Do you think this is strange?

Asked by LifeQuestioner (4162

) 13 hours ago

I don’t know, maybe I’m becoming cynical in my later middle age but here’s what happened. About a week ago I had two packages coming, both from different companies and both being delivered through the United States Post office. (Which was enough to make me cringe as it is, because we don’t have very good delivery in our neighborhood.)

Anyway, I was following them through tracking in the days leading up to Wednesday, which is when they were supposed to be delivered. At some point later in the day Wednesday, I got an email, a separate one for each one, saying my packages had been delivered. I went and looked outside my door where legally things are supposed to be left by the post office if it won’t fit in your mailbox. No package. Then I went down to my mailbox and looked all around in that area and there were no packages.

I contacted the one company and they immediately issued me a store credit and I ordered the same item again which thing came this past weekend. I contacted the other company and for almost a week I went back and forth with them on emails. It was frustrating because they only had somebody respond about twice a day so it was a slow conversation. And it wasn’t always the same person responding so they frequently were addressing questions that I had already had answered from the other person.

Finally, after almost a week, they just told me they wouldn’t issue me a refund and that I had to file a claim with the post office. I might have done that in the first place except the one time in the past year that I’ve tried to do that, I was told by the post office, well, it says it’s been delivered so it must have been. How’s that for logic?

So I filed a claim for my package this past Monday and I did get an email telling me they were looking into it and to please be patient. When I got home today, I laid down around 4:30 p.m. because my back and neck were really hurting from sleeping weirdly last night. When I got up around 7:30, I had a voicemail on my phone from somebody who said they were calling from the post office to let me know that they were still looking into the matter and to please be patient. So that was fine.

What struck me as odd is that they claimed that my local postal delivery person had come by my apartment and knocked on my door to try and talk to me.
If they did so it was after 4:30 or so and I never heard them knock but sometimes I sleep deeply.

Is that normal for them to stop by unannounced like that? There was no note left either on my door or in my mailbox, which, when I did some Google searching, is apparently the normal procedure. So overall the whole situation just strikes me
as odd. And what was the person’s intention in coming to my door? Were they upset because they were being
investigated? Is that normally how the post office handles stuff? Do I even want to talk to this person face to face because if the post office is questioning them, I feel like they might go off on me?

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4 Answers

Making a claim on the PO for an undelivered package is a rare situation I’ve not experienced, so I’m not sure how common it is. It seems a little odd, but postal in different areas will do different things, and what they do varies from person to person. I have had some of them try to communicate with me via notes or coming to my door, and of course in person if I happen to be out when they come by. Some of them can be quite conversational, and/or suggest unusual ways they can deliver the mail.

I can imagine the carrier may have been asked by someone looking into it, and the carrier might have then tried to investigate a bit by coming by. It doesn’t seem that odd to me, given that you made a claim that a package marked delivered didn’t actually get delivered.

Zaku (30570

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I guess not. In general, I don’t like when people come to my door because I’m an introvert and I would much rather talk to them on the phone or through email or text. I don’t know if they will come by tomorrow or not, but I wish they had waited for me to get back to them tomorrow. I just had that one bad experience with the post office before where I was told that because they said it had been delivered, that was the end of the story. No looking into it or anything.

LifeQuestioner (4162

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The PO probably looked into the delivery, found who the carrier was, talked to that person and asked them to go out to ensure the package was delivered. That isn’t a big surprise. What I suspect happened is that the package was delivered to the wrong address. Either it was addressed incorrectly or the carrier delivered it incorrectly. Either way, someone else got your package. If the PO is saying the carrier knocked on your door and that didn’t happen, it might be the package was addressed incorrectly and the carrier delivered it to the address which was on the package. They then went back to that address and knocked on the door to ask.

As a side-note, I would not do business with the second company again. It is their option to use the postal service for delivery so really, if it is lost in the mail, it is on them. When you mail a package, you have the option of insuring that package. What they are doing is trying to pass the buck when something gets lost, sending their customers into a circle-jerk of bureaucracy that will end up being far more frustrating than actually not getting the package. This company doesn’t care about customer service. They will do whatever they like and never take responsibility for any of it.

seawulf575 (17074

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I agree with @seawulf575 that the company should make it right, and not make you go through this runaround. I had a problem once with a package that was shipped via USPS, from Kohls, and when I called Kohls, they tried to pass it on to the PS, and then I decided this is bullshit and I called Kohls back and pressured them, and they then mailed me a new item. @seawulf575 is right, the company should make it right, not make you go through this. Then the company should take it up with the USPS. The bottom line is you still don’t have your item(s) and the company should use a carrier that is more secure.

I like when Amazon delivers a package and photographs the package at my front door. I also have GPS coordinates and a description of my house and where my house is (name of the complex, entrance number, second house on the right), in my Amazon profile, so there’s no reason why they should go to the wrong house.

jca2 (16798

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