Need to get my rimblow or my cash back
got a post office tracking number, and no joke, it took the post office 5 weeks to ship it from North Carolina to Abilene Tx.
I can beat that—thrice!
1. About 12 years ago when
this book came out, I did a call for interest on autographed copies, then bought a dozen or so and Bill Weertman signed 'em for me (at that time the price was much lower; mama mia!). I sent 'em out to everyone who'd squawked, and about a week later everyone had their copy…except for one dude in Argentina. His copy never arrived, and the post office eventually did their trace, the result of which was
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A year(!) later, the book arrived back at my address, still in the undamaged packaging I'd applied, with stampings and markings and stickers indicating it had enjoyed an all-expense-paid trip around the world.
2. A few years ago I sold a camshaft, valve springs, valve stem seals, and lifters to a guy in Finland. It worked out most economical to send the small parts and the cam in separate boxes. The small parts arrived in Finland in 7 days. The camshaft disappeared. Post office did their trace and found it had been sent to Ghana (um, because yeah, Ghana...Finland...easy mistake). They said they had to wait for the Ghanian postal authority to do their own investigation. For some strange reason, they never heard back—probably because the Ghanian postal authority is make-believe. Okeh, fine, somewhere in Ghana somebody's using a custom-ground Slant-6 camshaft as a baseball bat or something. I filed for the insurance, collected it, had another cam ground, sent it, and it arrived in Finland in 7 days. Nine months later, the first camshaft landed on my doorstep in fine condition with no explanation. I should mention that it had a machine-printed address label so there could be no handwriting issue, all customs forms were properly filled out and attached, and a sheet with destination and return addresses was inside the box in case the outer label would be damaged.
3. Last September I had a customer, a Westerner in Thailand who was rebuilding and upgrading an old Mercedes W123 car. I sold him the top-of-the-heap headlamp system he wanted. That was like 12 individual components in three boxes—big order, big price tag, but he insisted that it be declared for not more than $300, otherwise he'd get taxed on it. I explained how underdeclaring meant his *** was hangin' out if anything went wrong; if one or more of the boxes got lost or stolen or damaged he'd be outta luck for most of his money. He swore up and down he'd never had a problem, boxes always arrive in perfect condition, this is just the way it works in Thailand, everyone does it this way, etc.
Okeh, fine; you da boss. Parts distributed amongst three carefully-packed boxes, machine-printed address labels inside and out, customs forms completed and properly attached, etc. One of the boxes went missing, because of course it did. It vanished from radar very shortly after its origin scan. National US Postal Service people initiated their traces. Local US Postal Service people tried their best, too (benefit of small towns). Nope, gone. Vanished without a trace. And it was the box that happened to contain the NOS no-longer-made Mercedes parts, not the readily-replaceable LED headlamps. Groan. I put in for the minimal insurance, got it, and scrounged up a good used set of the brackets and a set of aftermarket faceplates (no more NOS), boxed them up, declared and insured them properly at full value (with the sheepish agreement of the customer), charged him for the replacement parts less the piddly insurance payout, and sent 'em off. They arrived in his hands 8 days later. And last week he pinged me to advise the missing box from the original shipment had just appeared on his doorstep!
(All that said, overall my experience has been better with US Postal than with UPS or FedEx)
