Dear United States Postal Service:
My brother-in-law and I chipped in to purchase a vintage coffee maker in an online auction two weeks ago. The product was to be mailed to me, but I never received it. The auction seller clued me in today to a tracking number for the package, and I was able gather online your assurances that the product was indeed "DELIVERED" on May 12, notwithstanding that I have not seen hide nor hair of it in the week since.
The next step here, as I saw it, was to contact the residents of the five other units in my building, as one of them might have signed for and received the package last week, but forgotten to pass it along, as happens from time to time. I soon learned that two of my neighbors saw an unidentified man walking off our porch with a box sometime last week. They were not in a position to stop him, and it sounds like he was a large man.
On to the Post Office then, for a consultation — which takes some measure of determination, as none of your Customer Service Reps cares to answer the phone when it rings. But my own persistence and singularity of purpose ultimately won me a moment's congress with an operator, who informed me that the "Delivery Confirmation" level of service entitles the postal carrier to leave packages on porches, without making any real effort to ensure that the package is securely placed within the building. Had the auction seller sprung for the next tier of "delivery" service and purchased
insurance, I was told, the mail carrier would have been required to obtain my signature before leaving the package to the wolves.
I think it's terrible policy for mailmen to leave packages outside of homes in urban areas, then blithely declare over the World Wide Web that they were "DELIVERED." What is "delivery," if the intended recipient never receives the goods? To take one example: I call for a pizza and am promised "free delivery." The delivery man throws the pizza into the River on the way to my house. He then presents himself at my door and asks for payment for the pizza. When I complain that the pizza has not arrived, he tells me, "well, if you had asked for it, we would have provided you with a guaranteed free delivery. At a dollar's extra charge, of course."
And so we come to the crux of it, a point I raised to the Wife several weeks ago when I walked up with her to the Mass. Ave. Post Office to mail my nephew's birthday present, and we declined insurance — the Postal Service's sale of "insurance" generates a bit of a warped incentive structure. In any other context, it's called a "protection racket." One envisions Internal Memoranda in your offices along these lines:
To: All Mail Carriers
From: The Postmaster General
Revenues from our package insurance program have dropped considerably in recent weeks. We attribute this decline to increased consumer confidence in our delivery capabilities. To put it bluntly, you folks are not losing enough packages. Please take all necessary steps in the coming days to remedy this situation, or layoffs will ensue in short order.
In short, I'm out $120 on this deal, because you people are sloppy and stupid. So thanks for nothing.
[Phutatorius]
I should add that this sort of thing didn't happen when Clinton was President.
