Come on Post Office! Give me a break here.

This was the first boo boo  Click on that to read the first episode.

So last week I sent a letter/card/whatever to Texas.  Mailed it on March 6.  Did the 1-3 day Priority thing so it would get there quickly.  Insured it, the whole 9 yards.  Paid extra for all this.  I might as well have wiped on that money! Tomorrow will be one week and there is no sign of it ever getting there.  

March 11, 2015 , 7:28 am

Departed USPS Origin Facility

DENVER, CO 80266 

The package is delayed and will not be delivered by the expected delivery date. An updated delivery date will be provided when available. Your item departed our USPS origin facility in DENVER, CO 80266 on March 11, 2015 at 7:28 am. The item is currently in transit to the destination.

March 6, 2015 , 10:02 am

Arrived at USPS Origin Facility

DENVER, CO 80266 

March 6, 2015 , 8:47 am

Accepted at USPS Origin Sort Facility

PUEBLO, CO 81006 

March 6, 2015

Pre-Shipment Info Sent to USPS

As near as I can tell the post office scooped it up and rocketed it to Denver into a big hole, where it remained until I put an inquiry on where the parcel that was destined for 3 day delivery had gone.  

As near as I can tell it is suspended some where after Denver and before Texas.  OK.  I accept that the post office is overworked and they need to raise the postal rate every time I figure out how much a stamp is, but come on people.  Isn't this a little ridiculous?

How can I get something from point A to point B with out the post office cooperating with me here?  I could have laid this on the dash of my car and driven it down there and basked in the Texas sun for 5 days and came home and made supper.  See I know there is avacuum between here and Oregon, but I did not know about the one between here and Texas.

Well, that is my speil for the day.  I will let you know when and IF my card makes it there.  In the meantime, I will just stare at the tracking number and wonder.

Please bring back the Pony Express!!!

So as you all know, I sell on ebay and thus use the postal service for delivery.  On orders in the United States I have tracking free.  Buy through ebay and track it righ to the door. Not so on International orders.  Oh, I get a tracking number, but it ends at the edge of the ocean or the Canadian border, so I am used to things diappearing into a customs office and never coming back.  Or if a package arrives at a post office and is not picked up I see it wend it's way back to my door.  But from here to Oregon is pretty much a straight shot, or so I thought!

A lady in Eugene, Oregon bought a book on November 13.  I immediately posted it at my Wedgewood office.  It left there sometime that day and arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah 8 days later.  That must have been one helluva trip  It remained in  Salt Lake City for several days until they got tired of talking to me.  It  then came back to Denver.  After due time it caught a wind and headed out west.

It then spent 2 days flying to Washington.  After spending the night in Federal Way, Washington it spent 2 days flying to Eugene, Oregon.  So 15 days later it arrived on her door step. Below is my tracking record.  

This is a post-only message. Please do not respond.

Lou Mercer has requested that you receive a USPS Tracking™ update, as shown below.

USPS Tracking™ e-mail update information provided by the U.S. Postal Service.

Label Number: 9449009699938911873408

Service Type: USPS Tracking^™

Shipment Activity	Location	Date & Time
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Delivered, Left with Individual	EUGENE, OR 97405	November 28, 2014 11:58 am
Arrived at Post Office	EUGENE, OR 97405	November 28, 2014 8:56 am
Departed USPS Facility	FEDERAL WAY, WA 98003	November 26, 2014 2:40 am
Arrived at USPS Facility	FEDERAL WAY, WA 98003	November 25, 2014 6:59 pm
Departed USPS Facility	DENVER, CO 80217	November 23, 2014 3:00 am
Arrived at USPS Origin Facility	DENVER, CO 80217	November 23, 2014 2:21 am
Departed USPS Facility	SALT LAKE CITY, UT 84199	November 21, 2014 6:55 pm
Arrived at USPS Facility	SALT LAKE CITY, UT 84199	November 21, 2014 3:10 pm
Picked Up	PUEBLO, CO 81005	November 13, 2014 1:36 pm
Pre-Shipment Info Sent to USPS		November 13, 2014

Reminder: USPS Tracking™ by email

Seems like the real vacuum hole seeems to be beween Pueblo, Colorado and Salt  Lake City, but that is not the case.  Only God knows where that thing was.  So after many weeks I was most happy to find this email in my box:

Holy Moley, it's on the correct edge of the country!  lol

Happy Thanksgiving, Lou

:-)  Jeanne

And finally, this one:

EUREKA!!!!  Silly Sally has arrived!

