oh the crazy

Did you think you’d get through this holiday season without having to read a delivery horror story from me?

You’d be wrong.

Today’s doghouse resident: UPS.

I am proudest of one of the first gifts I ordered this holiday season. Inspiration struck me out of the blue, and I knew exactly what to get this particular family member. So I ordered this particular (very cool) gift right away, on December 6. The next day I got an email from the company I ordered from telling me my order had been fulfilled and giving me the tracking number. I cheered, knowing that at least one gift was taken care of and would arrive at my dad’s house in Texas in plenty of time to be opened on Christmas Day. I didn’t track the package because I figured it would get there when it got there, and I wouldn’t be down there to open it and wrap it until the 23rd.

On Monday, I got a phone call from a nice lady in Florida telling me that she had my package and wanted to know when I could come pick it up.

Florida Lady’s address is the same as my dad’s—except for, of course, the CITY, STATE, and ZIP CODE.

I immediately got online and looked up the tracking number so I could see what the heck was going on. I first blamed the vendor—the stupid company probably got the address wrong on the shipping label, so I’d just call and make them send a new order to the correct address, and deal with getting the other order back on their own time. But the invoice showed the correct address—me, care of my dad, at his address in Texas. So I pulled up the tracking information.

There it was, on December 12:

[CITY], TX: A CORRECT STREET NUMBER IS NEEDED FOR DELIVERY. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THIS INFORMATION / THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED

And then they sent it to Florida.

I spent quite a bit of time on the phone yesterday morning with UPS trying to figure out (a) how this happened, (b) how I was going to get my package, since Florida Lady had given me her phone number but wasn’t answering her phone and her voice mail was full, and (c) what UPS was going to do to FIX IT.

To be fair, UPS was very apologetic (though I am sure it is in the customer service script that they are to apologize every time they say anything to a customer who has lost a package), and they are doing everything they can to get my package back from Florida Lady and on to Texas. They also got detailed information on what was in the box (including item numbers), presumably so that, if the package is gone, they can just call the vendor and order a new one on their dime and overnight it to Texas in time for Christmas.

Of course, I’m not completely won over—after all, they screwed up. I am just not sure how someone in Texas decided that my dad’s perfectly valid address was not valid, and then how that someone decided that I really meant the package to go to the same address but in a different city and state. I bet there are other cities in this country that also have an address with the same number and street as my dad’s—I guess I’m lucky they happened to send it to someone who was nice enough to call me and say, Hey, I’ve got your package here!

Simply unbelievable. I’ll keep you posted on what happens next.