Bizzare, funny and odd lost mail situations

[ricarmic]

I saw another thread deviating from the original intention so I thought I'd start a new one just for this!

Here are 4 of my experiences:

1.  Mail lost, if I remember it was somewhere in Quebec. About 5 years later I saw a newspaper article about a postal employee who was not delivering all their mail and had been stockpiling it in their house for a long time. About a week later, the item came back to me as undeliverable! The PO had tried to deliver it to the original addressee who had moved! 

2. Note from buyer, missing box. I asked him to check his PO to see if they had any news. In the meantime he happened to go to BBQ something for supper that day or the next and lo and behold the postie put the box in his BBQ!!!

3. Returned item damaged in transit. All I got back was the lid of the box! 😞

4. Got a bizzare looking poly mailer from Scotland, it looked like it had dried blood all over it. Stamps inside were OK because it was a plastic bubble mailer. A week or two later I got a note from the fellow advising that the stamps he went to send me were lost because he was hit by a bus while walking to the post office and the package was lost because he was taken to the hospital and had just gotten out! So it was dried blood on the envelope (there was a lot!!!!) and someone must have put it in a post office box or something who found it. A very bizzare situation, he was very happy to hear that it wasn't lost, I think he was in his late 80s so he wasn't a young guy!

Lets hear some more!

[mr.elmwood]

About five years ago I was at the PO in Shoppers. They knew me well, there. Anita snaps to it and says "Hey! We had a parcel come back that might be yours". The CN22 had peeled off and all that was left was the corner with the post office number on it. My handwriting.

[cumos55]

Shipped a parcel to New York City.

Went from Winnipeg through Toronto  and then to New York City.

Buyer never picked it up ,  and it started back to me.

From New York City  to Toronto  and then it did an about turn

From Toronto to Montreal  and back to New York city....  different zip code..  than first time to New York City.

Canada Post could not find the parcel... and insurance was paid.

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How about a parcel going to the destination city... but  the destination address could not be found..... parcel came back to me... address was correct......    Postal service... first time USPS  and second time Canada Post   could not deliver the parcel... address not known?????

[cumos55]

This one I heard about

How about a parcel, with tracking  going from Winnipeg  to Toronto... then to Calgary... then to Toronto... then Calgary.....

Canada Post could not catch the parcel.... and stop it from its travelling....

Something about the address... made this possible.

[cumos55]

Parcel was mailed to Germany in September 2013.

Then at about one year later  almost to the day... buyer asks... Where is my parcel?

One year later????

Lost in the mail system. was my answer....

[rose-dee]

Well, this one is probably a good news story, with honours due to the USPS. 

I mailed a parcel to a U.S. buyer several days before it was clear that Hurricane Sandy was going to hit the east coast of the U.S.  Five days after mailing (when I would normally have expected my shipment to get to the buyer), I checked my buyer's address and realized she was located in New Jersey right in the middle of the most dangerous hurricane zone.  Uh-oh.  It was Small Packet service, so there was nothing to do but wait. 

Two weeks later my buyer emailed me to say she hadn't received her package.  She told me her local P.O. had been flooded and was completely ruined.  Although I knew there would be a massive clean-up going on in the area and people would be worrying about more important things than looking for parcels, I asked her to try to contact her local P.O. and see what she could find out, and if the parcel didn't show up within a few days, I'd send her another identical item.

Well, she told me there was a handwritten sign on the front of what was left of her P.O. saying all mail and parcels had been moved to a school on higher ground and would eventually get sorted and distributed.  

Sure enough, about a week later, my buyer received her parcel, dry and intact.  It was an antique sewing pattern, so it wouldn't have survived water damage had it not been "rescued".  All I can say is that for all the griping I hear about USPS on these boards, they went above and beyond on that particular occasion. 

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OK, and then there is my story about the stinky letter - nothing to do with eBay, but since we're on the subject, see next post. 

[rose-dee]

Many years ago, one of my first jobs in Ottawa out of university was in the PMO as a junior correspondence officer.  I hesitate to say it, but it does clarify the story to state that this was Pierre Trudeau's PMO.  

The policy of the PMO at that time was to reply to every single letter, whatever the content, vitriolic or not, with a polite response.  Of course, most letters fell into one general topic category or another, so they were sorted that way by us, with any letters from important groups or VIP types going up the chain of command for specific responses, but most being handled by the correspondence officers using more or less stock replies. There was, at the time I was there, an entire room devoted to letters about the seal hunt, which one by one, were answered with standardized replies and signed with an automated stylus machine. 

