then the mail went astray

canon digital rebel xsi

November has been a bit bumpy - and we are only three days in. Yesterday our mail got delivered by UPS to an address three miles away! How is that even possible?

We have a PO Box at a UPS Store in Northern California. We got it when we first came back to California, and have kept it for three years now since we are still technically "between residences". If we are not up north, then once a week or so, they forward our mail to us. So how a UPS Store shipping a package via UPS gets lost is pretty daunting indeed.

B noticed that according to the tracking information sent by the UPS Store, the package was delivered at around 10:30am yesterday morning, and signed for by Edgar. He checked the porch, and the places our UPS guy usually hides packages, but found nothing. Given that B was downstairs around that time, having just returned from the car repair shop that ordered the wrong part, it seems like he would have heard the truck or the knock on the door, but didn't. He decided to give UPS a call and see what was up.

There was a problem with the phone connection, which certainly didn't help with getting the tracking number straight. It took them several tries, but the woman on the phone was able to look it up and sure enough saw that the package had been delivered. B told her that while that may be the case, it wasn't delivered here. She looked more closely, and sure enough it was delivered about three miles away to a business park.

The UPS rep asked B if he knew the area where the package had been misdelivered. He explained that he had a general idea where the address was located, but had never been there. He was then told to go pick it up himself. Seriously.

This is where the problem began. Apparently what must have happened was that a group of boxes were delivered to that address, and our box must have accidentally been in the pile. A quick search on Google revealed that there were more than one businesses at that location, so it wasn't like B could just walk in and claim his box. The correct answer would have been to send the UPS driver back to the location to claim the box from Edgar, the guy who signed for it.

We made a few phone calls (oh the magic of Google), and tried to find Edgar without any luck. At one point, I actually was talking to someone in Fremont (okay, so Google isn't perfect), where one the companies is headquartered. No one I spoke to could understand what I was talking about. They all thought either they were shipping me a package, or I had shipped them a package - they couldn't get that UPS could misdeliver a package to a completely wrong address.

B then called the UPS Store, which is probably where he should have started. Even they had trouble understanding what he was explaining. But since they were technically the shipper, and have a relationship with UPS, they were really the only ones who could do anything, which really makes no sense, since they were 400 miles from the package, while we were just three.

The good news is the package showed up on the doorstep this morning. We have no idea what happened in between the calls to the UPS Store and UPS calling to tell us they were on the case. I am just glad this story had a happy ending.

Don't get me wrong, I still love UPS. They deliver millions of packages every year to the right place. It is just seems that the few that get misdirected take quite a bit of craziness to get back on track. This is not our first experience with boxes going to the wrong address. When we lived in Emeryville, a replacement battery sent from Apple, accidently got delivered about a mile away to the CompUSA store (reportedly the label fell off the box). In an even more bizarre twist, the guy who normally accepted packages for CompUSA was on vacation, so in the end Apple just shipped another battery.

on the night stand :: A Gate at the Stairs by Loorie Moore.