RobbieTunes

Foot chase, tussle. Not exactly touch football.
Deputy resolved to mutual dissatisfaction, of sorts.

francophile 

So, same happened to me last year. I got an amazing score, won some Mavic SSC stuff that would let me get full Mavic on my SP1000, Deal seemed too good to be true. As I recall, seller was listed in eBay as being in US. When I paid, it came back with details that pointed to it being Chinese. Followed the tracking, shipped from Germany. Showed as delivered on a Saturday, sent to my office, but my building is closed weekends. I was naturally suspicious. when I got there on Monday and nothing was available, I filed a case on eBay and saw the seller had been flagged with two other fraudulent sale feedbacks since I won.

I called USPS knowing they couldn't tell me where it was delivered, but I was curious about the weight. The package was 1oz, so far less than what the mini group I won would weigh. So I added that info to my eBay case and called them to follow up. They told me to contact the seller after 90mins on the phone getting bounced between two people. I contacted the seller to let them know what USPS told me and what eBay said, and they egged me on "if you're so convinced, file a claim with PayPal". Eventually, after multiple times of being prodded, I did.

It was intentional. PayPal auto-closes any case where delivery is made, and that subsequently closes out the case on the eBay side - and this was after the split. 1 hour I spent on eBay after that trying to clear it up, "nothing we can do, case is closed in both systems". Then 1 hour on the phone with PayPal trying to get anywhere, "we see you paid half with your PayPal balance and remainder on your card - we can't do anything, dispute with your CC company". So I do, then call back eBay and they agree, I got scammed and several others did. They suspended the seller, who'd just completed no less than 200 sales, and gave me a credit. Seller still got the money, and probably many others.

Lessons learned:
- Never open a PayPal dispute if the package shows "delivered", if the delivery was made to the same zip code as your own, they'll auto-close the case.
- Never trust where a seller says where they're from.
- Be patient and don't let a seller goad you into doing things
- eBay actually takes time to evaluate cases on a case-by-case basis.

Alternately, if you really want to screw a buyer over, apparently all you need to do is send a package of nearly the same weight to a random address in their zip code with tracking. If it makes it and it's send internationally, apparently none of the domestic delivery services will release the address without a warrant, and none of the companies are willing to go there.

gios

I read somewhere that if you have problems to contact your Area Consumer Affairs Manager for help. Copied the link and noted my poc (point of contact). Haven't had the need to try it yet - knock on wood.

Area Consumer Affairs Managers and Customer Service Program Specialist Contacts

iab

I'm familiar with never events. What's interesting, they are "allowed", except financially. Never events were initiated by the Center of Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as a means to not pay hospitals for when they did a never event. That's right, operate on the wrong kidney prior to 2008, the hospital would charge CMS for the procedure, and the cost to fix the mistake. Private insurance has followed CMS' suit not to pay. I have always likened it to going to the Jiffy Lube for an oil change, they bust your headlight, then charge you to fix the headlight.

But back on topic, I suspect a box going to CN instead of CA certainly wasn't caused by malice. Automated package handling systems are pretty damn reliable, but not perfect.

tricky 

So like, June?

heltex

I've had them turn up with NOS parts that were lost from about a year ago. never lose hope.

Cougrrcj

That'd work for the STREETS of thunder bay, lol...

My younger sister's birthday is July 22, and when our family was on vacation out west, we'd make sure we were somewhere in the mountains so we could have a snowball fight with the snow that was still around in the shadows... In '71 it was at Crater Lake, and '73 it was somewhere in the Canadian Rockies - possibly near Jasper... after attending the Calgary Stampede...

72ChromeP15

It was the guys in brown that lost an entire Mercian coming from Manhattan to me in LA. It was missing several days after it should have been delivered and I had to stop the rotation of the earth to get that package from wherever it was mis-directed. I had connections at UPS at the time and I really was never told the exact story. (package label was pristine, with a totally different tracking # than the seller provided and the box itself looked like
it had been through world war III. Very weird)
I sent a package to a customer in London UK one time via USPS that sat in some unknown post office in England.... for about 3 months. It was then unceremoniously returned to me in the US.
No explanation was given as to why it never made it to the customer, who was within 1 mile of the PO. I had a postal inspector (grandfather of one of my friends) check into that one.

stephr1

Not that it helps your cause....

I've generally had great success with stuff coming from China (min of 1-1/2 weeks, max 4-5 weeks). However, 1 pkg made it from China to SFO. It sat in SFO for at least a week (going from international to domestic) then was sent off to a post office within 4 miles of me, but not *my* post office. Back to San Francisco (main postal service here in Northern Cal) for another week. Finally made it to *my* post office, sat there for a few days and then got delivered.

