Will I ever get my copy of Good Deeds Gone Unpunished?

[holywhippet]

At the moment things look doubtful. I pre-ordered my copy and it shipped when it came out. Shipping from the USA to Australia is generally pretty slow but even still I thought it was taking unusually long so I checked the online tracking. Well, it seems my copy made it out of the USA after a week, made brief stop in Tokyo, Japan then finally reached Sydney, Australia. This is generally the route a package takes to get to me from the USA. However 10 days after arriving in Sydney it arrived in Greece -the country in Europe (or at least I can't find anywhere in Australia by that name). That was about 2 weeks ago now and the online tracking hasn't changed since then. I've contacted OokooDook and USPS about it but both have remained silent about it.

[Peelee]

At the moment things look doubtful. I pre-ordered my copy and it shipped when it came out. Shipping from the USA to Australia is generally pretty slow but even still I thought it was taking unusually long so I checked the online tracking. Well, it seems my copy made it out of the USA after a week, made brief stop in Tokyo, Japan then finally reached Sydney, Australia. This is generally the route a package takes to get to me from the USA. However 10 days after arriving in Sydney it arrived in Greece -the country in Europe (or at least I can't find anywhere in Australia by that name). That was about 2 weeks ago now and the online tracking hasn't changed since then. I've contacted OokooDook and USPS about it but both have remained silent about it.

I imagine USPS would have checked out once it hit Australia customs, at the very least. Have you contacted them with the relevant information to find out why they sent it to Greece?

[holywhippet]

I imagine USPS would have checked out once it hit Australia customs, at the very least. Have you contacted them with the relevant information to find out why they sent it to Greece?

I've filled in an online request to see if they can find the package (I think, the form I filled out might have been for the sender rather than the recipient). There is another part of their website for querying where a package is but it requires an address to be filled out and it only accepts USA addresses.

[Peelee]

I've filled in an online request to see if they can find the package (I think, the form I filled out might have been for the sender rather than the recipient). There is another part of their website for querying where a package is but it requires an address to be filled out and it only accepts USA addresses.

AUS customs has a query form that only accepts US addresses?

[holywhippet]

AUS customs has a query form that only accepts US addresses?

No. USPS. I doubt it went through Australian customs since it went on to Greece.

[Peelee]

No. USPS. I doubt it went through Australian customs since it went on to Greece.

10 days after arriving in Sydney it arrived in Greece

It almost certainly hit Australian customs.

[holywhippet]

It almost certainly hit Australian customs.

Odd, I'd have thought since it went from Sydney to Greece that it would have come off the plane then been misrouted onto another plane instead of going through customs. Ok, I'll see if I get anything out of Australia customs.

*update*

Ok, this is odd. The USPS website still thinks it is in Greece but when I tried the Australian postal service tracking it says it was in Melbourne, Australia yesterday and is back in Sydney, Australia today. I guess my book decided to take a vacation in Europe first?

[Tajerio]

Odd, I'd have thought since it went from Sydney to Greece that it would have come off the plane then been misrouted onto another plane instead of going through customs. Ok, I'll see if I get anything out of Australia customs.

*update*

Ok, this is odd. The USPS website still thinks it is in Greece but when I tried the Australian postal service tracking it says it was in Melbourne, Australia yesterday and is back in Sydney, Australia today. I guess my book decided to take a vacation in Europe first?

Prices are pretty low in Greece right now.

[Peelee]

Odd, I'd have thought since it went from Sydney to Greece that it would have come off the plane then been misrouted onto another plane instead of going through customs.

Quick and dirty rule of thumb: if it leaves one country and enters another, it's gonna go through customs. If it's going through an intermediary country (like Japan in this case) and just passing through, they'll probably expedite it and not look too much, because what do they care? Soon as it hits the destination country, though, it gets the full treatment.

