I have been
ordering things online for many years now, and a good 95% has made it
to me intact and on time. But either I offended the postal gods, or
the post office is currently being operated by 5 year olds, because I
have had a spate of mail related “incidents” recently.
I ordered two
books from the Book Depository in October. 50% of them made it
successfully all the way from the British post office to the Israeli
post office 3 weeks later. By 3 months later, I had given up that
poor second book for dead and wrote a message to the Book
Depository’s customer service in which I stated that although two
books had allegedly been shipped on October 23, only one had made it.
It’s already a bit strange that they would package and ship two
books separately on the same day (why not just stick two books in one
box?), but I have given up on asking these questions because rarely
do I get a satisfactory answer. The nice lady who replied to me
within 24 hours (less than 24 hours later, can you imagine???)
alleged that there had been issues lately with the Israeli postal
system due to structural reorganizations of the system. Not being
Israeli, she didn’t understand that “reorganizations” means
that someone’s cousin Moishe has been hired to head the post office
branch, but don’t worry, he’s totally qualified, he used to be a
tank driver in the army, so he can totally handle sorting a few
packages. She said it was possible that it might still come. I
replied that it seemed quite unlikely if it hadn’t arrived after 3
months, but that in the unlikely event that I did receive the book
after they had refunded me my money or resent the book, I would just
send it back. She acquiesced to my not unreasonable demands, and two
weeks later I went to pick up the book.
You’ll
never guess what showed up at the post office two weeks later. Now
keep in mind, this was already 4 months later. The book had clearly
been though some traumatic events, judging by the package (or what
was left of it). After letting it rest a bit for a few days to regain
its bearings, I dutifully gave it to my parents to ship back (who
generously footed the shipping bill since the Book Depository was
unwilling to lose more money over the Israeli postal service’s
incompetence).
A few weeks
after my original book order, I had ordered a sweater from
AliExpress. After 2 months, the seller inquired whether I had
received it or not. I was able to confirm that it had made it to
Israel via its international tracking number, but was unable to learn
its subsequent fate (which is apparently impossible to do without an
Israeli tracking number). I let them know that I had not received the
package despite the fact that it had arrived in the country a month
before. The seller told me he’d try to track it down and update me
on his progress. Which he did the next day. Apparently my package got
“destroyed” in transit. How you can possibly “destroy” a
sweater in a package is beyond me. You can literally drop it
repeatedly on the floor and nothing will happen. IT’S A SWEATER. So
unless it got attacked by a pack of wild animals (possibly the same
ones that got to my book?), I am quite flummoxed. At this point it
seems likely that the main postal sorting center does in fact keeps a
pack of German shepherds on the premises to ravage all packages sent
to Natania Casden.
At some point
after reordering the sweater (and an additional sweater for back up),
I noticed a bunch of papers on the floor next to our mail box. A few
days later, I was annoyed enough about the litter on the floor to
pick them up. Lo and behold, it was two second notices from the post
office about two packages I had not picked up yet and that were still
waiting for me. This was confusing since if these were the second
notices, where were the first notices? I found them. In my neighbors’
mailbox. They had been sitting there for about a week and I had been
wondering why the neighbors weren’t collecting their mail. It’s
because it WASN’T their mail. The reason it didn’t reach the
correct mailbox is because the post office had neglected to jot down
the small detail of the apartment number when they wrote my address
on the notices. So the mailman stuck them in 'a' mailbox,
any mailbox, hoping it would eventually get to the correct person.
The post office then sent out second notices, and again did not write
an actual address. Considering the main job of the post office is to
make sure people get their mail, they don’t seem to be taking this
job very seriously. I guess Moishe’s getting paid whether or not
Natania Casden gets her packages.
The real
kicker is the phone call I got last week from a number I didn’t
recognize. The voice on the other end sounded like a teenage boy.
"Hi,
this is your neighbor. I have your package.”
"…...What?”
"Yeah,
the mailman delivered your package to me by mistake. I opened it.
It’s underwear.”
"………..
Why did you open my package?!”
“I dunno. I
got a package so I opened it.” At this point I could hear some kid
in the background yelling, “it’s underwear! It’s underwear!”
"Where
do you live?” Said I, slightly apoplectic but trying to controlling
my rising anger.
"At
number 7.”
“What?! How
did the mailman get confused between number 22 and number 7?!”
"Wait,
is this a man or a woman?”
"It’s
a woman! Would you please just return my package to me?! Just stick
it in the mailbox for apartment 6.”
"Ok.”
Honestly,
it’s probably unnecessary to state at this point that I did not get
my package back. I did try calling back a few days later but the guy
insisted that he had put the package in front of my door that same
night, said “I have to go,” and hung up. I don’t know what this
kid is doing with women’s underwear, but at this point I don’t
think I want them back.
To summarize,
this circus of a postal service is doing a pretty atrocious job at
getting people (or at least me) their packages. Which is quite
problematic, as soon many online international suppliers are going to
get tired of refunding people’s money and resending packages to
Israel and are just going to refuse to sell things to Israelis. This
will then be seen as a political statement both by Israelis and
internationally, potentially sparking a commercial war where
countries will refuse to engage in trade with each other, leading to
a financial crisis, and a downsizing of the Israeli postal service,
and who knows what’s going to happen to Moishe then?! Actually
he’ll probably be the last one standing at the post office after
all the other workers have been fired, and then there’s absolutely
NO chance whatsoever that anyone’s going to get their mail.
So the
message for the day is to stop ordering things online in order to
prevent WWIII.
