RBCraik - wierdest delivery yet

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Posted By: leon

Ok folks......this one takes the cake....sit back and let me tell a tale......sooooooo.....Bob Craik and myself start an email chat about the '11 Zeenut Weaver I just sold and it comes about that he has a D304 I need. Never to miss an opportunity I take him up on the D304 as it is a back I need...I am only down to the "General Baking" back now....(hint hint)....but I digress......so I paypal him immediately and he sends the card out immediately, or within a day or so, and this was on or about the 18th of Dec.....well, I didn't get insurance and he had said the amount "delivered".....and I never got the card. SO a few polite emails back and forth and we had written this thing off. I decided to take a partial hit and he could take about 2/3 of it.....It is my opinion that in lieu of an agreement we win together and we lose together. Some would think that him saying "delivered" is just that but I am not that big of an A-hole. SO I said he pays back 2/3 and we live and learn....as he did say "delivered" but I never said anything about insurance. I will say that he (hi Bob if you are reading this) was very polite and professional throughout the ordeal. WELL.....just now some guy came into my office and gave the receptionist a run over (literally with tire marks on it) white, padded envelope. It has only my address and NO kind of postal markings at all...nadda, none.....so this thing was in the middle of the street, run over, and this unknown gentleman, who left before I could thank him, gave it to our receptionist. Bob doesn't even know about this but I will be pay pal'ing him his money back today....AND...drum roll.......the toploader was totally cracked, and in pieces, and the card is UNSCATHED........how's that for a story? hope the rest of my day goes as well...... regards all.....

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Posted By: Jay Miller

Through rain and snow and dark of night the Post Office will drag your letter. Then they will run it over and give it to the gorilla who used to star in the Samsonite Luggage commercial to do what he would with it. After all that they will deliver it (maybe) at least two days later than promised/guaranteed.

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Posted By: jay behrens

At least the Post Office eventually delivers it. From personal experience, UPS just opens the box and steals stuff, then delivers an empty, opened box.

UPS "lost" more packages, or I should say the contents of the package, in a 3 weeks span than the Post Office has in my 20+ years of using them. I will hold this grudge for the rest of my life because they were more interested in cutting me a check than finding out who in their system stole the items. And I will bad mouth them adn tell retell this every chance I get.

Jay

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Posted By: John Wojak

And they'll deliver it in one of those cute little "body bags" in which they seal the shredded pieces.

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Posted By: leon

The mailman did not deliver this. The gentleman, whom I never got to meet, was not affiliated with the Postal Service....and was about 10 miles away from my office when he found it and brought it to me. UPS has never lost any of the 100's of shipment cards I have sent (knock on wood) and is my preferred method of shipping. Fedex, at my company, costs twice as much as UPS so I don't use them. A lot of that cost is probably my company skimming on the back end and raising our per transaction cost....regards all

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Posted By: RBCraik

Thanks to you Leon, for your honesty & integrity on this one! I had written this off & frankly was sick that such a great card had likely fallen into the hands of someone with no appreciation of it!
Our U.S. Postal Service...with apologies to Bob M., friggin' unbelievable! Everything goes out insured from now on.

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Posted By: dan

seems strange that no postal mark at all was on it since they postmark it where it is mailed from. It should have been postmarked before it left Rob's town, strange. Jay, was your UPS problem during their strike? They lost a very expensive package of Lelands during the strike. 1 of a kind non-sport art was lost.

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Posted By: jay behrens

No strike as excuse for them. This was back around 1987. I figure it had to be the guy that did my deliveries and pickups as he was aware of what I was shipping out and recieving.

Jay

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Posted By: Julie

I was mailing a $25 Cracker Jack (sic!) to central California from Berkeley, California, and I decided to have UPS pick it up at my house for $5, just to see how the package was treated. The card's trip was a horror beyond imaginging. They couldn't deliver it second day, because the guy lived in a
"Gated community," and the (substitute) delivery guy forgot his key. The next day, they said nobody was home. Receiver said "Send it to my office. Anyone would have answered the bell for the delivery guy--he probably didn't even try." I called UPS, and told them to re-direct it, and sure enough, it got there overnight (from the same city it had been in for some time now!). "The package was in shreads, but the card survived," receiver said. I think it was the shreadded nature of the package that kept them from delivering it in the first place!

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Posted By: leonl

I am sure it was in another package and probably fell out. Don't think it would have made it from CA (priority mail) to Dallas without any postage.....I am positive there was nothing on the white bubble wrap envelope except for tread marks and a little cement "burn".....I still have another package with the USPS that was sent about the same time that has not arrived either....but there is insurance on that one.....although it is that newspaper card from ebay that I have never seen before...from the Evening World, 1927.....hopefully it will arrive too.....

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

why anyone would not take out insurance on ANY item of value. The cost is overall negligible in the overall scheme of things.

As for post office, UPS, etc. we've all hashed and re-hashed the whole things many times (I'm gonna re-hash another time so if you have a closed mind, press the 'back' button your browser at this point). Everyone has their own favorites and for the most part, each service does a good job at what they do.