In general, I believe all the shippers and postal services have their hands full (especially in the US now with all the mail in voting!).

Can't offer any insight for you. Will ask the cosmic shipping gods to send help and look out for you.

greenspark

So as long as we are having postal/courier stories, here are two:

1. I needed an LED digital display and figured I would be safer ordering from EBay Germany than the cheaper Aliexpress Chinese models. It was to be sent to New Zealand. The Germans packed it in an un-padded envelope, so of course it arrived broken. They sent a replacement. Covid hit. Tracking showed it was in the Netherlands where it remained unmoved for months. Finally, I asked them to re-send. Instead they refunded my money. I ordered one from China. Cost less, arrived in ten days (in the middle of total lockdown) and was packed in a metal box with foam lining. It took a couple of months to get around to installing it, and just before I began the German one arrived. Seems they sent it to Zeeland (a province in the Netherlands), not New Zealand and it took forever for a postal clerk to notice it did not belong there. So figuring the German one was likely to be of better quality, I installed it. It cracked within minutes - flawed glass. I installed the Chinese one. Works great. With the recent 9-years late opening of the Berlin Brandenburg Airport, I am beginning to wonder if German efficiency is not what it used to be.
2. My daughter is a venture capitalist and a fashion model who loves clothes. Back when she was in college in New Mexico, she found a bright red winter jacket in a 2nd hand shop that was both unique and lovely. At the end of the school year, her boyfriend invited her to drive to New York, but he did not want to haul four suitcases of her winter clothes. So he took them to UPS to send to his family's home. Of course, the suitcase with the red jacket got lost. Weeks of calling the UPS help line was fruitless. When it was clear UPS was going to do nothing, I started using the resources of the internet, including my VOIP US telephone number and eventually was able to track its last warehouse location in the Bronx. Somehow (can't recall now) I also found the direct phone number to the warehouse, and Bruno was so impressed that I was calling from New Zealand to find a suitcase lost in the Bronx that he let my daughter and boyfriend come into the secure facility. Luckily, I also had a photograph of the suitcase, which I sent her. Using Google Earth, I was able to give daughter and boyfriend real-time driving instructions (this was before smartphones with Google Maps) to find the warehouse - not a nice neighbourhood. My daughter charmed Bruno and Vito into climbing into a mountain of packages and suitcases - finding the lost-forever suitcase that UPS said was lost forever.

Lesson: When something gets lost, it does not mean it has vanished from planet earth. It's somewhere, you just have to find it.

frogman

francophile,

I feel your pain. I have had similar looooooong waits for vintage parts, but finally received them. Please let us know
when it arrives !

stephr1

I always thought that when something gets lost, you usually find it in the last place you look.

francophile 

randyjawa and 3speedslow --

On a whim, I refreshed the tracking page I've had open since I posted this thread. Good thing I did. Looks like the package finally made it to Canada then cleared customs in BC, practically on the other side of the continent. I'm assuming this was the fastest way to get it out of China once they realized it was in the wrong place. I've had tracking alerts setup for any changes in status, but I didn't hear a peep from them about this. I was shocked to see these new updates.

Randy, I'm really hoping this thing makes it there before EOW, but I guess we'll see. Talk about a debacle. Hope we get a happy holiday ending here ...

thinktubes 

I attempted to send a small camera part to a guy in South Africa and it never arrived. I gave him a refund and forgot about it.

8 months later, it showed up in my mailbox as "return to sender". It had customs stamps from 7 different counties and notes scribbled on it by various agencies, along with all kinds of stickers. Wild.

conspiratemus1

See? Just as I told you. It's in Canada, no sweat. Randy'll have it any day now. Canada Post may be slow-ish, but they are reliable. The stage-coaches don't break down and the mules keep pulling no matter what. (But the drivers do come out on strike sometimes, so there is that. But not wildcats. You can plan.)


You seem annoyed that China Post sent it to Vancouver. Look at a map of the Pacific Rim and tell me where you think a parcel from China bound for Canada ought to have made landfall in Canada. When you're in Asia, Van is not "on the other side of the continent" from TBay. It's on the way, in the right direction, no backtracking. Good on China Post for expediting it toward its correct destination rather than sending it back to the USA as your USPS contact seemed to think would happen. At least the China Post sorter managed to hit the "Canada" bin (even though we're in their bad books right now.)


And don't you think "debacle" is a bit too strong a word? The sinking of Titanic and the Japanese naval disaster (or miracle from the point of view of the good guys) at Midway were debacles. This was a minor postal misadventure in the middle of a pandemic that is about to have a happy ending.


