I had a very interesting chat with a royal mail chappy the other day. I was chasing up a parcel which had gone out with International Signed For (ie tracking). The customer said he had a call from FedEx. Parcel had been delivered to the wrong address. FedEx thinks I. Strange. Nevertheless I called FedEx figuring that perhaps like ParcelForce they had some sort of agreement with FedEx that meant it switched over stateside. I tried to have the parcel picked up and delivered to the correct address. I was told that only the shipper could do that. I told them I was the shipper. She told me that Royal Mail was the shipper. Riiiight. So next morning I called Royal Mail. FedEx?? says the guy. We don’t contract with FedEx. Shurely shome mishtake. I gave him the tracking number, and on the online tracking page the message was something like ‘package processed ready for shipping’. That means, he told me, that it is definitely in the US. Obvious really. It is beyond me why the message couldn’t read “In the USA being processed by xxwhoeverxx”, but there you go. It is probably in customs he went on to say. He then went on to tell me that not only is UK customs x-raying every parcel that leaves the UK, but the US Customs is x-raying every parcel that enters the US. In addition he said that US Customs has slowed parcel traffic to 25% of normal, worldwide. This means that US customs actually delays mail from leaving the origin country, then delays it again on entry. Nice. On top of the best snow (ok worst if you’re a parcel) in 45 years, Christmas mail traffic, we now have super-paranoid customs to deal with. Still, the reality is that only about 10-15% of parcels are actually significantly affected. That’s a lot worse than the 1% we experienced before, but it isn’t as bad as I would have thought. Just thought you might like to know.
And the U.S. postal service still can’t manage to actually find anything dangerous. I have had so many packages opened by the postal service here it’s ridiculous,several times it was nothing but protein powder being shipped from Utah to Nevada but they delayed it 2 weeks anyways to look it over.
I’m a bit confused and think something was left out where you wrote “fedex thinks I.” And did you mean to say the “US” customs x-rays the package before leaving the UK? I would think that anything from royal mail would go to the hands of usps once in USA? Perhaps the package is still in transit somewhere. I think I had a package lost in a usps truck under a seat for a while. It was lost for almost a year, totally forgotten about, and one day it arrived. We laughed pretty hard, but where was it all that time? Maybe the customer’s call from fedex has nothing to do with your package? And with all the x-rays am I ingesting radioactive snuff?
At least Americans get postage delivered on Saturdays, Canada Post has weekends off so we always get huge stacks on Mondays.
Oh, that superfluous radiation business is bad for my extremely sensitive photographic film that I order from Germany.
you have to love ineffective security measures. Man if they wanted to save lifes they’d put more effort into auto safety.