and so it ends

i got the letter yesterday…

…for a journey that began back in august.

the moral to the story is i will never, ever, EVER sell anything on eBay with “first class mail” as a shipping option. everything goes priority. why? because first class has a weight limit of thirteen ounces, which ended up totally screwing me back before labor day. see, i had set up a shirt to go out but the guy only paid two dollars and some change to ship it first class.

“no problemo”, i thought, and printed the label. but then i was out of envelopes saved for priority ones, which aren’t an option of a first class package.

(side note – if you have one of the tyvek ones you can flip it inside out so none of the “priority…” graphics show as i recently learned)

so i put it in a box, which made it 14.2 ounces – an ounce and some change OVER the weight limit for a first class package, so the post office wouldn’t ship. according to the ufb (i wasn’t there – she ran it to the post office for me) the girl behind the counter than typed a bunch, generated label, and we paid the difference to pay to ship it priority to wisconsin…

…the problem? the label that had BEEN on the package, generated by eBay, had it shipping to WASHINGTON, as in the state, not port washington, wisconsin. the postal girl claimed she didn’t put it in, but i know WE didn’t, so how this happened is still “a mystery”. but it happened, and was delivered to a house on the lake in port washington that wasn’t expecting in nor had paid for it.

fuck.

fortunately (or so i thought) any priority mail has a minimum of fifty bucks in insurance, which was what i was told i had to do to get this righted according to my post office. claim number one was filed, but instantly denied when it was discovered the package HAD been delivered. the first appeal was likewise rejected when i pointed out it was delivered to the wrong address, but they pointed out it was the address on the label. the SECOND appeal, where i explained how THEIR people had put the wrong label on it, NOT me, sat in review for over a month, and was finally denied. why? because i couldn’t PROVE they did the label wrong. even though i showed what eBay generated as a shipping address, and showed my original label, i couldn’t prove i then went all rogue and just willy-nilly sent it somewhere i’ve never heard of. the burden of proof wasn’t on them to show they’d done it right, it was on me to show i hadn’t done it wrong.

that’s fucked up.

and it took from before labor day till THIS WEEK for all to finally get “resolved” – whereby they, as an organization, essentially didn’t do shit to correct a mistake one of their people made. so now the lawyers come out to play? no. why? three reasons:

1. at the end of the day it IS the government, so their budget for council is a bit larger than mine.

2. the shirt was actually under $20, all in with shipping. while it was irreplaceable (since it was from 1997) it wouldn’t have been worth it to pursue legal action, but if it had been some multiple-hundred dollar purchase than that would have been different.

and…

3. in the interim i had reached out to the post office in port washington, wisconsin, who was able to get ahold of the people, get the package back, and ship it back to me. i then took the hickey and paid for a new priority label i generated and shipped through a post office in austin and he got his stuff…because i kept up communication with my customer and he knew none of this was my fault he gave me glowing feedback even though he got his shit a month later than he expected it. customer service like a muh-fuckuh, yo!