I sent my PC components to somebody else's little corner grocery in Heikinlaakso

[cimorene]

So I NOW have built a new PC and it's up and running the freshest version of Ubuntu, but the saga was quite fraught for a while there. The phrase "For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, the parts got sent to Helsinki" was used quite a few times in the last few weeks.


Wax & my MIL in front of the shop in Heikinlaakso displaying a big advertising poster that says in Finnish "EVERYTHING GOOD IS NEARBY".

You might remember the difficulties we have already had with postal deliveries ever since our postal service was outsourced and the store that holds the delivery contract for our neighborhood is doing a shitty job.

Well, they also installed a Smartpost automat in our development. A Smartpost automat is a bank of electronically-locked lockers attached to a touchscreen which can now be found in nearly every corner grocery in the country and allow you to receive packages. The postal service delivers the package to a locker and you get a unique code by text message which you use to pick it up. The success of Smartposts has allowed them to expand to private automats for big businesses and apartment houses, for example, which can only be used by the residents with access to the automat. The source of all this trouble is the implementation of the Smartpost system:

1. How Smartpost automat deliveries work: Smartpost delivery costs slightly more than regular postal delivery and has to be offered by the store you're ordering from. You select Smartpost as the delivery method, and the webstore then loads a database of potential Smartpost locations. You search by city/zipcode/map and select the store to which it will be delivered.


The problem with this is that the private Smartpost automats can't be allowed to appear in the same database of Smartpost locations with the regular ones, to prevent people without access to the automat from unknowingly sending their packages to it.


2. The solution Smartpost chose to implement: To use a private Smartpost automat, you have to log into the postal service website (as it's government official, identifying yourself against your social security number) and enter the private automat as your desired destination for packages only in their mail redirect system, which is also used for things like moving/summer residences. When you place an order (from a store that offers Smartpost, due to the cost issue) and choose Smartpost from the delivery methods, the webstore will continue to offer you the same database of public pickup points as ever. Instead of using this, you have to manually change your address in the store's address field (which usually still displays your name and address when you use a pickup-point delivery method: it enters the pickup point address as "c/o").
   
   Each Smartpost automat has a completely unique address from every other place and from each other, which they achieved by inventing an entire new class of nonexistent zipcodes. Each automat has its OWN zip, which to the informed eye offers a clue to its location: our zipcode is 20210 and our automat is "20214"; the next nearest one is "20215". So, for example, my order confirmation from the store now states that my delivery address is "Cim 'n' Wax, Street Address of Laundry Building, Turku, Finland, 20214." Whereas our real street address is elsewhere in the development and that isn't its zipcode, while the laundry building's actual zipcode is 20210 - if anybody lived there, their regular mail would go to "Dr Laundromat, Laundry Building, Turku, FI, 20210".
   
   Essentially, then, we're tricking the webstore. We've told it that our address is the not-actually-extant address of the Smartpost automat, and the zipcode, when read by the postal service's sorting machines, will route it into the Smartpost system instead, where they will send it to the correct automat. The webstore doesn't know anything about that, though. Their computer is happy as long as each field is filled out: the address field (with our fake address), the delivery method (with Smartpost), and - here comes the next problem -
   
   - the pickup point selection menu with the database of public Smartpost automats. This field can't be left unselected, because the checkout process will say "ERROR! Required field" or something like that. The first few times I successfully ordered to our new private automat, I selected the nearest public automat here, but since the package doesn't go there it's sort of beside the point.


As my sister, who works for the Lousiana state tax department (job description: Jen from The IT Crowd) remarked, her boss, the chief of interfacing between the design and implementation teams, would never have allowed a solution as backwards, confusing, and complicated as this to go out of the testing environment into production. Because she's competent.


3. What actually happened to my package: it hinged on the website I ordered from and their order form. Usually the checkout process has a row of big icons for all the services they use: the credit cards they accept and Paypal, DHL and whatever other delivery services they offer. This website didn't have a list like that, but when I opened up the payment dropdown menu my bank appeared in the list and when I opened up the delivery methods dropdown "pickup point delivery" appeared in the dropdown menu. When I selected "pickup point", it automatically selected the grocery that houses the nearest public Smartpost automat on the basis of my home address (which was already in their system because you have to give them your billing address). I absent-mindedly, I now understand, assumed this meant Smartpost, which is what it usually means in Finland. I proceeded to change my address in their system - they had a handy tickbox for "change for this order only". When I entered the automat's fake address in the field, it immediately auto-updated the page and stuck a green checkmark next to the zipcode and autofilled the "city" blank further down with "Smartpost". So I was like, "Aha, it's working! Perfect!"
   
