14 Jun
2013
14 Jun
'13
11:42 a.m.
On Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:13:18 -0400, David Riley <fraveydank at gmail.com>
wrote:
And yet everything (admittedly not an awful lot) I have had sent here to
Sweden by USPS has arrived quickly, at least as quickly as stuff from
Germany for instance, and in perfect condition...
/Jonas
> Brazil
isn't Italy! The postal service works (sort of) and it is not usual
> >>for mail and packages "vanish" from nothing
>
> You should see the postal service here. I had what is possibly the last
>remaining copy of some Forth documentation sent to me a few days ago. It
>arrived mangled, about 1/3 of the pages missing, with a note from the postal
>service telling me how much they care about the package, and that they're
>"sorry". Fucking assholes. I wish they'd just go out of business and
be
>done with it. They've been limping along for years on gov't subsidies.
Ugh. Was that the stuff mentioned recently on the list? If so, at least
it got scanned first, but still. Ugh.
It's a shame, really. The USPS used to be my preferred shipper, because
they did the best job for the lowest price. Things have gotten REALLY
bad in the past few years, especially where I live in Philadelphia; most
of the carriers genuinely do not care. There are a few of them who don't
even bother knocking when they come with a package and leave it on our
doorstep on a BUSY CITY STREET. We've even had one rubber-band a package
to the door handle. Someone tried to stuff a padded envelope full of
6502s into the slot in our mailbox and gave up halfway because it got
stuck (I had to cut the package in half; fortunately, I could cut BETWEEN
two of the chips).
Most of the time I swear they don't even knock (I work from home, so I
should be able to hear them knocking). One time a few weeks ago, we
got a slip in our mailbox when we never heard a knock, and when my wife
went to the post office the next day to pick it up, there was a line out
the door (in a post office that's not usually even busy) full of people
with the same story, all of whom had the same carrier who apparently
hadn't even brought the packages back to the post office. We eventually
got it the next day, but it was pretty much the last straw; I avoid USPS
shipping altogether now if I can help it.
We have one older carrier who always knocks loudly and waits more than 3
seconds for an answer at the door and never leaves the package on the
step. He's the ONLY ONE out of about 7 different carriers, and he's
about to retire. What a shame.
I wonder if people didn't grouse so much whenever postage went up with
rising transit and administrative costs (and a drop in junk mail, which
also subsidized the service) the system might be better. A few months
ago, they were going to stop Saturday deliveries because no one would
accept a hike in postage rates, but our Congress decided that that just
wouldn't do and MANDATED that they continue Saturday delivery (without
actually offering any more money to sustain it). It's such a broken
system.
- Dave