:-)

-Jeanne

Now I just went and checked out the Pony Express and copied what was there for you to read:  The service opened officially on April 3, 1860, when riders left simultaneously from St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. The first westbound trip was made in 9 days and 23 hours and the eastbound journey in 11 days and 12 hours. The pony riders Annual Pony Express Re-Ride covered 250 miles in a 24-hour day.

So am I off base in suggesting that they might bring back the Pony Express?  I figure I could shave a good 3-4 days off my delivery time.  Let me know.

In the meantime, I do hope Jeanne is enjoying Silly Sally.  I want to thank her for being so patient.  Most people would have given up early in the game.  Sure hope to do business with her again.

Update on the clip on earrings and the bubble wrap!

Dear loumercer3,
Hooray!!! Hallelujah! The clip-on's have arrived!!!!! They are beautiful! Thank you so much for your efforts to make sure I receive these earrings. I've left you positive feedback, and I hope we do business again some time!

Amy

- amysue20921

Spring time in the Rockies.

It is about to get to be spring here in this neck of the woods.  I actually thought about digging around out there to see if I can find my crocus.  I love spring!  My little acre here in the foothills is soon going to be covered with goat heads.  Do not let them fool you with that notion that geese eat goat heads, because they do not.  I have read that if I take baby geese and pen them up and feed them nothing but goat heads they will eat them, but my geese are so old and tough you could not even eat the gravy off of them, and I know you can not teach an old dog new tricks and the same goes double for a goose!
I have gotten 4 goose eggs so far this month.  I sent the first two to Andrea in California.  Thought I had them packed pretty well.  First I put them in a box with 200 pounds of side wall strength.  Packed them in bubble wrap before putting them inside.  I did not mark them fragile as this is a red flag to the post office workers! Then I put that box inside another box.  One was completely broken and the other cracked.  I had told the lady at the counter that there were two raw goose eggs inside, which I think was my mistake.  I expect as soon as I left she took the package to the back and hollered "Heads up Johnny!  Got goose eggs here!" and lobbed the box across the warehouse to Johnny who then went out for the touchdown. 
So I found out those two were shot and this time I packed each egg in a separate box after double wrapping them in bubble wrap.  Then I padded the box with the large bubble wrap and fitted them all around with more bubble wrap.  I left it rounded on the top so nothing could be set on top of it and slapped my label on, wrote "fragile" in red marker every where there was a place to write it and kissed it goodbye and wished it well.
Now if this does not work I am going to try UPS and see how that goes.  Right now I am watching a seed catcher try to make it's way to a lady in Canada.  It left customs on February 20 and is "in transit".  I love this selling on ebay, but it seems like the more I pay for postage, the less I get in service.  I sent towels to Austrailia after I mailed the seed catcher and she has already received them and left feedback.  Amazing!
But back to the Spring time thing here in the Rockies.  I know that means nothing.  Two days ago we had a blizzard.  Today it will be almost 70 and I think we have another blizzard coming Saturday or Sunday.  And they all say, "We need the moisture!"  And I say, "Hey, rain is moisture and I do not have to shovel it!" 
It was so simple back in Kansas.  We planted our potatoes on St. Patrick's Day.  I think out here they plant on Good Friday.  It really is no never mind, because I always dig mine up way to early any way and only wind up with a little hand full.  I love to go back to Kansas the end of March cause it seems like the Lilacs are blooming and the trees are leafing out and Tulips and Daffodils every where.  I just love Spring.  When I go there and then come back here then I get to enjoy spring twice!
But I can not go again this year cause I have to gather the goose eggs or I will have babies and that is not good.  I keep saying that when Goosie dies, I will get rid of the flock, but then Goosie has a husband and son that will need taken care of.  (Just ended that sentence with a preposition which I hate to do, but seemed no way around it.)  Somebody suggested I just chop their heads off and call it good.  Bastard!
Off to a sewing class today.  I am going to learn to make a cup cake pot holder at Sprinkles.  Now I know how to do about anything that can be sewed, but it is rather a social thing.  It is only two hours and we will have fun.  And then I will come home and hopefully do something!
Have a good one.
 

Yes, Virginia, the Post Office is in a bit of trouble!

