PayPal and the USPS

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churchilllafemme
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PayPal and the USPS

Post by churchilllafemme »

Just another brief complaint. I created a USPS shipping label via PayPal last Thursday for a parcel that I wanted to drop off at the Post Office on my way out of town for a short vacation trip. However, I accidentally created a duplicate label. I didn't see an easy way on PayPal or the USPS site to void the label, and I was in a hurry, so I just went ahead on the trip, figuring I would take care of the problem when I returned. I got home late Saturday and sent a message off to the USPS about the error; their response was that they could do nothing since I had paid for the label through PayPal. So I contacted PayPal and was told that I could not get my money back because applications for USPS label refunds had to be filed within 48 hours. And so, I am out an extra $11.30, and once again I have been treated like dirt by these two wonderful organizations, without any recourse. What a bunch of morons.
_______
John
ShadowsDad
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by ShadowsDad »

When a label is made a lot more goes on behind the scenes than one realizes. It's quite similar to buying a plane ticket.

When a package label is made a computer figures out available space on a pallet for the package. Once that space is "booked" you own it. You can cancel the "seat" but once the pallet is put together and even if your package never shows, you still own that unused space in the pallet. Just like a seat on a flight. Don't show for the flight and unless you canceled you own the ticket and little else. USPS doesn't hold the pallet waiting for your package any more than a plane will be held waiting for a late passenger.

Yes, you needed to cancel the unused label promptly. Did you notice the area where you're asked when it will ship? Yup, that's why they ask that. They're trying to figure loads. Ever wonder why they can give deals on certain boxes of theirs? It's a known size to help them figure an efficient load.

I can't understand why you would blame USPS and Paypal. I have no love for either of them, but I just don't see how it's their fault this time. Any more than if you buy a plane ticket, don't use it and try to get a refund a week after the flight has left. It's much the same.
Brian

Maker of Kramperts Finest Bay Rum and Frostbite
Or find it here: Italian Barber, West Coast Shaving, Barclay Crocker, The Old Town Shaving Company at Stats, Maggard Razors; Leavitt & Peirce, Harvard Square
brothers
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by brothers »

I've learned not to be too quick to criticize and condemn. They aren't morons, they're computers that are doing what they were programmed to do. I've printed duplicates, and it only takes a matter of seconds to log on and request the refund. Then when the first mailing code is scanned, the second is cancelled, and the refund is initiated back into the paypal account. Maybe I missed something.
Gary

SOTD 99%: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, soaps & creams, synthetic / badger brushes, Colonial General razor, Kai & Schick blades, straight razors any time, Superior 70 aftershave splash + menthol + 444
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fallingwickets
Clive the Thumb
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by fallingwickets »

I didn't see an easy way on PayPal or the USPS site to void the label
if its true that the delete is hidden away; not very consumer friendly and definitely worth ranting about :D

clive
de gustibus non est disputandum
ShadowsDad
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by ShadowsDad »

The USPS site is not the most user friendly, but it is getting better compared to what it was a year ago.

One needs to understand, they are only go'vermin employees and never actually had to produce anything of value before. That goes for the CiC on down to, well, USPS. They're just there for a paycheck and retirement on our backs.

If you want to be really impressed send a 1st class package through the NY area sorting facility today. Maybe they fixed the problem, but just a few weeks ago it was the absolute pits.

A month or so ago USPS decided that everyone would get tracking on their 1st class packages whether they wanted it or not. Of course they charge extra for this, but since it's mandatory now it's not an extra charge, it just costs more. Congress wouldn't give them the millions they needed to stay afloat so they instituted what amounts to a rate hike. OK, so I posted a 1st class package to Texas a month or so ago and after 1 1/2 weeks it still hadn't arrived. Since it had tracking I contacted USPS. They're supposed to get back to anyone within 3 business days. After a week passed I contacted them and they told me that they contacted me to tell me that it had been stolen. Neither of which was true. So I re-sent the same contents, this time in an insured PM package. That made it through and the gent contacted me to inform me that it had arrived. I requested that when the first package showed up to write "refused" on it and "return to sender" and drop it into a mail box . About a week later, Shazamm!, it showed up in Texas and he did as I requested. A month later I received it a bit worn, but intact. USPS is just making a bad situation worse with their crappy service.

