the USPS; one for the incompetence involving my very valuable package, and one for the refund I 'requested'. For which I had to explain to the support person that when you sell a service that's not delivered, some would call it fraud, technically and literally, and at a bare minimum, a refund is in order.

If some of these people lived closer, like, in the neighborhood for example, I'd likely be in jail at the moment.

 

[Gry]

A fine job of deliberately degrading the service of the USPS, has been done.
That it was approved of by Congress, made the treachery more reprehensible.
As the bastards had no affection or respect for a legacy left us by Ben Franklin,
then what in this nation do they have they any care for ?

 

[Gry]

 

[moose eater]

Granted, it's not here in the Interior yet, so there's plenty of time for the postal service to lose it still.

(Re. the passport)

Which, I guess as a matter of consistency(????), they indeed did, mis-sending it someplace else for three days after scanning it in locally...

When it finally appeared, no signature was required to pick it up, it was placed in my PO Box, no one apologized, and no one told me where it had been mis-sent to on its unplanned (3 additional days) vacation.

 

[moose eater]

 

[moose eater]

 

[Worldatlas]

 

[moose eater]

The force of that water, at 8 lbs./gallon, with ice at X thickness, can do damage that's unfathomable to most when it cuts loose or leaves the banks of the river, and enters villages.

Springtime break-up floods involving ice can be found online at YouTube and in other sites, where river flows entered villages. It can remove homes from foundations in moments to hours. Amazing stuff.