Not-So-Speedy Delivery

I've been doing a fair bit of shopping lately. Not for the holidays, but for myself, though when I do set out to shop for others, I usually end up buying stuff for myself as well. There are just so many good deals to be found these days, and I've needed some fall and winter clothing.

Over the years I think I've gotten pickier about quality, and I've learned a lot from my attorney friend DC, who has seemingly been aware of this stuff since he was in grade school. So one day a few weeks ago I was roaming around the dusty back halls of eBay and I came across a guy selling new Allen Edmonds belts. I remembered that my friend likes their shoes and belts partly because they are made in the USA (although he says they seem to have slipped a little since the company was sold a couple of years ago). To my surprise, the seller had eight or ten belts in my size. (I'm not a weird size, and that's often a problem--too common.)

The belt I bought ended up costing me $40. That might seem like a lot for a belt, but it's really only slightly more than you would pay for a lesser-quality belt from your local department store, and half of its retail price, plus it happens to match a couple of pairs of my shoes nicely. The seller shipped it on Monday, November 3rd, and that's where the story gets a little more interesting, because it's not really about the belt, but about what happened to it on its way to me.

Not all sellers bother to tell you that they have shipped your item (I always do, so remember that when I start auctioning things), so I've learned to be patient. I have never not received an item I bought on eBay, which I guess makes me pretty lucky. Typically I wait least a week before I send an email to the seller asking about the status of the package. In this case, I waited a little more than a week, until the day after Veterans' Day, since holidays can screw with delivery times.

He responded and gave me the tracking number, and said he had checked the tracking and it said the package had arrived in Boston that day. I went and had a look for myself. What he'd neglected to say was that it was the third time it had arrived in Boston. At this point, I think it would be slightly more entertaining if l just post the whole tracking sequence here:

• Acceptance, November 03, 2008, 3:44 pm, PALM DESERT, CA 92260
• Processed, November 03, 2008, 6:54 pm, SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92403
• Processed, November 05, 2008, 4:31 am, ALBANY, NY 12288
• Arrival at Unit, November 05, 2008, 7:44 am, SCHENEVUS, NY 12155
• Missent, November 05, 2008, 8:51 am
• Processed, November 06, 2008, 12:18 am, SPRINGFIELD, MA 01152
• Processed, November 06, 2008, 4:30 am, BOSTON, MA 02205
• Processed, November 08, 2008, 2:34 am, ALBANY, NY 12288
• Processed, November 08, 2008, 11:45 pm, SPRINGFIELD, MA 01152
• Processed, November 09, 2008, 8:43 pm, BOSTON, MA 02205
• Processed, November 11, 2008, 12:38 am, SPRINGFIELD, MA 01152
• Processed, November 12, 2008, 12:46 am, BOSTON, MA 02205
• Processed, November 13, 2008, 5:06 pm, ALBANY, NY 12288
• Processed, November 16, 2008, 11:18 pm, BOSTON, MA 02205
• Delivered, November 17, 2008, 11:03 am, MEDFORD, MA 02155

So, a priority mail package that typically takes three days to cross the country took two weeks to get to me. That's what happened, but why? If you look at the sequence, you can kind of figure it out. Where it says "arrival at unit," you see that it's some place in New York state that I've never heard of. I went over to Google Maps and found that Schenevus is about 35 miles southwest of Schenectady, on the way to Binghamton. Its zip code is the same as mine, except for the first digit, and that's the key to the whole fiasco. That's why it says "missent" right under that entry. From there, it seems like it would be a relatively simple fix to get the package back on the right track, but it bounces back and forth between Boston and Albany for another week and a half before finally making it to its destination.

In hindsight, everything becomes clear. When I got the package, I expected the seller to have botched my address, but he didn't. It was correct and perfectly legible. But the person who processed the package at the seller's post office entered the wrong zip code when they printed the little postage label with the bar code. Right under the bar code, a little "12155" was plainly visible, and that was the problem. The automated scanners kept putting the package back into the system, and the system kept trying to send it to zip code 12155, which I guess is what it's supposed to do. Eventually a human must have figured it out and intervened, because there was a thick black magic marker slash through the bar code and the zip code on the little label.

After all that, I was expecting that there would be something wrong with the belt, but it was fine. But I guess we're going to have to keep a closer eye on those postal workers.