In those days the big concern was the lingering threat of FLQ retaliation through the mail to the PM by way of exploding materials.  All mail went through the RCMP before coming into the PMO, which in those days I presume meant some sort of X-ray scanning for metal or other bomb materials, etc.  I doubt things like "powdered substances", anthrax, etc. were on the radar. 

One day the fellow working next to me received his usual rolling cart full of letters addressed to the PM.  You have to get the picture first -- we all had letter openers and flew through the envelopes almost mechanically. There wasn't time to stop and admire the envelopes (although we had to keep the letter with the envelopes they came in).  At one point I heard a loud shout/groan of disgust coming from the cubicle next to me.  Of course we all ran over to see what was wrong.  

There my colleague was, holding the open envelope at the very edge.  He was grimacing at a small plastic bag lying on his desk that had slid out of the envelope, filled with, well, a squishy brown substance that smelled to high heaven, even through the plastic, and that no one misinterpreted for anything but what it was.  No note to the PM, just the personal message in the bag.  

Needless to say, that was one of the only letters I knew of while I was there that did not get answered!  But kudos to the intrepid men and women of Canada Post who handled and delivered it -- it did get to its proper destination...what's the line?.. through snow and sleet and ice and sh....ite???

[femmefan1946]

That's the same job I just retired from! Only with Aboriginal Affairs.

Nowadays, we are allowed to ignore some letters if the sender is deemed a 'constant correspondent'. And we also refer some to the RCMP for further investigation.

[rose-dee]

Yes, I had my foot firmly in the door of the Public Service back then, and I often think that, had I stayed, I would have actually had a pension I could live on at this stage in my life.  

There wasn't much need for polyglots in Vancouver in the 1980's, but there was a booming legal sector, and I got more or less stuck in it for many years.  Law firms, by and large, don't believe in pensions, probably because the partners need the money to build their mansions. 

[michaelbb2]

I had a package addressed to me go all the way from the Canadian seller to the United Kingdom and back due to the similar postal code layout.  There was a message on the package as follows:  "Seriously?....try Canada".   The seller did not put Canada in the address but if anybody with half a brain read it.....it was clearly destined for a Canadian address.

[mr.elmwood]

Except that the parcel was read by a machine and postal codes can be replicated in the UK.

[ricarmic]

I had one package that the temporary fill in postie in my local PO put our postal code in as the destination instead of the target postal code in the system (it was right in the address on the box). This caused my box to bounce back and forth between the London and Toronto sorting plants I think 3 times. I presumed that it was been seen by eyes which saw the TO postal code on the box, then a machine somewhere saw my Shedden postal code in the expedited label and back it went to London. My regular postie who had returned by that point had to intervene to get it delivered properly!

[cumos55]

How many times does a seller get a parcel back  that says...

Address not found...

and there it is ... on Mapquest....  and then with a Google street view

Send the first parcel .. and USPS cannot find the address.....  Second item bought... same buyer...  same address.. and this parcel gets through.

Sometimes one just has to give up... Buyer is frustrated.....  Their address could NOT be found..... why???

Maybe seller error.... Maybe buyer error.... and more times than not... Postal service error!

[2014sportsterguy]

Had an envelope with cash inside about 50 dollars return to sender me' one year later unopened? Must have taken a trip somewhere in postal land. Another time a letter returned to me burned at the edges,pranksters l guess. And that's it except for all the wrong address letters and we wonder why stuff goes missing..... Had also drop off at my house with no return address, what am I going to do with a box full of Alpaca wool?

[vintagenorth]

Sell it on ebay!

[maggiebvintage2010]

Absolutely! - it's expensive stuff.

[2014sportsterguy]

Actually I have a customer that has a cottage type knit store, since she used my technical services I gave her the box, she was very happy....

[riceqa02]

I sent a package to an american buyer with tracking and when I checked the status 5 days after dropping it off at the post office, my package was out for delivery in my home town. Sure enough the package was delivered to myself even though the label cleared stated my address as the sender. When I called Canada Post the tracking was suppose to be delivered to an US zip code.

[dipmicro]

Recently I got this email from Greece customer regarding $18 item he purchased in July and we reshipped in August after 6wks have passed without delivery.

Btw. this is very rare occurance. Out of hundreds mail lost and/or replaced, it only happened perhaps 3-4 times including this one.

[femmefan1946]

I was talking with Jean-Jacques Blais, who was the Postmaster-General at the time, and he was saying that the biggest delays they had were 'mantelpiece mail'. Items that were delivered to the wrong house, sometimes postie error, sometimes incorrect address, and which then are neither returned to the mail stream nor passed to the neighbour's correct address.