Jazz
- Thread starter Captainfog
- Start date
Selaws
Well-Known Member
Yeah my copy arrived from the US to the UK 2 weeks ago tomorrow.
I have had lots of messages on Instagram saying the same as you guys though, that they have the postal/tracking info but no updates to it.
mingerton
Well-Known Member
One of the CS managers finally wrote back to me and gave me a bit more information:
"We have 500 in this batch that went out on this date that are also delayed. I have a message into our post office for their manager to call me back as these packages 100% left our building on 4/19/21. Our post office has also given us a 4-6 week media mail time frame, which is in our policy. So want to see if they have any updates for me and can give me any more information on this specific batch of orders before I call you, so I can give as much information as possible. I am so sorry again, we have many customers reaching out about this and are doing our best to work with the post office for an update. USPS has let me know I should get a call by EOD tomorrow from our post office's manager. I can call you as soon I hear from them."
If they have 500 in this status, this is very worrying because the post office manager in Batavia told me they don't have them and he checked with the Aurora sort facility and they don't have a backlog of media mail there. The person from Craft (which is actually "Second City Prints" that mailed it) who dropped off 1,000 packages (over several days) at the post office should have waited in line and insisted someone scan them all in as received. Instead, the post office manager suggested, that person probably just dropped all of them off in drop boxes or in back at the loading dock.
dhodo
Well-Known Member
Why should they have had to watch them all get scanned? Is the post office manager suggesting you can't trust them not to lose or throw away 500 packages in their facility? Absurd.
mingerton
Well-Known Member
You're right. CS from Craft just confirmed they don't drop them at the post office. Someone from USPS came to Windy City Prints to pick them up and scanned a manifest, but not each one individually, which is why they are "pending acceptance."
(Me: picturing some rogue USPS driver, like Newman from Seinfeld, taking 500 Lateef's back to his house, then slowly selling them on Ebay for $400 each.)
Just posted this over in Fresh Grabs. I haven't listened through yet, but Spinning habiba & really impressed, sounds great & really cheap.
edit - Hassan ibn ali is pretty great, QRP pressing, there are some minor issues with sound but overall it sounds really good. Amazing stuff, fascinating story & a great all round package.
edit - Hassan ibn ali is pretty great, QRP pressing, there are some minor issues with sound but overall it sounds really good. Amazing stuff, fascinating story & a great all round package.
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Kramer gets involved and starts selling them too fast, floods the market, prices bottom out. "WE'RE RUINED JER! RUINED!" Elaine leaves nasty reviews on their ebay seller profile because they won't cut her into the scheme.
Anyway glad we got an update. Hopefully they appear at some point...
Carl
New Member
Absurd only begins to describe it. The systemic incompetence at the USPS predates COVID, they operate at or below the same level of efficiency as that of a thrift store donation center.
Not exaggerating in the slightest, the conversations I’ve had with USPS representatives over the last few years can best be described as “mind numbing”.
Selaws
Well-Known Member
New Ruby Rushton EP up for grabs on Bandcamp tomorrow.
On the bright side, it seems like that would be a smoother distribution method than craft's actual website.
Really - should have stood there at the counter while 1000 packages are scanned in individually??? This is really entitlement type stuff. For a record. The guy would be occupying the local post office for 10 hours or more easily, while no one else coming in could get service without hour long waits in line.
So the great Craft record takes precedence over all those people, who may be mailing a birthday gift, money to an elderly relative, a utility payment, or any of the myriad uses that must surely be more important?
Bulk shipping is intended to be done through a bulk manifest list, not individually. Totally inefficient use of postal service resources otherwise.
McGlam
Well-Known Member
I wrote craft and they did not answer me directly, just the same media mail form email
Selaws
Well-Known Member
To be fair, I think that people that ordered and paid for the record are quite literally entitled to receive it.
The way that this is worded makes it sound as if the way they handled them is the only way to have done it. At the end of the day this was not a cheap purchase and to have them gone missing through the postal system because they were not handed off properly really isn't the buyer's fault. There are thousands of companies that ship records with no issues and its clear from the comments here and on other sites that this particular shipment has not been handled well at all.
On a side note, I have mine in hand so I'm not coming to this as a disgruntled buyer.
Yeah I agree with this, obviously the idea of hand scanning a thousand packages is absurd-- but buys deserve to get what they pay for (me included) and this clearly wasn't handled well.
For all the hate USPS gets, I still love them. It's an amazing system with a public mandate to cover places that no other shippers would bother with, and for all the mistakes they make, they still get it right the majority of the time. Like I rarely have issues with USPS-- it happens, but it's not common. I love the USPS. We should double their funding.
zdkaiser
Well-Known Member
Wonder where they all disappeared to? It's not like these are some small letters that can fall through the cracks somewhere. These are large 5 lb boxes, and 500 of them! But if 500 packages are truly missing, Craft is looking at $50,000 in refunds. That'll be a tough pill to swallow.
Are people actually going to wait 45 days before filing a PayPal claim or a credit card chargeback? Seems like a very long time for any domestic piece of mail.
I opened a missing mail case with USPS today. Talked to a postmaster yesterday, and he said it's very usual the tracking hasn't updated in 3 weeks. He said, give it another week, then try to get your money back if the tracking doesn't change. He was not optimistic that it'd turn up.
Russ I
Well-Known Member
I’m in no hurry. Will just wait to see how it turns out and remain optimistic
Personally, I think it highly unlikely 500 parcels are missing, but I suppose time will tell. And I have a few other records I can spin while I wait. 
mingerton
Well-Known Member
It's even more complicated because Craft subcontracted Second City Prints to handle the distribution, so Second City may be on the hook with Craft if 500 disappear. The CS supervisor at Second City has been updating me by phone. It's confirmed that there's a whole pallet of missing Lateef LPs, and that's not the only missing pallet of LPs (!), but they're prioritizing this one because of the small batch (and expensive) nature of the pressing. USPS escalated the claim to an Operations Specialist who has a call scheduled with the head of Second City Prints tomorrow. Fingers crossed...
zdkaiser
Well-Known Member
Keep us posted if you hear anything else.
As a Canadian, I can only comment on my experience getting packages coming to Canada through USPS. Without a doubt, service time was declining well before Covid, but Louis DeJoy cuts made it worse. However, I do appreciate that USPS in its present form is unsustainable without a significant and ever increasing annual taxpayer donation, while USPS has a mandate to be self-sustaining.
At the end of the day, it's gotta come somewhere - government funding endless losses (which every American pays for inevitably), modernization and rationalization (which DeJoy, despite being a Trump guy, started) as well as service cuts.
Perhaps it is time for Americans to wake up on USPS. Perhaps 3 or 4 days delivery isn't the worst thing instead of taxpayers funding one to two day. And do you really need Saturday delivery? For what?
Canada did away with Saturday delivery in the 1960's. No other country I know of, of significance, still does Saturday delivery. Just eliminating that would probably go most of the way to resolving USPS's problems.