 Label/Receipt Number: 9101 1501 3471 1091 7220 14
Expected Delivery Date: December 21, 2011
Class: Priority Mail®
Service(s): Delivery Confirmation™
Status: Processed through USPS Sort Facility
Your item was processed through our DENVER, CO 80217 facility on December 31, 2011 at 5:08 am. Information, if available, is updated periodically throughout the day. Please check again later.
 
 
    
     
     Enter Label/Receipt Number. 
  
Enter Label / Receipt Number. 
     
    And I did enter all the info.  See I never send anything through the USPS without a tracking number because it just has a a way of going lost.  So let's follow this package.  I sent one of my purses to a lady in Denver (paid for by a mutual friend.) on December  20.   It went immediately to Colorado Springs.  And 2 days later it arrived in Bell Gardens, California .  Apparently they realized right away that it did not belong there.  It was then sent to Denver where it has been kicking around now for  3 days while they search for the address before declaring it Undeliverable as Addressed.  Then they hung on to it for 4 more days.  before they ran it through another sort facility.  Today is January 2, 2012, 14 days, or 2 weeks after I sent this on it's way.  I have no idea where it is now.  No doubt it is probably still in the sort facility in Denver.  Does this tick me off?  Yes it does.  Why?  Let me tell you why...
I sent this Priority Mail, which costs extra with confirmation, which costs extra.  I have the correct address on it with the postal code the Post Office gave me.  Now I could punch this in my GPS and drive right to her front door.  The Post Office will be receiving another increase in postal fees here pretty quick.  They need more money.  They occasionally slip one in on us online buyers anyway, but that is neither here nor there.  What frosts me is that this is the most unreliable shipping service in the business today.  Do you know I can ship Priority (with2-3 day delivery) cheaper than I can ship Parcel Post (2-9 day delivery).  Does that make sense to you?
I live in the county and have a mailbox at the end of my drive.  It is not uncommon for the mail person to just lay a large package beside the mailbox (assuming that everyone who passes it is honest and will not steal it.) rather then bring it to my door and put it on my porch.  One day the door bell rang and a neighbor stood there with a small, dripping wet package.  It was addressed to me and was floating in his irrigaiton lateral.  MP3 player and it is just a damn good thing the Chinese double wrap everything in cellophane.  Since this was not the first time I found mail in the ditch I called and complained.  So now parcels appear on my porch which I greatly appreciate.
Now today is a holiday for the Post Office, poor overworked souls that they are, so I will have no updates on my package.  But, ah tomorrow is coming.  I am assuming that they can get it back to me, but who knows.  Then I can buy postage once more and see where it goes, or wait!  I can give it to the guy who bought it and let him drive it up their to this illusive address.
So that is my story and I am sticking to it.  Oh, yeah, Happy New Year and here's hoping some people are making a lot of resolutions to break.  I will not be breaking mine cause I gave up making them years ago.  Keep in touch!






  Detailed Results:
 
 Processed through USPS Sort Facility, December 31, 2011, 5:08 am, DENVER, CO 80217  Undeliverable as Addressed, December 27, 2011, 6:53 pm, DENVER, CO 80224  Out for Delivery, December 27, 2011, 9:28 am, DENVER, CO 80222
 Sorting Complete, December 27, 2011, 9:18 am, DENVER, CO 80222
 Arrival at Post Office, December 26, 2011, 7:56 am, DENVER, CO 80222  Processed through USPS Sort Facility, December 24, 2011, 10:40 pm, DENVER, CO 80217
 Depart USPS Sort Facility, December 23, 2011, BELL GARDENS, CA 90201  Processed through USPS Sort Facility, December 22, 2011, 3:05 pm, BELL GARDENS, CA 90201
 Depart USPS Sort Facility, December 21, 2011, COLORADO SPRINGS, CO 80910
 Processed through USPS Sort Facility, December 20, 2011, 9:22 pm, COLORADO SPRINGS, CO 80910  Dispatched to Sort Facility, December 20, 2011, 7:06 pm, PUEBLO, CO 81005  Acceptance, December 20, 2011, 2:03 pm, PUEBLO, CO 81006
 Electronic Shipping Info Received, December 20, 2011  

They are winging their way to Hong Kong!

First..click here to donate to my account for the AIDS Walk!

Today I had a small victory and I want to share it with you!  See that package  up above?  That contains 4 vinyl records and I built that box with my own two hands.  Why?  Because anything over 4 pounds going to Hong Kong requires Priority Shipping; under 4 is First Class which is much cheaper.  Now I am getting quite proficient at doing the online International shipping, but this one had me stymied.  Until, along came Matt!