   However, when I scrolled down, the formerly irrelevant pickup point-dropdown had repopulated. The nearby corner store was no longer selected. Instead it had automatically selected a corner store in Heikinlaakso (Henriksdal), a small township in the Helsinki urban area right next to Vantaa, the suburb that houses the Helsinki airport and the 2nd oldest Ikea in Finland. We opened the dropdown and all the other options were also in the Helsinki area. "I guess it thinks all the Smartposts in the country are in Helsinki," I said. But since I had ordered to the private automat successfully twice and both times the pickup point field had indicated the irrelevant nearby store, we just shrugged and submitted the order.
   
   And then I failed to open and actually read through the information in the confirmation mail and the shipment message - I just got the popup notifications on my phone and read the subject lines out from the notification bubbles - "Oh, my PC parts shipped now!"



4. So four business days later I got two text messages from PostNord that my package was available for the next 2 weeks at this corner store in Heikinlaakso and it was a signed delivery, government-issued ID required, thanks! (I've never before gotten a signed delivery without paying extra for it??? PostNord is weirdly cheap about that for some reason and I definitely didn't select it, nor did it say anything about it on the order page!) Oops: PostNord is a private delivery company, like DHL or UPS, that operates only in the Nordic region. They don't use the Finnish postal service's sorting machines at all, obviously - they get the packages directly from the store and deliver them to their contracted pickup points. They have one at the same corner shop that has the nearest public Smartpost automat, which was why it was initially the suggested location when I selected pickup point delivery. There's two other pickup point delivery carriers operating in Finland, Matkahuolto (they travel in the cargo portion of long-distance busses) and MyPack (used by Zalando), so I should have remembered, but I forgot that "pickup point" could mean any of these. However, I've never encountered a checkout process that didn't proudly and explicitly display the logo of whichever of these services you're purchasing, because they're well-known and trusted services.



5. I politely emailed their customer service, and I needed like four paragraphs to explain how I had gotten confused because nobody who didn't already know would believe that private Smartpost automats work the way they do. She replied that they never use Smartpost and have no contract with them at all, and that their only pickup point carrier is PostNord, and that she would check with PostNord to see if they could redirect the package for me.
   
   (I was quite baffled about the green checkmark and the "city:Smartpost" incident at first, but I've concluded that the postal service database must be served to all webstores, regardless of whether they use Smartpost, perhaps to check that the addresses are valid for delivery or to autofill missing zipcodes. There's definitely no reason for "Smartpost" to be in the database that is sent out externally to clients who don't use Smartpost, but that's the postal service's fault, not the shop's.)
   
   Then the next day she sent another message that, unfortunately, the package had already been delivered and locked up in Heikinlaakso, and they didn't have the ability to redirect it after that point. Now only I with my government ID or someone else with an ID and a signed slip from me allowing them to pick the stuff up on my behalf would do. She apologized for the inconvenience and said that the stuff would be automatically returned to them in 2 weeks' time if nobody picked it up, and at that point they would refund the purchase and I could place a new order for the same components.



6. We don't have any friends or family living in Helsinki rn - at least, not ones close enough that we have their phone numbers or email addresses - so we briefly considered asking Wax's brother if he knew someone there whom we could pay to get the packages and then mail them to us. But as we looked into the possibility, the amount of hassle for them in going out to Heikinlaakso to do this, plus the fact that we'd have to fax (?) the signature to enable this stranger to do it, started seeming just as expensive as going there ourselves.

So ultimately, since Wax had the day off, we ended up calling her mom and asking if she and/or her car were free. We made a day of it - 2½ hours in the car each way, left the car in Tikkurila (Dickursby), took the train to downtown Helsinki and had lunch, and then her mom went to visit her 90-year-old aunt in a nursing home while Wax took me to the Kiasma museum of modern art (which I've been wanting to see since forever - it's famous!!! - but this was my first visit). It was a nice day. We especially enjoyed the animatronic muppets in The Aalto Natives by Nathaniel Mellors & Erkka Nissinen and we were introduced to the beautiful tapestries and pottery of Brit Grayson Perry. We still intend to look up some more interviews and documentaries with him on Youtube.

The computer assembly went pretty smoothly after that - we even had spare sata cables - except that I forgot to attach the secondary power supply cable the first time and had to take the case back off and remove the power source to reach the port. Minor hiccups, really. Gold stars to the people in customer service who corresponded with me, and I just hope my emails were more entertaining than exhausting.

Comments

[torachan]

In the event that US postal service becomes privatized I really hope that no one looks to Finland for an example of how to do it.! D:

[cimorene]

I think the actual Posti has been corporatized for years, but this whole outsourcing fiasco is RIDIC. Not only did they close the branch post offices in favor of having their duties handled by the customer service counters of grocery stores - which actually COULD be a good move, because the stores are able to have longer operating/open hours and when there's no demand for post office, the customer service desk employees have other things to do! - but they also outsourced the delivery to the same stores, and my previous posts detail how that's been going. Losing packages constantly, not delivering notices or delivering them illegally late, illegally returning packages to sender before the last store-by date... GAH!