Adventures With Amazon

[Burning Petard]

As an old geezer who hates to wander through stores to shop, not even hardware stores, I get alot of stuff from Amazon. I frequently get a notice about stuff that is shipped via the US Post Office that delivery is running slow and if it doesn't arrive in the next few days, I can get a refund. ALWAYS this has been something that I have already received and the post office never noted in their tracking system that it had ever been delivered.

Last week I ordered something that I really would like to have soon. Delivery was promised today. It has been shipped by Amazon's own internal logistics unit. Yesterday it tracked as arrived and then departed from an Amazon warehouse in Allentown PA. This is at most a four hour drive from me here in Northern Delaware, depending on traffic in Philly. There are three major Amazon warehouses within a half-hour drive from me, two in Delaware, one next door in Maryland.

Amazon tracking shows the package is now in California and being re-packaged and re-labeled.

Amazing. As the new/old saying goes: To err is human, to really screw it up, you need a computer.

snailgate

[Bicycle Bill]

It's a case of "rules is rules and we follow 'em, no matter how ridiculous they may be".  To illustrate:

Was at the post office today to mail my rent check to my landlord.  Address is to a PO Box.  I was at the counter purchasing a postal money order for payment; I then put it in an addressed, stamped envelope and handed it back to the clerk.  He hand-cancelled the stamp, and I assumed that since it was going into a PO box less than twenty feet away from where we were standing he'd set it aside until he had a free minute at the counter and could slip it into the box and be done with it.

Huh-uh!  Said envelope has to be bagged, put on a truck, and sent to the regional sorting office in the Twin Cities — because that's apparently where it gets sprinkled with magic fairy pixie dust or something, before it is put into ANOTHER bag and gets another truck ride back to whence it came.  Then and ONLY then is the now-suitably-consecrated mail able to be sorted and slotted.

Really un-fucking-believable.  An envelope that needed go to maybe ten yards, tops, instead travels roughly three hundred miles.  No wonder it's fifty-some cents to mail a letter (up from five cents, which had been the prevailing price for much of the 1960s and first half of the 1970s).

-"BB"-

[Econoline]

No wonder it's fifty-some cents to mail a letter

OTOH, it would cost that same fifty-some cents to mail a letter to Utqiagvik, Alaska, up on the Arctic Ocean, or to Christiansted, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, down in the Caribbean or to Hanalei, Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi, way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. (Try asking FedEx or UPS for their rates on deliveries to those places!) Because they're all in the USA the the system is designed so that it all evens out.

[Bicycle Bill]

No wonder it's fifty-some cents to mail a letter

OTOH, it would cost that same fifty-some cents to mail a letter to Utqiagvik, Alaska, up on the Arctic Ocean, or to Christiansted, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, down in the Caribbean or to Hanalei, Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi, way out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. (Try asking FedEx or UPS for their rates on deliveries to those places!) Because they're all in the USA the the system is designed so that it all evens out.

And back in 1972, that same letter would have gotten to Alaska, or the Virgin Islands, or to Hawai'i, or even the Canal Zone with the six-cent stamp on it too.  What's your point?

And I still say there is something seriously whacked when something can increase in cost, without significant differences or improvements in the goods or services being provided, roughly 886% (from 6¢ to 58¢) in less than fifty years.  And that something was whichever genius who, back in the mid-'70s, decided to change the U.S. Post Office from a Cabinet-level government agency established by no less a document than the Constitution of the United States (Art. I Sec. 8) to a privatized entity (USPS) that was then mandated to provide the same services as before but without the benefit of funding from the federal coffers.

-"BB"-

[ex-khobar Andy]

The UK has just decided to put up the price of a standard letter (100 g, just over 3 oz) to 95p which is around $1.30.