This is Matt Phelps and he is my buddy at the Mesa Pharmacy. I had packed this order very carefully the night before thinking my maximum weight was 5 pounds. I could not buy first class postage online because that is just the way it is, and besides that the address was too long. See, here we just say John Doe, 54 elm,nowhere, no state 12345.  In Hong Kong the addresses are 4 blocks long.  So when I got to the post office I found that it was a pound over and would cost me $49.98.  No way.  So Matt unpacked the whole thing and weighed the box, my packing materials, the records and pronounced it a mess.  He looked for a box, but still it was overweight.  So I brought it home and constructed a box that was lighter, smaller, but still sturdy.  The corners of the albums I protected with bent card board  and lined with foam sheets.  Back I went and Matt met me at the door.  To the scale and voila!  A miracle.  3 pounds and 14 ounces!  First class and money saved.

  

Here is my receipt for $32.87, exactly what I had charged Mr. Cheng!  I will not figure the profit on this little transaction at an hourly wage, because the packing, running back and forth and the stress of the whole thing could not be measured.  Below you see the change I received from two $20 bills. You also will see the front of Mesa Pharmacy.  

So, today I salute Matt Phelps who works at Mesa Pharmacy out here in Blende.  25th Lane and Highway 50.  If you get a chance to pop out and see him, be sure to tell him Lou put in a good word for him.  He is one of the good guys and they are getting so few and far between that it is kind of sad!  So I gotta say thanks to Matt and tell you girls out there that he is still single!  But watch him go!

I'm just gonna run to the post office...

Now those words are an understatement if I ever made one!  To begin with, the closest post office I can run to is over a mile away.  It is a sub station and I gave up going there because they cringe when I show up with packages.  See, I buy my postage online.  It is cheaper.  Seems like enough incentive for me!  But the substation does not get to collect a "pick up fee" from the post office so it is a free gratis thing.  UPS pays the stations a $1 pick up fee.  Course when they sell the postage there is a profit built in to the price.  But not with the USPS. 

Now back to my packages I have so neatly packed and labeled with my online package.  I have padded them and made them as sturdy as possible to avoid breakage because I know they are going to be dropped at least 4 times by the post office and way more than that by FedEx or UPS.  UPS gives free insurance for the first $100. Post Office gives you jack. 

After I pack them, measure them and weigh them  I print out my postage and apply the label to the box.  I then need to drop my boxes some where.  They have the 13 ounce rule, you know.  That means I have to take it in and hand it to the clerk.  The clerk will ask me, "Any thing explosive, breakable, liquid or illegal in here?"  I always say "No" and then I am done.  I especially like waiting in a long line with heavy boxes for this ritual to take place.  Occasionally I will get a clerk that will motion me to put them in the canvas box on wheels and then he will smile at me and I will leave.  That does not happen very often.  More like it happened once.

Now, I want to go on record here as saying Homeland Security and all that is just great.  After I leave the post office I feel I have been thoroughly  processed and my packages do not carry bombs or any of that stuff.  I am on first name basis with most of the clerks around town.  But occasionally some little guy gets himself hired and his job description seems to contain the words "must be able to piss an old lady off and make her cry in frustration."  Yesterday I met one such fellow.  No doubt he was promoted to something before I got to my car.  He was good!

The upshot was my one box had the word "Ale" on it.  Ale is hazardous.  Course it was not ale since someone had already drank all of it and I am assuming it was not hazardous since he was still alive or at least I assume so since I did not read in the obituaries of anyone dieing directly after drink one bottle.  So I told him that apparently the word  "paint"ball on the other box made it hazardous as well.  He was in complete agreement.  So I drove the 10 miles home, unpacked the boxes after carefully cutting the label off with a razor blade, turned the boxes wrong side out, repacked them, taped on the labels and took them back to town to the one in Belmont where the lady likes me.  I told her my tale of woe and she said "He must have been having a very bad day!"  Hey, Janie, what do you think he did for my day?  She thought that was funny.  Never was a very good comedienne, but it worked with her.  May have missed my calling.

