Why won’t the Post Office deliver my package?

My USPS tracking report
My package is sitting in the post office at ZIP 94124 and “scheduled for delivery” 11 days ago. Can someone help me get it to its destination?

A few years back, Canada got a new Postmaster General. He was presumably a political appointee vs. someone who came up through the ranks, judging from what he said at his introductory press conference. He was asked how he could improve mail service for business mailers and he replied to the effect of, “quite frankly, I don’t think it’s a very good business model to count on the post office.” Informed that thousands of direct mail marketers and mail order companies did exactly that, he quickly modified his remark.

I thought of that anecdote this past week while trying to track a package that I’d misaddressed and sent through Priority Mail. This is a great and reliable service that brings many of us back to the post office once per year at Christmas time. For $16 bucks or so, we can send a box of a fixed size but any weight and it will arrive in 3 days or so.

It was when my recipient didn’t get the package that I looked at my receipt and discovered my error: I’d sent it to an old address which was on file with my USPS account. I then went online and input the tracking number (tracking is included with the Priority Mail service) and found that it had gone out for delivery, presumably was rejected, then was forwarded from San Francisco to City of Industry in Southern California, where it had at this point been sitting for several days.

I tried to find a way to contact the post office on the website and eventually found a form I could fill out. I had to choose a reason and said it was an address change. (There was no choice for “I made a mistake on the address and I want to correct it.”) I actually got a call, in fact two calls, from the post office in response to this effort. But when I returned the calls the phone numbers rang forever; nobody was picking up and the post office doesn’t have voicemail.

By now my package, moving from port to port like the Ancient Mariner, had made it back to the Bay Area, giving me hope it would be redirected to the correct destination. But after it sat in Richmond for several days it made its way back to the post office for ZIP code 94124—the same ZIP code from which it had been dispatched to my original bad address.

At this point I filed a Package Intercept Request. The USPS website explains that it is a “request” rather than an “order” because “With USPS Package Intercept® service, you can seek to redirect a domestic item you’ve sent. If your item has not been delivered or released for delivery, you can request to have it redirected back to the sender’s address, to a Post Office™ location as a Hold For Pickup, or to a different domestic address. This service is available for packages, letters, and flats with a tracking or extra services barcode and all mail classes except Standard Mail® or Periodicals (other restrictions may apply). The Postal Service™ will make every effort to locate your item prior to delivery however; there is no guarantee for the service. [italics added]”

Now think about that. The package has a barcode, it has a tracking number, the postal service knows where it is, the post office knows the corrected address, and yet it hasn’t been delivered. How can this be? What good is a tracking number if it can’t be used for tracking?

You wonder why the U.S. Postal Service is, year after year, billions of dollars in the red as business drains away to Fedex, UPS and other for-profit carriers. Think about how responsive UPS was to last holiday’s shipping fiascos to make sure they wouldn’t happen again, and they didn’t. When those companies offer tracking services, you better believe they’ll work.

Maybe the project to track packages at the Post Office ran out of budget so they’re able to track a truck full of packages from one central location to another (note the ZIP code is the lowest sort level on the report; there are no actual recipient addresses). Maybe the person who was in charge of the tracking package got promoted, or retired, and the replacement wasn’t interested in the project.

For me as the customer, knowing my package is within a few miles of its destination, and yet not delivered, is far worse than simply giving it up as “lost in the mail”. If somebody in the Post Office is reading this, would you please take the package off the shelf and deliver it before the cookies inside get any staler?

Kohler how-to video might have been titled “why you shouldn’t buy Kohler bathroom fixtures”

You’ve replaced a toilet seat, right? It takes about five minutes: you unscrew the plastic nuts underneath, pull off the old seat, position the new one by poking the plastic bolts through the very obvious holes, secure it with new clean nuts and you’re done.

Well, if you have a Kohler one-piece toilet things are a little different. This video–which was MADE by Kohler, not an irate customer–tells you how to replace the anchors that hold the toilet seat in about (their estimate) 45 minutes. Mind, these instructions are just for the anchor…. you still have to put in the toilet seat and its bolts. And you have to buy a kit (Kohler sells it for $47 but you can get it for much less on Amazon) that includes the anchors and a bunch of specialty hardware to handle the difficult task of getting out the old anchor (which in my case was broken off in its hole) and stabilizing the new one while you compress it.

Take note as you watch the video of the sequence in which the washers go on the mounting bolt: first the flat washer, then the lock washer which is the opposite of the way it’s usually done. This means that after you seat the anchor and back off the mounting bolt, when you lift it off the toilet the lock washer will inevitably fall… into the toilet! At which point you have no choice but to fish it out by hand.

