When I worked at a pack-and-ship store, we had a regular customer who was missing part of his arm.

One day, around Christmas, he came in with several packages and seemed to be struggling with them. Attempting to be helpful, I asked him:

Me: “Do you need a hand?”

Yes, it was an innocent mistake, and I apologized profusely.

We live up a long driveway in a rural area, a fair drive from a couple of tiny towns, so most of the time, mail orders are literally that — through the mail — and we collect them at the post office. There is one courier who drops packages off at a gas station only twenty minutes away, another courier that actually comes to the house (which I feel bad about as they usually get lost, and at best, it’s time-consuming), a few who decline to operate out here, and one that’s… just plain weird. Let’s call them [Courier].

The first time we had something coming with [Courier], I was watching the tracking closely, and to my frustration, I saw the package check in at a city five hours away and then stop. I Googled the business name mentioned as the last check-in spot and could find no record of it. I thought maybe it was a small local company that might do a loop only weekly or something, so I waited patiently.

When nothing came, I tried contacting [Courier], but searching their name brought up no contact information, only a million negative reviews and people raging that [Courier] was impossible to contact.

After two weeks of no tracking updates, I tried asking the seller for a replacement — sent with another company!

Maybe a week later, a stranger called me. It turned out she worked at a business in a town over an hour away — not the nearest town, by the way, but the fifth nearest, and very small, so we never go there — and my parcel had been sitting at their counter for weeks. She got tired of it being in the way, so finally actually looked at it and saw that my number was included on the label, and here she was calling. There was no explanation of why it was there or why she and her coworkers had not immediately either contacted the recipient or sent the package back.

Inconveniently, this business was inaccessible to me due to disability.

Me: “I’m not able to get the package. Could my partner come and get it for me?”

Employee: “No, we’ll only give it to you personally after seeing your ID.”

Tight security for an abandoned parcel! I had no choice but to tell her to return it to the sender, though I wished I could have saved the poor unwitting seller the hassle.

Even had I been able to collect it, I think it very strange that a courier who got paid to deliver a package would see fit to drop it miles away, forcing the recipient to do their work. And if they do this sort of thing, why not at least update the tracking with the package’s actual location and/or contact the recipient, so they know they are supposed to go to this location and get their parcel?

I have to wonder if this policy is why so many reviews complain about things never arriving. 

And I have to laugh at the bizarre fact that there is a “delivery company” which takes delivery jobs and charges delivery fees… but does not deliver.

I live in a somewhat rural area, but I’m just over a mile from a fairly large hospital. My street has single-family houses on one side and several condo and apartment complexes on the other. The complexes range in age from about twenty-five years old to one still under construction, and many are inhabited by people connected to the hospital.

One day, I get a voicemail from the local branch of a national shipping company about a problem delivering a package I’m expecting: they don’t have a valid address. I call.

Customer Service: “The address we have isn’t a valid address, so we just need the correct address.”

Me: “Oh, wow, no problem. My address is [street address] in [Town].”

Customer Service: “Yes, that’s the address we have, but we need the correct address.”

Me: *Pauses* “That is the correct address. What’s wrong with that address?”

Customer Service: “Ma’am, that street doesn’t exist.”

Me: “What?”

Customer Service: “It’s not a street in [Town].”

Me: *Pauses again* “Yes, it is?”

Customer Service: “Ma’am, we have looked up the street, and the drivers tried to find it. There’s no such street in [Town].”

Me: “This street has probably more than 300 people living on it, and I’ve been here for two years. I can assure you, this is a real street.”

Customer Service: *Starting to sound exasperated* “Ma’am, there is no [Street].”

I give directions — it’s off of a street that’s off the main state highway that runs through town, so perhaps not super easy to find — and include some landmarks.

Customer Service: “I’ll pass on this information and we’ll try again, but otherwise, you’ll have to make other arrangements to get your package.”

And miraculously, my package arrived the next day.

My friend was going to ship something to me, so I created a shipping label through [Company #1] and sent it to him.

Me: “Do you need to schedule a pick-up?”

Friend: “Why didn’t you use [Company #2]?”

Me: “[Company #2] often delivers my packages to the house at the bottom of the road instead of driving up to me.”

Friend: “I don’t like [Company #1]. They’re rude.”

Me: “You can do a pick-up and leave it outside; you won’t have to talk to anyone.”

Friend: “Yeah, fine, have them come here tomorrow.”

I scheduled the pick-up. A few days later, I hadn’t heard anything from my friend, so I checked the tracking. It hadn’t even been picked up.

Me: “Did [Company #1] come by?”

Friend: “I wasn’t home, so I didn’t leave the package out.”

Me: “So… it wasn’t sent out.”

Friend: “No, this is why I don’t like [Company #1].”

Me: “Because… they don’t pick up packages you haven’t left out?”

Friend: “They never came.”

Me: “Either you weren’t home and you didn’t leave the package, or you were home and they didn’t come.”

Friend: “You need to use [Company #2].”

Me: “I’m paying. I will not be using [Company #2]. I will schedule one more pick-up, but if you don’t allow them to have the package, you’ll have to go to a [Company #1] store.”

My friend left the package outside the next day, and it was at my door within two more days.

I work in retail. We buy jewelry (not expensive). We use a system where the carrier picks up the package from our warehouse and hands it to the post office, and they are the ones who deliver it to the customer. The post office does not provide insurance for packages, so basically the customer has to dispute the charges. (It’s a pain and everyone hates it.)

I get this call from a customer. We start the call fine. He asks about the status of an order, so I pull it up.

Me: “The package was already delivered by the carrier yesterday. If you didn’t receive it, you can check with your local post office, since sometimes packages stay there.”

He starts yelling at me, stating how “lazy” I am and that I am the one responsible for contacting the post office, like I care for this man’s package. He asks for a supervisor.

I message mine, and she tells me to just send him to my manager, so I do. Then, she sends me a message that I was wrong for what I did because, basically, the post office did not make the delivery; it was the first carrier, and I needed to file a claim. Mind you, two weeks ago, the person in charge of the claims told us that even if the carrier does not hand it to the post office, the claim does not apply.

Then, I get a call… and it’s the same man. He’s PISSED. He starts telling me how disrespectful I am and how lazy I am because I should be the one interested in his package arriving.

Me: “I apologize, sir. We are filing the claim for you.”

I do so and give him the time frame, and he starts yelling at me AGAIN.

Customer: “I don’t want to wait! Give me your name!”

Me: “[My First Name].”

Customer: “I want your employee number, and your last name, too!”

We are a really small department — eight or nine people — so I tell him:

Me: “Sir, I do not have an employee number, and I cannot provide you with my last name per the company’s policy, but I’m the only one with my name in this department, so they will know you are referring to me.”

Customer: *Yelling* “I don’t want to take you out for dinner! I want to file a complaint against you!”

Me: “Sir, you are more than welcome to. Since I am the only [My First Name] working in this department, management will know you are talking about me.”

Customer: “YOU ARE SO USELESS AND LAZY! YOU DONT WANT TO WORK!”

And then, he hung up. After he did it, I immediately started crying. I’ve never been treated this way before by a customer, and I spoke to my manager about it.

I am scared because, the way our queue works, they redirect the calls from numbers you’ve previously spoken with — that’s why I got him the second time right away — and if he calls again, there is a huge probability I will get him.

I just hate how people want us to magically solve everything for them when I couldn’t give two s***s about him or his package not arriving.