Now get this, a year or so ago I sent a seed catcher to my friend in Niagara  Falls.  Then he ordered two more.  He then decided to send the first one back and have the size of elastic changed.  So I put a box with a return postage label all printed out to me and enclosed it so he could return the first one.  He dropped it in the mail box to come to me.  Three days later, it was returned to him because he had not taken it inside the post office and they thought it was a bomb because it was over the 13 ounce limit.  So I had spent $4.95 for the label.  Now he had to spend another $4.95 for the new label.  But the most asinine part was that it had been in the mail system for 3 days being returned to him.  It was never opened and he bought a new label and put it over the old label with out anybody ever looking inside.  So this made the $10 seed catcher cost a total of $14.90 in postage for no reason what so ever. If there had been a bomb in the goofy thing it surely would have detonated shortly after being put in the box. Or at the very least some time during the next day or so.

Then there was the time the doorbell rang and there stood the man who lived up on Bronco with a soggy box in his hand.  Hmmm.  Lou Mercer, yep that is me.  Oh gee is that the MP3 player I have been expecting?  Only silly me, I was looking in the mailbox for it, not in the irrigation ditch where he found it.  Let's see, that was about the time they took another 2 cent raise on postage.  Very well deserved if I do say so myself. 

So, I set here and think about my United States Postal Service and shake my head in wonderment.  Seems like we had a pretty good thing going when the Pony Express was in action.  Grab a saddle bag and ride like hell!

Back to the going postal thing.  See, I know these guys get a big kick out of being mean to us little old ladies, but I think they are also mean to each other.  Maybe they have left their station and gone across town and been mistreated by someone in another station and they are just getting revenge.  Why doesn't the powers that be teach these people to smile?  I have always found that sugar catches a lot my flies then vinegar.

You know what the first thing I learned when I went out into the work force?  I learned something called Customer Service and the golden rule to that was that the customer was always right.  Know who paid my salary?  The customer.  If we did not have customers I did not have a job so i always wanted them to come back.  Not so at the post office.  Or as far as that goes most government jobs.  Stop and think for one minute about what we have done to ourselves.  We sent a bunch of guys to Washington to pass a bunch of laws to make our life easier.  Then they had to appoint a bunch of committees to oversee the laws and make sure they were working.  Then we had to have people to check on the committees to be sure the committees were doing there job.  So now, guess what!  Everyone but you and me is now working for the government.  No wonder the post office people are so mean. I am the only one not working for them and they are afraid I will quit paying my taxes, so they want to make me suicidal and hope I do not have a will so the government can take all I own and put it back into circulation.

I keep hearing that the postal service is in trouble.  You know, I do not doubt that.  Gone are the days when you wrote a note and put it in an envelope and mailed it off to someone in another city.  Now we have a cell phone in our pocket and a computer on standby and we can touch someone electronically in a nano second.  But here is what I want you to ponder, if you will; Has electronics and such brought about the downfall of the postal system, or are the cell phone and email a result of a postal service that did not serve our needs?  Ah, it is indeed a quandary.  Might be too much for this feeble mind to comprehend.

From here to Madrid, Spain in 7 days!

This is Marvin the Martian. The little fellow left here last Thursday, March 11, 2010 and woke up this morning in his new home in Madrid, Spain. That is less than 6 days which is doing some moving if you just stop and think about that. Here is how Marvin the Martian Telephone came to make this journey.

I sell on eBay and Marvin was dropped off by a member of PFLAG which is the acronym for Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. They have a rummage sale in the Spring to raise money for a scholarship fund they maintain at Pueblo Community College. It came to our attention that some items would bring more money if they had more exposure. We were right.

So Marvin came to my house. He was photographed on his best side in natural light and off he went to the eBay auction. Now new phones were selling on eBay at the time for $15.99, so imagine my surprise when I got my opening bid and it went up to $19.99. I was amazed when the auction closed at $31.00. Then came the most amazing post. I received a communication from a guy named Juan in Madrid, Spain telling me how happy he is to support our cause.

Postage to Madrid is by no means cheap, and the best I could do on this was $33.00. And then I check the progress today and find it has been delivered! I have sent things to Canada that are still in transit!  I have had people email me from Canada that apparently never get their package and when I trace it I find it has left the United States at which point it seems to be swallowed up in the big hole called Customs. But again I digress.

I just wanted to tell you how well the United States Post Office came through for me on this one. I sent a boat title to Denver 26 years ago and it has not gotten there yet, nor was it returned. Some letters have taken weeks to get there while the short check I mailed in anticipation of the deposit I would make the end of the week reached it's destination the next morning.

And so my hat is off to the USPO, Customs in Spain, Marvin and Juan! All worked like a well oiled machine for a story of success!