My teenager was impressed that a company has found a way to make money on its own design incompetence, but as he grows older he’ll learn. Google a bit and you’ll find Kohler is reviled among plumbers and any homeowner who’s ever had to work on their products and all swear never to buy Kohler again. I’m giving them my broken-off bolt award for “Worst User Experience of the Year”.

Second place, by the way, goes to my 2010 Prius for its right* low beam headlight. The halogen lights in newer cars do burn out and need replacement, which on the left* side is as straightforward as you might expect. But the right* side requires taking off the bumper for access, giving you the choice of spending half the day on the project or paying the dealer $150. Nice move, guys.

* I originally described it from the mechanic’s perspective, where you’re facing the car. Corrected to standard nomenclature where right is the passenger side (in the U.S. anyway).

Instead of protecting trees, Sierra Club turns them into advertising

Sierra Club Note Card Mailing
Sierra Club note card mail pack… that’s a lot o’ timber, podner!

John Muir must be spinning in his grave like a lamb on a campfire rotisserie. The organization he founded to “preserve the forests and other natural features” of the California Sierra Nevada Mountains has, in its most recent prospecting mailer, delivered a set of five two-panel note cards (complete with mailing envelopes) that must have taken out quite a swath of those forests.

Thinking about how many of these mail packs likely end up in the trash (or hopefully, recycling bin) unopened, it has to amount to a Giant Redwood-sized waste of natural resources. Hopefully it grates on the sensitivity of the target audience so it fails and they don’t do it again. Especially because the purpose of the mailing is not to protect the forests but wolves, who are being removed from the Endangered Species list presumably because they are no longer endangered.

I’ve been mildly irritated by previous Sierra Club mailings for their promotional nature but it wasn’t until today that I got rankled enough to dig into the mailing. A small notice that your gift is NOT tax deductible tipped me to go trolling on the web where, in spite of some excellent reputation management, it soon becomes clear that the Sierra Club you’re supporting is NOT the Sierra Club Foundation that spends 89% of its funds on worthy activities and gets high marks from charitywatch.org.

Sierra Club disclosures
Disclosures on the back of the reply form (which you send back). Click the picture to read the fine print.

Rather, “Sierra Club Founded 1892” is a PAC that spends almost half the money it receives on lobbying (this information is on the back of the gift form in the mail pack, which you are going to be sending back with your gift so it’s no longer in your possession). I took a picture of this document so you can see the budget breakdown, winsomely portrayed as a sectioned tree. I do see that 7.6% goes for “outdoor activities” which might be wilderness hikes, but might also be lobbyist picnics.

In short, I smell a polecat up this tree. If you’re looking for a year end tax deduction (which “Sierra Club” wouldn’t give you anyway) a better choice is Doctors without Borders which, while governments and NGOs dither about the fight against Ebola, is in Africa in force with boots on the ground. Grit your teeth as I did and check the “may we share your info?” box because it really does save them money if they can exchange lists, rather than renting them. Plus how else would you get on the list of other organizations and receive mailings like the one from the “Sierra Club”?

Does “made you look” strategy work for fundraisers?

Made You Look!
“Made you look” address sticker direct mail from DirecTV

I got a Christmas card this week from Chris Thomas—or so I thought. I was intrigued by the seasonal address sticker and wondered who I knew in El Segundo, a community near LAX notorious for its predatory speed traps. I opened it up…and there was the familiar tent card invitation from DirecTV, which indeed has its corporate headquarters in that city.

The DirecTV invitation is successful judging by the frequency with which we all receive it; the question is whether this “made you look” twist on the outer envelope helps response. I’ll guess it does, because some people will open who otherwise wouldn’t, like me, and some of those may  be in a mood to churn their TV subscription. But is there a negative effect from people who are irritated by the trickery and become LESS likely to respond in the future?

The same question applies to a graduate student’s marketing experiment described in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (it’s a long article, and this example is way down at the end). The researcher noticed that when a Salvation Army bell ringer was posted at one entrance of a mall store, shoppers would go out of their way to use the other entrance. He then posted solicitors at both entrances and had them directly request donations from some shoppers, and not from others.

Shoppers who were directly asked for donations were 60% more likely to give. That would seem to be a big win for the Salvation Army. But what about people who were irritated by the pressure and less likely to donate in the future (or maybe to visit that store)? Donors have memories and if you create a negative impression, does it hurt you in the long term?

I’d love to hear from readers who have some experience or thoughts on this. For me it goes back to my early experience with subscription and catalog direct mail when we definitely saw fatigue; mail somebody too often and they become less likely to respond, now or ever. I’m sure there is a negative effect from pushing too hard, and I’d like to know how organizations are factoring it into their fundraising.