But they have customer service down to a science. Locally, in the interest of making using USPS easy to use they have closed the satellite offices to business for certain hours during the day, while keeping the personnel who should be manning the desk in the back, and keeping the lights and heat on. Essentially they are there waiting for business to come in through the door, it's just that they've been told to lock the doors. That somehow reduces the expense of these post offices. Morons; of course. They can't understand what drives folks to flip the bird to the USPS and use email and whatnot.

I'm forced to use it or UPS, so I'm stuck, but others do have a choice and millions leave USPS for something else. Heck, I have folks send me digital greeting cards today. When USPS is so difficult and expensive to use what do they expect? Couple that with the fact that 1st class is an iffy proposition and USPS is breathing it's last, except that it's Constitutional. Yes, at times our useless folks in DC do know what that means.

It's aggravating for me because when someone sends me a check for an order and it doesn't arrive they look at me as though it's my fault. It's not, but I'm in the middle trying to explain that it's their tax money at work.

Ok, rant mode off. (They're still morons who don't know how to run a business though)
Last edited by ShadowsDad on Wed Jul 22, 2015 7:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Brian

Maker of Kramperts Finest Bay Rum and Frostbite
Or find it here: Italian Barber, West Coast Shaving, Barclay Crocker, The Old Town Shaving Company at Stats, Maggard Razors; Leavitt & Peirce, Harvard Square
CMur12
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by CMur12 »

I still prefer the USPS to UPS. In my experience, it has cost less and delivery has always been quicker.

Now, on to my rant.

I was a government employee for 30 years in Child Protective Services. Most of us did uncompensated overtime on the sly because there was no way to keep up with the workload. It was stressful work and it required expertise in multiple disciplines. It was anything but an easy job, "working only for a paycheck and retirement."

I know it is popular to disparage public employees, but blanket statements like the one above are an abuse of many hard-working people who do a thankless job and are deserving of respect.

End of rant.

- Murray
ShadowsDad
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by ShadowsDad »

Murray, the guys making the decisions aren't the guys doing the work are they? If so then they deserve to get crapped on too. But I doubt it. I'm pretty sure that everything I referred to was a management decision. I stand by what I wrote. Everything I wrote was done by the folks in charge. I have no idea why you would think that what I referred to would be pointing at the small people. I stand by what I wrote and I won't back down from it because I ask questions when I'm at the post office and don't like what I see. The workers there tell me precisely where it came from. The folks in charge are total idiots. If you choose to think that means the small people, well, it's not me saying that. Lots of times the low level employees there just flip management the bird and do what's right rather than what they've been told to do. But they can only do so much of that. I'm writing that they don't like what's happening either.
Brian

Maker of Kramperts Finest Bay Rum and Frostbite
Or find it here: Italian Barber, West Coast Shaving, Barclay Crocker, The Old Town Shaving Company at Stats, Maggard Razors; Leavitt & Peirce, Harvard Square
CMur12
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by CMur12 »

I will accept your explanation, Brian, but that wasn't clear (to me, at least) in what you posted above. I was responding to your statement, "One needs to understand, they are only go'vermin employees and never actually had to produce anything of value before."

- Murray
ShadowsDad
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by ShadowsDad »

Understood. Yes, I suppose I could have been more clear. But workers produce every day.

You couldn't give me a low level job in USPS, and I certainly wouldn't last in management. That would be a suicidal career for me. I'd be too honest, like my wife. She worked in human services too and when a budget crunch came upper management came up with the idea of getting rid of workers. That would have cut services and the safety of her staff. Her idea was to cut her salary and keep on the workers. The day she told me that I told her to start clearing out her desk. Sure enough, within a month she was gone.
Brian

Maker of Kramperts Finest Bay Rum and Frostbite
Or find it here: Italian Barber, West Coast Shaving, Barclay Crocker, The Old Town Shaving Company at Stats, Maggard Razors; Leavitt & Peirce, Harvard Square
brothers
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by brothers »

There is another issue at play. The non-government employee citizens readily admit they don't know or care what the rules are, they (we?) just do what we want to do when we want to do it, and when it gets sidetracked and doesn't work out to their (our) advantage, they use the "outrage" card to blame the "government bureaucratic morons" for the consequences of their own impulsive self-serving actions. The upper management is usually loaded with highly compensated upper-class partisan political hacks who are appointed or elected for serving at the pleasure of the even bigger fish for who they know instead of what they know about running an enterprise. It's so easy and so ignorant to blame the government workers. Kind of like blaming the foot-soldiers for losing the war. Career government employees care about those they serve. And they get very little credit for a job well-done. They keep on doing their jobs which includes taking undeserved criticism for circumstances they did not create. No rant, just the truth.
CMur12 wrote:I still prefer the USPS to UPS. In my experience, it has cost less and delivery has always been quicker.

