Cursed by Hermes or some other god of package delivery

[cimorene]

1. A couple of weeks ago I ordered a TINY package, 2 bottles of nail polish, from my favorite Hki salon.
   
   In the past I always have selected pickup-point shipping for orders from her, but she usually downgrades it to the cheaper "maxi letter" shipping if the package is small enough to fit through a door slot in a padded envelope (typically up to 3 bottles will).



2. Something has changed in how Paypal interfaces with the webstore?? And I didn't get the opportunity to select the shipping method at all this time - it went straight to regular parcel post. I was a bit confused, but I figured it would certainly fit through the letter slot so that wouldn't matter. As far as I'm aware, postal service policy is that packages too big for door slots get a pickup slip but little ones go through the door.



3. The package didn't arrive and didn't arrive and I also did not get any package slips???



4. I lost track of time a little bit and I admit I wasn't counting the days, but I figured worst case scenario, a notification would arrive like... a week late? Probably? We HAVE gotten them 20 days late before though, so it's not like the delay was unambiguous.



5. A full 8 days later, I checked my email for something else and found an electronic reminder of the packing slip THAT I NEVER RECEIVED that had been auto-filtered into my "updates" folder (um... thanks, Google). I was like... WHAT?! It wasn't sent by the postal service, it was some third party reminder service that was like, "Remember, you need the package slip from the delivery service to actually retrieve your package!" There was no actual notification from the postal service directly under it. But then I searched the inbox and an email from the day after I placed the order appeared. It was the first I knew of it, so apparently I must've dismissed a notification without realizing it (so yeah, PARTLY my fault).



6. I still haven't actually received a package slip in the mail. As far as I'm aware, you are still supposed to get one! I always have before and nobody told me it was about to stop. They're not supposed to ONLY notify you by email, are they? Especially without warning that that's what they're about to start doing??? But anyway, the next day we stop at Citymarket with the postal service to pick it up.



7. I open this, the electronic (pdf attachment, lol) package notification slip on my phone so that I can show it to the clerk at the service desk... and I suddenly realize that it says "Package will be kept for seven days after delivery and then returned to sender". Sure enough, I squint at the rest of the small print and according to the slip, they've sent my package back to the sender two days before.

I need to contact the salon about it now, which is feeling at this point like more effort than I would've agreed to to get these nail polishes in the first place. But needs must.

In conclusion: For fuck's sake.

Comments

[yvannairie]

>_>); .... yeah, that actually worked the way it was supposed to. It's the electric confirmation EDI SSI parcel (the product name is "Pikkupaketti"/"XXS-paketti" which means they're technically cargo mail instead of letter/parcel mail, hence the shorter hold time) You weren't supposed to get a parcel slip for it, but you are supposed to get both the e-mail and a text message when it arrives in holding. I have no idea how you didn't get one, though -- maybe something weird in the seller's end or a typo somewhere.

[cimorene]

I've never had that happen before! So maybe the store selected a new category to mail it as?

[yvannairie]

Yeah, I think what happened is that a certain type of business mail was renegotiated to be EDI SSI instead of regular parcel mail -- like, most of our "registered" mail comes from book clubs, print houses, but I've also started seeing stuff from, like... coffee breweries, lifestyle shops, so probably that's the standard deal they're offering to shops.

Maybe your phone number registered wrong when the transaction borked up?

[cimorene]

Yeah I guess so! Cause in retrospect it wouldn't have been weird if I got the text message... I probably wouldn't even have questioned it since I'm so used to text message notifications for SmartPost.

[yvannairie]

Being cursed sounds likelier by the day, tbh.

[cimorene]

Sigh.

Hopefully the curse is on Citymarket and not on me.