Anyway, my money is on it got to Sidney, was sent to Melbourne for reasons, rerouted back to Sidney for sorting and finishing its journey, and it'll hopefully be coming to you soon. Never trust any nationalized shipping company's tracking info once they let another country touch the package, it'll most likely be useless info (and this is coming from someone who absolutely loves the USPS).

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Peelee
...this is coming from someone who absolutely loves the USPS....

I'm just trying to absorb this.

[godsflunky]

I'm just trying to absorb this.

Peelee's not alone in that, actually.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yeah, with some of the issues I've had with FedEx and UPS, I vastly prefer the government option. I've never used DHL, but a couple people I know have, and they swear by the post office as well.

Incidentally, all three of those use the post office themselves at at least one point in shipping.

[Algeh]

When I stop to think about it, the level of service from the post office is pretty amazing. I mean, they come by my house every day just to see if I happen to want to use their service to send something, and if I do it's well under a dollar to send a (sufficiently flat and light) physical object to some place clear on the other side of the country. They check every day to see if I want to do this, just in case, even though I pretty much don't (I don't trust things with money in them to stay clipped to the mail slot rather than wander off somewhere, so I use the drop box a few blocks away if I need to mail something).

I mean, they also leave a bunch of random papers I don't care about in my mail slot pretty regularly, and those are starting to build up and I should probably do something about them, but sometimes there are also pizza coupons and those are kind of nice.

[factotum]

They check every day to see if I want to do this, just in case, even though I pretty much don't

They would have to come past your mailbox as part of their rounds delivering mail anyway, so let's not give them *too* much credit there.

[snowblizz]

Prices are pretty low in Greece right now.

That one made me laugh hard enough I had to explain myself to coworkers.

They would have to come past your mailbox as part of their rounds delivering mail anyway, so let's not give them *too* much credit there.

I believe the thought here is they could just skip doing some parts of the rounds if traffic was low enough. I know many postal services sorta are going that way. Also, no way the postie will take something off my hands even would I be there when they come around. Ironically I know some parts where they are starting to do that and it's considered a cutdown in service (since there will no longer be a postoffice to go to).

[Peelee]

They would have to come past your mailbox as part of their rounds delivering mail anyway, so let's not give them *too* much credit there.

Considering privatized services don't, I'm perfectly happy to credit the public service. Stopping at literally every mailbox every service day is pretty damned impressive.

[ve4grm]

Odd, I'd have thought since it went from Sydney to Greece that it would have come off the plane then been misrouted onto another plane instead of going through customs. Ok, I'll see if I get anything out of Australia customs.

*update*

Ok, this is odd. The USPS website still thinks it is in Greece but when I tried the Australian postal service tracking it says it was in Melbourne, Australia yesterday and is back in Sydney, Australia today. I guess my book decided to take a vacation in Europe first?

Right, so as someone who used to do customer service for a shipping company, don't worry, it's probably in Australia.

People think of the online tracking as being instantaneous, but it's not. Some of the scans update instantly, but some are stored in the device that scanned them and only update when that device gets plugged in. This is especially true of the delivery scans (where they're scanned by a hand scanner away from the sorting facility, so it obviously can't update immediately without a cellular connection) but it can also be true within a sorting facility.

And this is doubly true when communicating between shipping companies, and countries.

So what happened here (in all likelihood) is that it went from USA to AUS by way of Greece (it happens, no worries - routing is weird and complicated). When it got to Greece, it was scanned, likely by an offline scanner, and then was sent to AUS. In AUS, it was scanned and updated to the system right away, and then sent to USPS at some point. Meanwhile, the Greece scanner just got plugged in and the info updated. Eventually, the Greece system will also send its update to USPS, but since AUS has already done so, they now appear out of order.

And Japan is in there somewhere, probably after Greece, before AUS.

So no worries, it's on its way.

Probably.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yeah, package tracking isn't as useful as it sounds. When I order stuff from Noble Knight, the package is often at my door before the software shows it as being picked up from the shipper. Granted, I live a state away...