Meh/Sidedeal package travelogues
1After the roundabout and much delayed trip of my Meh exhange gift to @capnjb and his nice status report about it, I thought we’d like to share our stories here of Meh and Sidedeal packages that were misdirected, stuck at a facility, taking the long way, etc. At first I thought it was just DHL, then USPS joined the party, followed by Fedex. (Does Meh use UPS at all?) Don’t worry about repeating a story you’ve told in another topic. We would want our fellow Mehtizens to miss out on a good “Huh?” and a laugh.
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Here goes… my IRK ordered on Feb. 19 shipped via Fedex on the 21st and was due to arrive on the 25th. Seems Meh and Fedex couldn’t agree on where it was for three days: one said it shipped on the 21st, the other said it didn’t arrive in Irving, Texas until the 24th. It didn’t arrive on the 25th and was eventually updated to the nebulous state of “We’ll add a delivery date as soon as your package starts moving.” Translation: “I got bored waiting around to leave, so I’m going out to paint Donaldson, Arkansas red! Don’t expect me to leave tomorrow morning because I’ll be hungover.” Suddenly Fedex grabbed IRK and said “No you don’t!” and kicked him all the way to Tennessee who then booted him along to Ohio where he’s resting. Hope to see you soon, IRK, and I hope I won’t instantly regret you!
IRK has made it to Connecticut with scheduled delivery tomorrow the 27th!
My JVC wireless speakers… They apparently spent three or four days at DHL in Irving. Irving must be one happening place! Anyway, in the wee hours of yesterday morning, DHL bid them farewell on their way to places unknown.
Had a box a year or two ago that went from Texas to really close to me in California before it went back to Kentucky or Tennessee or somewhere back there and then came back to Northern California before it came back to Southern california. Took more than a week past the expected date
My BrightEase lanterns must have decided after two days that Irving wasn’t exciting enough and that before heading to Boston, they would explore Bloomington, Cal. I guess they saw enough in four hours to get on board something which hopefully is heading east. Those lanterns and their little jaunt cost me five more days in transit.
Well, the BrightEase Lantern Awesome Adventure has come to an end. They arrived at my house 13 days after being ordered and going 2800 miles out of their way. Here’s the route they took to get to Boston.
KRULL! A SKULL! BRETT HULL! AWESOME!
Oh God… Reminds me of Pratt and Whitney days… Packages traveling random places and then sitting in warehouse for weeks at a time.
Most recent crazy package was one from California Etsy. Four days into shipping it had arrived at my home town… Yay! It would be here soon.
Nope… After crossing from California to my hometown in the Carolina’s, it then took a trip to Texas, Oklahoma, and Missouri before coming back to South Carolina and being delivered.
Why is this story so common? we need AI Robot overlords to fix it.
My wife ordered some repair parts for some exercise equipment (Not Meh). We were about to leave for a trip but it was on the way. It made it to Portland OR a nearby hub and airport. Then for some reason went to St Louis and spent another week touring the country. this was USPS. My wife actually called USPS and reached a human! And they had no idea why it did that.
When it finally got back to Portland area we had left and had mail forwarding set up. I didn’t think they would forward it but they did, and it showed up at our temporary address in North Carolina another week later.
@pmarin The only possible explanation I can come up with for the weird routing is that humans have been completely removed from absolutely any decision-making in routing and that it’s been turned over to AI which is far from being trained well. Yes, there has always been “computerized” package routing, but it seems to have gotten absurd recently. I’m thinking that AI is overreacting to even the tiniest of non-perfect conditions, like a full truck or plane, or a facility that is suddenly and temporarily at capacity, that will clear itself relatively soon. Anybody have any other thoughts?
@ItalianScallion Yeah I’m not going to specifically “blame” USPS because most other carriers have done similar absurd re-routings. Like I had some Casemates wine come into town and then take a drive up to Seattle area and spend a night there, then come back for delivery a day or two later.