I collect stamps and specialize in the very first stamps issued in 1840. I own an eleventh-day cover which doesn't impress most people until you realize it was the 11th day of postage stamps - May 16th, 1840. First day covers exist but would set you back $250,000 or so. Rowland Hill introduced postage stamps and a single rate throughout the UK - the Penny Post paid by the sender - because he realized that the old system - rate depended on distance and the recipient paid the postage - made no sense. Plenty of recipients refused to pay because the fact that they had a letter from son working away from home was all the info they needed. "I'm fine, Mum." Hill's other stroke of genius was realizing that the cost of handling the letter from A to B was almost independent of distance, and much the greater part of the cost was in sorting it at the sending office and the last mile delivery. So (a) they made the sender pay and (b) it was one penny wherever the letter was sent within the UK which in those days included Ireland. Nowadays of course every country has the same basic system.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Was at the post office today to mail my rent check to my landlord.  

mail a check?????

How quaint! And that's still the USA is it? Geez, so far behind South Africa.

[Big RR]

I still mail checks, and refrain from accessing my account online. It may be "quaint", but I am pretty sure my account will never be hacked online. If I had need of the online access, I am sure I would do it, but mailing checks is fine for now.

[MajGenl.Meade]

By "quaint" I mean that we don't have that choice and the USA is far behind. But you do have free banking which would be anathema to the banks here.

It's electronic funds transfers and that's that. Our rent is paid by a standing order I set up with the bank; likewise our internet; and health insurance. Our auto/home insurance and cellphone companies deduct from our account whether we like it or not. For variables (rates), one must go on-line and do the payment, account to account.

I buy my electricity using my phone - one of the (dis)advantages of PAYG. When my bank ceased verifying activity by email and insisted on use of a phone app, I had to join a more recent century

There's no option to mail a check and er . . . no checks. Our bankers just look puzzled when they hear "cheque" - wassat then?

And the Post Office - can't imagine relying on them to deliver mail here but I suppose they must do occasionally, even by accident

[Bicycle Bill]

Was at the post office today to mail my rent check to my landlord.  

mail a check?????

How quaint! And that's still the USA is it? Geez, so far behind South Africa.

This guy manages maybe a half-dozen properties and is a very low-key operation.  He does not do payment online or have any provision for automatic payment whereby I have my bank send an e-check to his account, since this would add extra costs, and for such a small-scale operation, it isn't worth it.

And since I'm paying an amazing low monthly rent already ($400/month, w/stove and fridge, and includes water and sewer and rubbish pickup), I'm all for whatever is necessary to keep it that way.

-"BB"-

[MajGenl.Meade]

Indeed BB

By "quaint" I mean that we don't have that choice

I guess your landlord would be SOL here. He wouldn't pay for a transfer from my account to his - but he'd pay his bank a fee to deposit a check all right! Then again, they probably wouldn't accept a check - it's electronic or f-off for us.

Zey have vays to encourage uz!

[Big RR]

I'm sure we are proceeding to this; it's just Luddites like me slowing it down.

[Jarlaxle]

Was at the post office today to mail my rent check to my landlord.  

mail a check?????

How quaint! And that's still the USA is it? Geez, so far behind South Africa.

Bullshit. There are many ways to pay (indeed, many apartment owners require online payment), but some people still use checks. I do, it's my only bill not paid online.

[MajGenl.Meade]

What's the "bullshit" for?

That I think checks are quaint? (You can't tell me that I don't think what I think)

That checks are still used in the USA? (They are, so that's not bullshit)

That the banking system in the USA lags behind RSA (but is friendlier in the area of no-fee services)?

Which one of those is incorrect?

[Long Run]

IIt may be "quaint", but I am pretty sure my account will never be hacked online.

You are actually more at risk of being hacked by not setting up your online account. Any low level thief can set it up now and drain your account. They will find your account when they hack someone else who has received a check from you. That person has an online account and it shows all the checks that have been written or deposited. The thief will take the info from your check and set up your account for their benefit. If you don't point out the theft to your bank within a fairly short time period, you take the loss instead of the bank (e.g., you are on an extended trip, or have an illness or injury lays you up).

[Big RR]

Something worth considering; thanks LR.