I had a customer whom I had to notify part of her order was on backorder.  I sent her an email to that effect, but as (unbeknownst to me) she was out of the country on business,  she was not checking her email.   (From now on, maybe I should put tracking code in my emails!) A few days later, her gentleman friend called me and left a voice mail asking where the product was.  I called both her and him back quickly, but she was still out of the country and not checking her voice mail either.  In the mean time he had already called PayPal, who had put a hold on the payment, despite the fact that the customer herself was not complaining, but an unrelated third party who was neither PayPal’s customer, nor my customer. But wait, it gets worse. Lucky for me, the backordered part arrived quickly,  so I called the customer again, again only able to reach the gentleman friend, to confirm that they still wanted the product shipped and did not want their money back.  (That time it was apparent she was in the room, but I’ve come to suspect she does not speak English.) Absolutely, they were adament they wanted the product shipped, and did not want a refund, so I shipped it out by Priority Mail the same day, and as I still could not reach her, I let him know.

I watched the Delivery Confirmation tracking cross the country … and then stall at their local Post Office.  I called both the customer (unreachable) and the gentleman friend again, and he confirmed for me that the packaged had arrived and they were happy with it.  He was happy to call PayPal again for me to that effect, but they gave him a run-around, until the conversation was concluded without him knowing whether they recorded it as delivered or not.

I, in the meant time, filled out the PayPal paperwork including the tracking number of the item in question.  They forwarded the customer’s paperwork to her, and although I could not see her response, the chart progressed quickly to the status of “PayPal Review”, where it sat, and sat, and sat, for a month.

I finally called them to find out what was wrong, and they said they needed more information.  I said they’d been notified by the customer (actually her guy) that the product was delivered, what more did they want?   Well, they’d made no record of their conversation with him the second time, although they were sure as heck quick to take his word for it the first time he called when he wasn’t even the customer.

No, no, no, the only “proof” they would accept would be to have the Post Office tracking updated to “Delivered”.  Tracking to the local post office “doesn’t count”.  Within less than a day of that conversation, in which I clearly stated I was contacting the USPS to correct their error, they reversed the entire payment to the customer.

I did contact USPS customer service anyway, informing them of the Delivery that had not been scanned, and the problem their mistake was causing and how it needed to be fixed.  They got back to me quickly and informed me of the following:

Thank you for contacting us about label number, xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx, that was Insured.

I apologize; we do not have any information regarding the status of your item. Complete tracking information is only available for Express Mail® items. Services that confirm delivery are designed to be a low cost alternative to full tracking. Delivery Confirmation™ provides assurance of delivery or of attempted delivery. You will not see any updated scans as the item is en route. Without a definitive tracking system affixed to the service, we are not able to tell you where the item is or when it will be delivered.

I read that as, “‘The USPS will only garantee Delivery Confirmation if you hadsent the package Express Mail instead of Priority Mail.  Buying Delivery Confirmation is a complete waste of money, as we don’t really honor it.”  They could not have cared less that the letter carrier failed to scan it at the point of delivery.

Rather than trying to drive the horses to make both PayPal and the USPS honor their own policies, I simply sent an invoice to the customer documenting the situation,  requesting that she check her PayPal account, and that she herself reverse the reversal back to us, or rather, pay for the product with the money that was mistakenly refunded to her by a series of bumbling people.

Now, he was a nice enough guy, but had the gentleman friend not meddled in his lady friend’s transaction in the first place, by jumping the gun and calling PayPal before checking her email, none of this would have happened.   Kinda reminds me of a case a few years ago when a husband “tested” the breast pump his wife had ordered from us on his elbow and decided he didn’t like it and wanted to return it.   As far as we could tell, she had not even seen it yet.  That was too outlandish, and we refused to refund the purchase.

So I wish husbands/men would not get involved in their wives breast pump orders, but more importantly, I wanted to make y’all aware that USPS “Delivery Confirmation” really isn’t.

All the Breast,