Certainly it’s not up to the drivers; everything is tracked and what is loaded on their truck gets delivered if their app says to deliver it. When an Amazon driver comes by my driveway, he has to walk within a certain distance of the house before his app cofirms it’s delivered to the right place (that’s probably a good thing given mis-deliveries).
The apps tell the humans what to do, not the other way around, Automation is necessary with the huge volume of parcels moving through all carriers, but as they say “still a few bugs in the system.”
@ItalianScallion @pmarin
I completely agree. I was reading something recently about when the workers went on strike at the ports and they said how they were moving AI into those type of jobs. But can you even teach common sense to AI?
@pmarin @Star2236 Or to solve the trolley problem?
I always cringe when I see that something is being delivered DHL - they have no sense of how to deal with rural delivery. Last item wandered around the country for a week before getting local, then had three “unsuccessful” deliveries before they gave up and dropped it at the local PO but waited two days before notifying me.
For all the crap they take, I stand in awe of the USPS - mostly because it can get things to the local office (yay zip codes!) and then the people who know where everyone lives can get it to you within a day. I fear the indiscriminate firing frenzy of the current federal administration.
Should add that UPS does a good job also. Drivers with regular routes get to know where everyone lives and how to deliver packages. They get a lot of gifts at Xmas, like bottles of Casemates wines.
DHL sucks.
@stolicat I’m 100 percent with you on this. When you take a step back, USPS really is pretty awesome. Just think, you can get a letter or card anywhere in the USA in a few days (a little longer since DeJoy took over) for under a dollar. For overseas shipping, they’re the only alternative to the high-priced express delivery companies.
As for UPS, the only problem I’ve had is that they don’t pay attention to where to put my packages when they get to the two-family house I live in.
Fedex is excellent with deliveries, but as my stories above will tell, confusing in their package routing.
DHL, yeah they just plain suck, at least for shipping within the USA. Companies I worked for used them all the time for overseas shipping and they seemed to be really good at that.
After seeing so many weird routes and stalled packages, I’ve been wondering lately if all the package delivery companies, including USPS, have a special Meh service at a super-low “I don’t care when or how you get it there” rate.
POPSOCKETS! ROAD ROCKETS! SONNY CROCKETT! AWESOME!
HIKING! VIKINGS! STRIKE KING [BRAND FISHING LURES]! AWESOME!
@ItalianScallion @stolicat How did you get 2 @mediocrebot responses to one post? I’m jealous.
And I’m bummed it no longer hates ants.
Has anybody figured out other things the bot hates now?
@ItalianScallion @stolicat The other thing people don’t “get” about the dreaded USPS is that as an essential government service (as originally envisioned) it was obligated to deliver everywhere, even if it’s hard, costly, and takes a bit longer. There are places (still now, I believe) that can only get mail/packages delivered by boat or small plane (especially in Alaska). That can’t be cheap, and certainly not meeting profitability standards for private companies.
@pmarin @stolicat I wonder if Mediocrebot picks up on the word awe too and that’s why there are two replies, or maybe someone wrote a comment with the word that triggers Mediocrebot and then deleted the comment.
@ItalianScallion @pmarin Yes, that’s a common misconception that any part of the government is supposed to directly produce profit - it’s a service we pay for in taxes, and the value of a worker in government service is not determined by profit return but by delivering said service.
If the jack-potted DOGE police come for our little rural post office I’m sure they will be met with muskets and pitchforks.
@stolicat If you need any training on muskets, just ask.
I’ve been a Colonial reenactor for 25 years and used to own a 1763 Charleville replica (used by Washington’s army) and a 1770s hand-made New England fowler for doing the era before and at the beginning of the Revolutionary War around Boston. Oh, do I miss the fowler, but I know it’s in the hands of someone who appreciates it as much I did.
Many of us had plenty of stories back in the day that meh used Pitney ‘Buthead’ for shipping.