I have been conducting trades over the Internet for the Star Wars Pocket Model game I wrote about last month. On the 27th I sent out a rare ship to a fellow in return for another rare ship. I used USPS First Class mail with delivery confirmation. I used to sell micro RC cars on eBay a few years ago, and have sent out hundreds of packages via USPS. I expected the ship to arrive within three days — Friday or Saturday.
I got nervous when the poor guy hadn’t received his ship by Tuesday, August 2nd. There was no reason for the mail to be that slow, especially First Class. I kept hammering the USPS Web site for a delivery confirmation, but nothing. Until today, when I got an email stating the package had been delivered … back to me.
I was afraid that I’d gotten his address wrong until I saw this:
The envelope was not originally mailed in shrink wrap.
WTF is that black blob? It looks like the package made it to Phoenix before being attacked by a giant Mail-squid. I use a laser printer, and the toner is not water soluble. I would understand I had used an ink jet printer, but holy smokes!!
At least they apologized:
Oh well. The fellow I’m trading with has been good natured about it, and I’ll be sending the ship out again tomorrow via USPS Priority. The kicker is that I haven’t been able to find out how to get a refund yet — the USPS Web site says I haven’t shipped any packages in the last six months. :)
That guano could be valuable.
So, they damaged it in handling, realized they’d damaged it in handling, and then instead of delivering it, they returned it to you? Odd.
Yeah, the odd thing about it was that I could make out the recipient’s address through the blot, as well as the entire delivery confirmation number. I would normally be surprised that they couldn’t have used either to deliver the package, but we are talking about the .gov here.
Oh well, hopefully round two will fare better.