On November 11th I placed an order with amazon.com for some books. Their email came within hours that the shipment had been given to the United States Postal Service. This was not good news.
Amazon's easy tracking system got me to the usps.com's site to track from there. And so I have, for six days.
The shipment is at the Springfield, MA facility; I live about an hour away in CT and am sorely tempted to drive out there and pick it up.
The main problem with the postal service is, I think, more their lack of web and tracking savvy that wraps itself like bubblewrap against today's technology. With UPS or any of the other package delivery services there is a system of updating information that just about tracks an hour to hour progress. I'm actually expecting the package to come today, but that likely won't show up on the usps.com site for another few days.
Now I'm no spring chicken, but I know that if I want to survive in this world I need to use the web technology. I clearly see that unless the postal service recognizes this for themselves, they're not going to make it to the 44-cent stamp.
BTW, my own local PO is manned by some of the best, nicest, and most efficient folk in the service.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I was actually thinking about this the other day when I was ordering some books off Amazon and realized the shipping was triple or more the cost of the actual product. The USPS has some serious cultural lag going on. I think devices like Kindle are the real answer to the problem.
Well, unless you’re willing to let the post office hold it for a week or more, I’d go for the UPS service. I still haven’t gotten the books–or any updates on the “we received notice to pickup” on the usps website. I expect to get it today…I think.
Kindle’s a bit out of my league pricewise when I consider how many books I have here to read.