Anyway, a First-World problem but I'm glad for you both that it is going to work out OK.

francophile 

You seem to be projecting a bit.

I'm just happy it landed stateside. My comment was only pointing out this package's apparent trip entirely around the globe when it only needed to go a few hundred miles. Up the east coast of the US, within nearly a hundred or two miles from Randy, then, I presume over the Atlantic to China, then over the Pacific to the complete opposite side of the continent it initially departed and should've remained on. Ultimately, it'll head back to within 100-20 miles of where it took a wrong turn, and - fingers crossed - land where it was expected.

Nope. I think this falls into the category of "colossal or ludicrous failure", debacle seems a perfect fit for me.

I packed it well, but I wasn't expecting it to go those extra thousands of miles, so hopefully it was sufficient.

Interesting part will be seeing if USPS refunds my postage for their gross failure to meet the expedited service I paid for. And yes, I'm grateful for those in China responsible for getting it back on track. I appreciate anyone who can put their political and/or cultural views aside in order to do the right thing or act the right way.

RobbieTunes

Wait, that's how that happened?

RobbieTunes

I think SNAFU is better. Or inconvenient reality. But I'm glad it's at least in the right hemisphere.

VtwinVince

LOL, I'm from Vancouver, and believe me, it looks a lot like China there these days, so the initial reroute is pretty funny in an inadvertent way.

francophile 

Can't see or use SNAFU without thinking about the skate/hard(ish)core band SNFU.

Good time to revisit.

francophile 

No stranger to BC, dated someone from there for nearly 5 years, met her when she was in Steveston, she later moved to Surrey. Had every intent to marry that girl, but it just didn't work out. Really awesome young lady.

Relatively familiar the area south of Richmond, downtown Vancouver and surrounding neighborhoods. I'll be honest, some of the best Asian-oriented food I'd had in eons. No idea how it looks now, that was 18-20 years ago now...

randyjawa 

Though I have little to contribute, at this point, my sincere thanks go out to both of the fellow members who have been helping me. This episode will become a part of this bike's history and an interesting tale, to say the least. Wnen the stem arrives (fingers crossed), it will be fitted to this old German steed...


For what it is worth, I am still waiting for one component from the US to arrive. And, I just ordered a set of Unversal hoods (stupid me, I already had a spare set - oh well) and a set of decals for my present project, a late sixties or early seventies Torapdo...

polymorphself 

Heh! Always like when I catch of a glimpse of someone here with an eye on similar interests as mine outside of bikes. Love me some 80's hardcore/punk. 90s too really.

Any Dungeons & Dragons fans out there? No? Just me? Ok...

WGB 

Canada Post may be slow-ish, but they are reliable.

Gotta call BS on that.

Two weeks ago man in Carlton Place (near Ottawa Canada) mailed me a set of tires. To expedite, on November 24th he mailed from Ottawa as it's a big city. Canada Post forwarded the package to Montreal, which is over 2 hours on the wrong direction. Package then sat, and sat and sat in Montreal and finally, finally arrived Saturday 4th. Distance from Ottawa to Fenwick 525km or 325 miles.

November 23rd, I mailed a freewheel tool to @oneclick (Halifax, NS). Lady at Canada Post told me to get a larger envelope as a small parcel could get misplaced. "But it has tracking!", I sniveled. She told me that I needed a large padded envelope or it would disappear. Bought a large Post Office envelope and off it went. That night it had made it to the Stoney Creek sorting office (52km or 32 miles) where it appeared to sit, and sit and sit. For the first week it showed delivery of Wednesday December 2nd and then it began to show "delay, delivery tomorrow" Today I called complaints and the nice lady advised that it is, officially missing. She told me I have to wait until December 14th until they will move to the "next step".

Copied directly from Canada Post website

Delivery status

Expected delivery: Item delayed — stay tuned for updates

Delays can happen for many reasons. Your item is still on the way. We’ll display a new date as soon as we can. Track this item later for updates or Sign up for delivery notifications

Received by Canada Post
Nov. 23

Expected delivery
Item delayed — stay tuned for updates

Nov. 24 12:02 am Item in transit
Stoney Creek, ON
Additional informationNov. 23 9:47 pm Item processed
Stoney Creek, ON
12:06 pm Item accepted at the Post Office
Fonthill, ON

So, yes, Canada Post gets stuff lost.

francophile 

Last year or year before, I dug out an old monster manual and some other DnD books! It's a small world. We're out here. I know for sure we're not the only BF'ers in these camps.

Yeah, I'll continue being nervous. Package still hasn't moved in the 10 days since it mysteriously surfaced in BC. Last known whereabouts was it arriving at a facility on December 3, 2020 @ 4:37 pm.

And again, we wait!