As a UPS employee, I appreciate Leon's comments and hate to hear comments like Jay's and Julies. Does it happen with UPS? Yep.....Fedex? Yep.....Post Office?....Yep. Unfortunately, people are human and some are downright liars, cheats, and thiefs. Is there a greater percentage of them per annum at UPS versus Lawyers, Stock Brokers, Bus Drives, Trash Collectors?

With 360K+ employees at UPS, 850K+ at the post office and 170K+ at Fedex, there's dishonest people at all three. I'm sure Fedex and the Post Office, like UPS, do as much as possible to root out illegal employees and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. Some people may not believe that statement that but what possible benefit to UPS--both from a cash outlay and from lost goodwill--could it be to cut checks on what was previously reported as $100K once worth of stolen merchandise versus investigating and prosecuting. If that was the case, shame on UPS or any of the other carriers.

A lot has changed in the last 10 years with the express carriers (UPS, Fedex, DHL, Airborne, Emery, etc) and MUCH more will change in the next 5 to automate MANY of the processes that we and our competitors have to reduce delivery times and make sortation automated and more accurate. Packages that travel through the $2 Billion Dollar hub in Louisville here are only touched by humans to unload and then load the packages. All the sortation is automatic. The packages never touch each other either with a 15-18" cushion of metered flow to help reduce or eliminate damages. Anyone travelling through Louisville, let me know and I can try to get you a tour.

Just a note to the wise....I once ran an import sort at UPS where we got in TONS of packages from overseas for clearance. MANY of the packages were addressed from 'Gold and Silver Exchange' to 'Dans Pawn Shop' (names changed to protect the guilty). Then you have 18-20 year old kids sorting the packages. You do the math. Using labelling that doesn't scream out what is in the package always helps to protect your goods. Almost as important as the inside packaging on something. Not only from UPS employees but also if the package is released by the UPS driver at your home or if it is left with someone else or if you have it delivered to work where the mail room signs for it.

Okay, I'm sensitive about this as if anyone couldn't tell. Guess we must be doing something right as we, for 20 years, have ranked number one in our industry with Fortune and for last 5-10 have ranked in top 10 of ALL companies in customer satisfaction/value.

If ANYONE ever has problems with UPS shipments, don't hesitate to email me personally as, while I might not be able to solve the problem directly, can help direct you to people in tracking/tracing and security that can hopefully help in the process. In addition, I have some internal tools to help track/trace packages that may have more detail than what is typically on UPS.com.

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Posted By: Jay Miller

From my experience UPS is the finest delivery service hands down. My delivery guy, Dave, is now a family friend. UPS IS THE BEST!

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Posted By: runscott

Fedex "Home Delivery" is a total joke in my neighborhood.

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Posted By: Julie

When you buy exra insurance at the postoffice, be in "express" or "registered mail," or whatever--they put the price right on the label. I don't like that! Who wants the delivery people to know they're handling a package with $20 woth of insurance!

Both FedEx and UPS either refrain from putting the price on the package, or will do so if you ask. Much safer.

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Posted By: Paul

I 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 ...

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Posted By: jay behrens

If you ever been to a Post Office auction of lost and unclaimed item you know that you can find some incredible items. The only problem is that you have to bid on an entire bin of material and you are not allowed to search them. You can look at what's on top.

Jay

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Posted By: Tom Boblitt

you were having problems with something sent to your home so much.....why not have it ALWAYS sent to work? Apartments are always a tough deal for drivers. Rarely do they find anyone at home, so they hold those deliveries till late in the day, so hopefully they can make them. Rarely do they driver release a package at a condo or apartment either.

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Posted By: Brian Weisner

Hey Leon,
I'm missing a package with a T206 Matty white cap. Have you seen it? It only had to go from VA(Scott Elkins) to me in NC, hell I could have driven a couple of hours and picked it up myself. USPS is killing me..........

It must be on the Pony express to Texas.

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Posted By: warshawlaw

three or four years ago I sold a PSA 7 Paul Krause rookie (football). The buyer claimed it had been damaged and wanted a refund. I told him to send back the card and the package, which he did. The PSA case was shattered and there was a TIRE PRINT on the bubble mailer. I refunded his $$ and ate the loss, or so I thought. After I extracted the card from the wrecked holder, it was fine except for a single crease. I offered in on ebay with the story and an accurate vg grade and got more than the initial price. Go figure . . .

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Posted By: Julie

I bought a 1955 Dodgers yearbook from a guy in the east a few years ago, and he shipped it overnight express-it was near mint. When it arrived, the front cover was torn off. I either called him, or he called me as soon as he got my e-mail, He said of course he'd refund my money, but wanted to know if the package were torn in any way so he could get HIS money back from the P.O. Upon (not very careful) examination, i found that the back of the envelope was completely black, as if it had been run over and over by a truck, So I included his mailer in my package, and he got his money back from the P.O.
Since they all make mistakes, maybe we should fund a pony espress...