the passionate ailurophile

Federal Distress and the Evil Post Office, that is.

On May 20th, I ordered this tripod thingy from Buy.com.  On May 22, I received an email that it had shipped.

However, there was something wrong with the tracking on Buy.com’s site…the clickable tracking number they gave didn’t work, it just gave an error message.  Also, they said that it had been shipped via “ground services”, so I had no idea what carrier.

Buy.com will not ship to a P.O. box, so I figured that they were using UPS.  When I bought the iPod speaker from them, it came UPS, no problems.  So I figured it would be safe to have future orders sent here.  Well, I thought wrong.

Now it’s been almost two weeks since the tripod was shipped, and I was still unable to track it.  I sent an email to Buy.com’s customer support to try to find out where it was and how it was shipped, so I could track it.  I received a response within ten minutes, which told me that they used something called FedEx Smart Post, where FedEx picks up the shipment and delivers it to the local post office.  Delightful, they used two of the most evil carriers in earth to ship me my order.  If I’d known that, I would have had it shipped to Mike’s work.

They gave me a web address where I could check the tracking.  A screenshot of it is above, click it to see bigger (opens in new window).

IT HAS BEEN SITTING IN THE EVIL POST OFFICE FOR A WEEK.

It was supposed to be delivered on May 30.  It is now June 4.  There have been 4 days of mail delivery between the 29th and today.

For once, FedEx didn’t fuck up.  But this is probably because it didn’t go through the Wilmington facility, that’s the one that usually fucks up my shipments.  Nope, it’s all the Evil Post Office once again.  I wonder if they will EVER deliver it.

The Buy.com rep said that if I didn’t receive it by tomorrow, to let them know and they will take further action.  Well, I have a feeling they will be hearing from me again tomorrow.

And if they still have the item in stock (it said that they had limited stock when I ordered it), I will ask them to please ship it to Mike’s office.

Oh, and about that Amazon order…I finally did get it, yet another fuckup on the EPO’s part.  But that’s another rant.