Now, on to my rant.

I was a government employee for 30 years in Child Protective Services. Most of us did uncompensated overtime on the sly because there was no way to keep up with the workload. It was stressful work and it required expertise in multiple disciplines. It was anything but an easy job, "working only for a paycheck and retirement."

I know it is popular to disparage public employees, but blanket statements like the one above are an abuse of many hard-working people who do a thankless job and are deserving of respect.

End of rant. - Murray
One other thing, let me assure you that the elected officials (legislative and executive branch) are constantly trying to figure out a way to eliminate the hard working government employees who are "working only for a paycheck and retirement" (government reduction, also known as privatization). Who among us is NOT working for a paycheck and retirement? To use that phrase as a form of criticism is the epitome of ignorance. These folks have the same families to support and bills to pay as everyone else.
Gary

SOTD 99%: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, soaps & creams, synthetic / badger brushes, Colonial General razor, Kai & Schick blades, straight razors any time, Superior 70 aftershave splash + menthol + 444
ShadowsDad
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Re: PayPal and the USPS

Post by ShadowsDad »

Gary, there are people who work only for a paycheck and retirement and nothing else. I tried to train one of them, so did other people. He didn't give a rats patoot what the consequences of his actions were, or what it would mean to anyone who came behind him. Then he worked a big shutdown and was basically on his own. He asked an experienced worker how to grease certain items, probably over 100 on one 13 story boiler alone, and there were 3 boilers. He was told how much hi-temp grease to put in each one and he basically told the gent with experience that he was going to do it his way. Well, instead of giving each soot blower a few shots of grease he filled up the cavity. He forgot that when things heat up expansion occurs and if it's grease it has to go somewhere. The boiler house gets extremely hot when the boilers were in operation and the untrainable person was told to get his a$$ up there with cleaning equipment and clean up all of the grease on the floors. There were approx' 100 soot blowers per boiler and 3 boilers; each soot blower being approx' 20' long. I think he learned to work for something other than just a paycheck and retirement on those days and in that heat. He didn't last long in that department and went to another one where maybe working for just a paycheck and retirement would work out better. Funny how when other departments needed a negative example his name would pop up frequently. Yes, somehow he may have figured out how to have children (dogs can do the same), so yes, if he did he was working for them also, but he never mentioned any children. But he should have been tying flies or doing something in a closet for a living; anything other than working around other people. So yes, there are people who are working for nothing other than a paycheck and retirement. The gent in question certainly was and he didn't care if he made everyone else's job more difficult, and I firmly believe that if his actions had caused harm or even death to another he wouldn't have cared one iota, as long as he had his paycheck. I wasn't alone in that thought and we didn't discuss it, we just figured it out independently. It came to the point where if I had something dangerous to do I'd send him off elsewhere and I'd do it on my own and just make sure that I was ultra careful.

I would tell him outright that he couldn't work by himself and couldn't work with others. Maybe I in small part had a hand in him leaving the department. I certainly hope so. But I suspect it was most other folks whose general attitude to him was what did it. He may still be working for that company, maybe not, and I couldn't care less about him and his "Yay me and eff you" attitude. That company and the work being done there had no room for folks who couldn't work as part of a team. We had to work together in order to, quite literally, survive. There were deadly scenarios most everywhere there. That's what it takes to make paper.

So yes, there are people who work for a paycheck and retirement and nothing else. I hope you never need to put your safety and your life in their hands. But on the day you do and realize that you are worse than being on your own you'll know what "working for a paycheck" and nothing else means.
Brian

Maker of Kramperts Finest Bay Rum and Frostbite
Or find it here: Italian Barber, West Coast Shaving, Barclay Crocker, The Old Town Shaving Company at Stats, Maggard Razors; Leavitt & Peirce, Harvard Square
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