Today marks a real milestone in this bear's life. Today, I had my first up close, personal experience with The United States Postal Service. Faarrrqque! It makes me want to move to America just so I can buy a gun and go and shoot someone there. Seriously. What a bunch of bloody useless pencil necked bozos. I mean, we have some inept government agencies here in Oz, but NONE of them even come close to the uselessness I experienced today.
Here's the problem...
We have a number of US suppliers who send us stuff. The trouble is, via UPS or FedEx, sometimes it costs more to send than it does to buy it. USPS International Priority Mail costs less than half, so we went to the USPS website and set up an account.
The account creation form let us create an account at our address, right here in Australia. It even let us enter our credit card details, with the card holder's address right here in Australia.
If you've ever used Click'n'Pay before, you'll know that you create a label, then print it out to stick on your package, and on the way, you pay for it.
And that's where my evening got interesting.
You see, their stupid credit card form, like credit card validation forms on just about every website you buy stuff from, asks for the card holder's address, and when you get to "State", up pops a list of 50 familiar states, none of which are here in Australia... and that's that. You can't go any further.
"Must be me", I thought, so I picked up the phone and called the USPS "Customer Service" 800 number. "Customer Service"? Not.
First, I had to negotiate my way through one of those bloody infuriating automated call routing systems. "No, I DO NOT want to hear about your bloody new postage rates."
When I finally got to talk to an operator, she was clueless. More than capable, I'm sure, if I'd had a question about the new postage rates, but as for my issue, clueless. She transferred me to the Internation Package Tracking Desk. This operator was even more clueless, if that's possible, in that she didn't even know there were new rates, and the best suggestion she could make was to give me the numebr of the USPS Post Office nearest the pick-up address for the package we're trying to ship.
My second call got off to a better start, once I'd negotiated the automated call router. "No, I DO NOT want to hear about your bloody new postage rates." The operator still couldn't help, and did offer to discuss the new postal rates before she finally transferred me to "Technical Support".
"Yay!", I stupidly thought. Finally, someone who can help.
He listened to my problem, and then said "I'm sorry sir, you can not send packages to the United States. The USPS can only be used to send packages FROM the United States."
"No, you IDIOT. You're not bloody listening. I am NOT trying to send a package to the United States, I'm trying to send one FROM the United States." Of course, I didn't actually say that... but I desperately wanted to.
I explained the story again, and he then said accounts could not be created from outside the United States, which he stuck with until I explained, for the fourth time, that the account creation page specifically allowed non-US accounts.
In the end, he told me to make other arrangements.
I am not easily defeated. "I'll email someone." I went back to the USPS website and clicked "email us". I filled in the form to the best of my ability, and just about the only personal imformation they didn't ask for was a Social Security Number.
There was a teeny weeny little space to "type my question", which should probably have been "Are you people serious?" because that's just about all the space was big enough for. Then I had to select the subject from a list. My subject wasn't there. I picked another subject, and then had to pick a sub-subject from another list. Not surprisingly, my sub-subject wasn't there either. No problem. Send. My email was rejected.
Perhaps I should have selected "Tell Me About The New Postage Rates" from the subject box.
Here's the problem...
We have a number of US suppliers who send us stuff. The trouble is, via UPS or FedEx, sometimes it costs more to send than it does to buy it. USPS International Priority Mail costs less than half, so we went to the USPS website and set up an account.
The account creation form let us create an account at our address, right here in Australia. It even let us enter our credit card details, with the card holder's address right here in Australia.
If you've ever used Click'n'Pay before, you'll know that you create a label, then print it out to stick on your package, and on the way, you pay for it.
And that's where my evening got interesting.
You see, their stupid credit card form, like credit card validation forms on just about every website you buy stuff from, asks for the card holder's address, and when you get to "State", up pops a list of 50 familiar states, none of which are here in Australia... and that's that. You can't go any further.
"Must be me", I thought, so I picked up the phone and called the USPS "Customer Service" 800 number. "Customer Service"? Not.
First, I had to negotiate my way through one of those bloody infuriating automated call routing systems. "No, I DO NOT want to hear about your bloody new postage rates."
When I finally got to talk to an operator, she was clueless. More than capable, I'm sure, if I'd had a question about the new postage rates, but as for my issue, clueless. She transferred me to the Internation Package Tracking Desk. This operator was even more clueless, if that's possible, in that she didn't even know there were new rates, and the best suggestion she could make was to give me the numebr of the USPS Post Office nearest the pick-up address for the package we're trying to ship.
My second call got off to a better start, once I'd negotiated the automated call router. "No, I DO NOT want to hear about your bloody new postage rates." The operator still couldn't help, and did offer to discuss the new postal rates before she finally transferred me to "Technical Support".
"Yay!", I stupidly thought. Finally, someone who can help.
He listened to my problem, and then said "I'm sorry sir, you can not send packages to the United States. The USPS can only be used to send packages FROM the United States."
"No, you IDIOT. You're not bloody listening. I am NOT trying to send a package to the United States, I'm trying to send one FROM the United States." Of course, I didn't actually say that... but I desperately wanted to.
I explained the story again, and he then said accounts could not be created from outside the United States, which he stuck with until I explained, for the fourth time, that the account creation page specifically allowed non-US accounts.
In the end, he told me to make other arrangements.
I am not easily defeated. "I'll email someone." I went back to the USPS website and clicked "email us". I filled in the form to the best of my ability, and just about the only personal imformation they didn't ask for was a Social Security Number.
There was a teeny weeny little space to "type my question", which should probably have been "Are you people serious?" because that's just about all the space was big enough for. Then I had to select the subject from a list. My subject wasn't there. I picked another subject, and then had to pick a sub-subject from another list. Not surprisingly, my sub-subject wasn't there either. No problem. Send. My email was rejected.
Perhaps I should have selected "Tell Me About The New Postage Rates" from the subject box.
ADDENDUM
I sent them an email. They wrote back saying something to the effect that the internet is a wild and evil place, full of foreign bad guys out to do harm to every American, and that they only accept US Credit Cards to "protect their customers from fraud". I wrote back asking them how a foreign credit card might expose their customers to fraud, but there has been no reply. I hope they're thinking about it. I desperately wanted to write back that the foreign bad guys weren't out to do harm to every American at all... just USPS workers, and in that, they're joined by most Americans. Fortunately, I didn't. Instead, I'm writing to Jack Potter.
4 comments:
Yes my friend, this is truly the US Postal Service you are dealing with. I am not suprised in the least.
Also, this is about what you can expect from any customer (dis)service line when dealing with US government agencies.
Welcome to America where all of your dreams can come true - unless your dream involves you not having to deal with stupid douchebags...
Working in Customer Service myself, sometimes I get the opportunity to be that Stupid Douchebag. That's why I can barely live with myself.
Welcome to America. I wonder if this kind of thing really does have something to do with people going nuts and going on a killing spree.
If the USPS could deliver things promptly, efficiently, (or at all in some cases) we wouldn't have UPS and FedEx. There's a reason we call it "Snail Mail".
:-)
Humorously enough, the shipping of the gun itself might be your biggest hurdle in actually obtaining one...
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