No shoes for you!

Lately, I’ve had some unfortunate luck when it comes to ordering things from the internet – shoes in particular.  Way back in November, feeling the need to embrace the warming weather, and after having spent some time consulting a podiatrist about a. the wart on my foot and b. my gait, I ordered myself a new pair of shoes.  Except those shoes never arrived.  Fast forward to January, and I went through the unnecessarily tedious task of trying to track down those shoes.  Long story short, I won’t be ordering shoes from RoadRunnerSports again any time soon, but at least I got my money back. 

As an aside, without searching through all that I’ve written, one of the glorious perks of living here as an American detachment with a consulate close by: US shipping rates.  Whatever it costs to send a package to LA is what it costs to send a package to Melbourne.  Sure, it might take anywhere from 7 to 27 days, but when your shipping is occasionally free, it’s totally worth it.  Not to mention most things – even with additional S&H costs – are cheaper from back home than buying here.  For example, Red Chuck Talyor All Star: AU$89.99, US$55.00.

Anyways, having spent the Christmas break as well as a number of other days out pounding the pavement with my aging Brooks, I decided another attempt at ordering some replacement shoes was in order.  This time, I went with Zappos.com, and I think the error is my fault.  Our zip is 96551.  A day or two after I’d completed my order, I realised that the shipping address was listed as 96557.  I have no idea if it was a typo on my part, or somehow electrons got crossed and a 1 turned into a 7, but it was suddenly too late: the order had been shipped.  Some searching on USPS proved that I had remembered correctly: package interrupt existed.  A call to their 800 number opened a case on my behalf, and I was provided with some additional instructions as to the form I could fill out and take to my post office.  Seeing as how the shipment was already on it didn’t seem necessary to fill out a form at my post office, so I waited a day or two more for someone to call me back about the case I’d opened. 

When no one did, I called the 800 number again, promptly got someone on the phone, who kindly explained that my case was being investigated and gave me the direct number to the USPS LA claims office which was handling my issue.  With that number in hand, I sat at my desk the morning of Jan 31^st and multi-tasked while I waited on hold.  90 minutes I was on hold.  90 minutes.  And when someone finally picked it up, the woman told me that the other lady who was the case worker handling my issue wasn’t at her desk, and would I be willing to hold longer [she did acknowledge that I was on hold for a while, at least].  Unfortunately, no, I could not as I had a meeting to go to right then, and I asked for a call back later with an update.

I got busy, and nothing came of it.  I had continued to refresh the tracking info from Zappos, and the information now showed that the shoes were in HI.  This is both good and bad – usually things that go through Honolulu hit a delay and take a bit longer to get sorted and distributed.  Great, I thought, I’ve still got a chance to do a package interrupt. 

Nope, another call yesterday morning of 50 minutes’ worth of time spent on hold to tell me that a letter had been shipped to our DPO box explaining how to use the military mail inquiry system.  I’m sorry, what?  You sent a letter to the DPO box about a package that needed to be interrupted?  Yeah, thanks for that.  Look, I get that the USPS is underfunded and understaffed, but I would’ve gladly paid a fee to have my shoes caught mid-route and shipped here instead of to 96557 [which, as I far as I can tell is just another DPO zip, so it’s not like the postal service can easily figure out that I’ve put the wrong city with the wrong zipcode]. 

I’m even more than willing to admit that the zipcode mistake is my fault.  Even if that’s the case, it’s the first time I’ve made a mistake writing my address for an online order [in years, if ever] … it just so happens to be on the second attempt at ordering some shoes.  I’m starting to think that these shoes just aren’t meant to be.

-EP