I had grand aims of pulling together a wedding anniversary one-year retrospective recap thing, but I just cannot begin to think how I would pull that together. Even if I did it would be a massive post, and really I try to avoid painfully verbose posts.
Instead I will tell you about the misadventures I had getting some items here from Amazon.
The catalyst for this was, interestingly enough, my reflection on the year past and the upcoming year. Heather and I received several copies of the book The Five Love Languages during our engagement and as wedding gifts. We read it eagerly, and I think it was helpful then, but I thought it would be an interesting thing to re-read now that we have a tiny bit of perspective on marriage. Not surprisingly, after two moves, we couldn’t locate the one copy of the book we had retained from before. I then jumped on Amazon to order a new one, because I felt I had fully torn the apartment up and clearly the book had been lost.
At this point, three things happened.
- Heather also bought a copy, because I was halfway wanting this to be a surprise and hadn’t told her about the order
- I found our copy of the book
- The Amazon shipment was listed by the USPS (United States Postal Service) as “delivered” on their website, but was not in my mailbox.
I should point out that the mailboxes at our current apartment are fairly large as far as apartment mailboxes go, and open with a key. I am fairly confident that the Amazon box would have fit into our mailbox. Even if it had not, there is a large drop box area with a single-use key system that allows the carrier to secure a larger box, and leave the key locked in your mailbox.
I filled out a missing parcel form on the USPS website a day or so later. After three or four days, I started to think maybe that wasn’t going to get any traction. I thought I should contact Amazon, as maybe they could demand a little more attention from the Post Office. I sent an e-mail to Amazon, explaining the missing package, and that I was still waiting to hear from the Post Office. I should point out I did not in any way imply they were to blame, nor that I expected them to do anything, just that I wanted them to be aware of the situation.
I got an e-mail back from an Amazon representative within ten minutes! The e-mail stated that they were sorry the package had been lost and they would be happy to ether re-ship the package or refund my order, and they would do so as soon as I responded to their e-mail.
I replied that I would like to have them re-ship the order (I had several books in addition to the now duplicate Five Love Languages).
The Amazon representative then communicated that they would be unable to re-ship the Five Love Languages as they were sold out, I would be refunded the price of that book and my other books would be shipped over-night express for no charge. The order would have been shipped express even if they had been able to ship all the books.
The next day, UPS dropped of my order, several hours after I got the call from the UPS guy using the entry way system to our apartment, I finally got a response from the USPS regarding my missing parcel. To their credit, they actually sent out a postmaster to check the “large package drop box” and area around the mailbox before responding to me. All the same, I have to point out the incredible speed Amazon had compared to their process.
The end result of the USPS investigation was that the parcel was lost. The recommended I fill out another form on their website for “stolen mail.” I filled out the form just to try and keep their attention on the issue. I don’t know if a package being shipped to the wrong person and them not sending it back is really theft, but frankly the frequency with with which we get mail in our box that clearly has someone else s name and address on it makes me willing to pursue any option I have to try and steer attention to our local mail system.
Three to four days later I got an e-mail saying my report had been processed and would be used for statistical reporting by the USPS. As far as I can tell, they consider the mater closed.
I almost feel obligated to write this post simply to thank Amazon. I never intended to ask them to eat the cost of the lost items, and am amazed that they would do so without hesitation.
-Jordan
Nelsons 