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PaulI was the recipient of Julie's $25 Cracker Jack (well worth the price!). Her story is 100% accurate and it was probably the 10th time it happened to me. There are actually more gorey details.
The "gated community" I was living in at the time was a condo. It had a locked front door like a lot of other condos, and probably every apartment building in the larger cities. That's something I would expect UPS knows how to deal with. Anyhow, whenever anyone tried to send me something by UPS, if I was very lucky, the UPS guy would use intercom at the front door and leave me a message on my answering machine, or leave a UPS delivery sticker on the main door. (The mailman, FedEx, the plumber, the electrician, and everyone else in the county had a key). When this type of good fortune struck, I would immediately call UPS and ask them to divert delivery to my office. I still remember the guy's name -- Ed. Very nice, but totally incompetent. Without exception, I would have to call UPS a minimum of three times -- sometimes 7 or 8 times -- before they would divert the package for me. I'd ask them what went wrong, and they'd give me some excuse that the change hadn't been entered onto the computer. I would then sit there on the telephone with the guy as he was (supposedly) entering it into the computer. The next day, still no delivery. I'd call back again, and get the same excuse. I'd remind the guy that he (supposedly) typed the information in while I was on the phone with him, and he'd have no explanation for what happened.
One time, I got so frustrated, I had UPS send the package back to the seller (which, somehow they were able to do), and then paid the seller to send it by regular mail. I never, ever use UPSs. I truly hate them.
I haven't had much bad luck with the post office, but have one post office story that's both good and bad. I received a torn envelope in one of those apologetic body bags. Missing was my N28 Bob Caruthers. On a lark, I called the post office to see if there was anything they could do. They directed me to the main post office in Los Angeles (50 miles away) where they actually have a division set up to collect things that fall out of envelopes and packages. I called them up, the woman who answered retrieved the missing items bin, I described it to her, SHE FOUND IT, and sent it to me right away (undamaged). I was absolutely stunned. She explained that the post office's machinery sometimes slices open envelopes when they are too thick. There's a guy whose job is to pick stuff up off the floor when this happens and put them in the missing items bin. I wonder how many people just assume that there's absolutely know way to track this stuff down and just give up ...