Thursday, April 16, 2020

Nowhere

On Tuesday, March 31st, I dropped off a package at the post office.

This is not a noteworthy occurrence, generally. I have an Etsy shop (Zizi Rho Designs). I make the occasional sale. I wore gloves, and I put it in the package slot, so I didn't even have to interact with anyone.

I like to "stalk" my packages. Once a day, I check the tracking to see where it's gotten to. By the next day, it has generally left the local distribution center and it's on its way to its destination.

But not this package.

For a week, every day the package showed a "not received by us" on the website.

I wasn't too worried. This happens sometimes. Some packages are nowhere in the system until they've been delivered. So, I kept waiting for the delivery.

After a week, I contacted the buyer to see if it had arrived, just in case the system never logged it. Nope.

What to do? I wondered if perhaps the package got jammed somehow in the slot at the post office. Could I call them?

The only phone number was a 1-800 number, so I wouldn't be calling the specific location. Might as well, right?

Of course they were experiencing higher than normal volume (I wonder if those lines are ever experiencing normal volume), but they would call me back when it was my turn. So, I chose that option and went on with my day.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, I looked at my phone. There was a notification...

And that's when I remembered.

On iPhones, there's a thing called "Silence Unknown Callers". If turned on, the phone will only ring if the call is coming from a number in my contacts. Otherwise, it'll immediately go into voicemail.

When I made my call to the post office, I had completely forgotten that I had that turned on.

So, I tried to call back, but I got the usual computer menu. But it was my turn! While I was calling, I got two more calls, the second one saying that they had tried, and now they weren't going to try any more. Considering at that point they had called me four times, that was totally reasonable.

Yeah, by the time I added the phone number to my contacts list, it was too late. Deep sigh.

Did I want to wait on the phone for another hour and fifteen minutes for another try? After poking around the website, I found where I could report missing mail. So, I did that.

Likely, that's all the person on the phone would have done, anyway. It's not likely that they would have called that post office to have them look in their collection bins.

That particular post office has done this to me before, that is not scanning the package in. It still made it to its final destination in a timely manner.

But the customer informed me that she's had issues with package delivery in the past. So, this might just be a perfect storm of issues.

I hope the package turns up. I don't want to have to reknit it...


I wrote this post last week. On Saturday, the 11th, the package arrived. Whew. Turns out I'm out of the colorway of the yarn that the customer ordered, and I couldn't find it online anywhere. 

23 comments:

  1. Gee, this story sounds familiar. ;) Now you know my mundane identity. And I wear the gloves more than expected. They're awesome.

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    1. I had no idea this was you. And I barely look at names, so I won't recall it. Glad you like them.

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    2. I'm wearing them right this second. ~grin~ They soothe my healing thumb (I'm still avoiding solitaire on my iPod classic Heh...). Be well!

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  2. Glad the customer got it after all those anxious moments.

    Something similar has happened here. My sister-in-law sent three textbooks by post for her daughter who stays here. While the website showed that the packet was on the way, it hadn't reached us even after 10 days, that's way more than the usual time. Finally, after multiple phone calls and visits to the post office, it arrived after nearly 20 days. No one knew why it took that long!

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  3. That's was an adventure! Pretty gloves, love the color!

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  4. Whew, indeed! We've experienced twice now on the same order a cancellation as the product was reported 'damaged' by UPS. I gave up & asked for a refund. :(

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  5. Its almost like you wish the package could talk to see what the hold up was with its delivery. But glad that it got delivered eventually!

    betty

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  6. That was a series of events! Glad it got there.

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  7. I'm glad the package showed up. It must have temporarily disappeared into the null space of the post office.

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  8. We had issues with the post office when we were on vacation in January. Fortunately we had the service where post office tells you what to expect in the delivery later that day. But it wouldn't have helped here. Our issues were blamed on the regular postal person being on vacation. Happy your customer finally got the package and is enjoying.

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  9. It seem like things are moving a lot slower. But for me personal I never yet have an issue with post office.

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  10. Oh boy, This is annoying because I think everything is delayed due to the virus. I am glad they got it finally

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    1. I so rarely have problems that when I do it's notable. But yeah, right now things are not as usual.

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  11. Aussie post is awful but at the moment they are overwhelmed thanks to everyone online shopping and the post office having to change behaviour to fit with social distancing. I had a package I was waiting for sit at the office it was dropped at for a week before it started its journey to me. Another package is overdue by a week *sigh*

    Glad to hear Darla got her gloves!

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  12. I'm glad it finally made it. I've had packages go missing with E-bay sales, and it's never fun to re-send something or do a refund.

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    1. I've never had a package go completely missing... yet. Knock on wood. Cross fingers. Do anything to make sure that continues to be the case...

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  13. Glad to hear your package arrived at its destination, Liz. It's happened a few times to me, both on the receiving and sending ends. Once I learned that a publisher had sent me a contract that I never received. Because I didn't respond, they figured I wasn't interested and they were no longer interested when I said I was. It was just as well. The publisher went belly up a couple years later.

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I respond to comments* via email, unless your profile email is not enabled. Then, I'll reply in the comment thread. Eventually. Probably.

*Exception: I do not respond to "what if?" comments, but I do read them all. Those questions are open to your interpretation, and I don't wish to limit your imagination by what I thought the question was supposed to be.