[Jeff Higgins]

Here is my absolutely unqualified, knee-jerk, seat of the pants assessment of just what HAS to be happening, with no evidence whatsoever to back any of this up. In other words, putting on my PPOT "expert" hat...

Looking at the timeline on my last botched delivery, the package sent last week, I see the following:

I placed my order on Friday. The nice guy with the hard to get old Ducati parts is in Kentucky. It was mid day here, so at least "tea time" back there. I kinda doubt he was able to get my stuff picked up by his mail carrier on Friday. Which, because he has a life and stays home to be with his wife and kids over the weekend, means he probably didn't ship until... Monday.

USPS changed status on my package as "Delivered, front desk/reception/mail room" on Monday. I think they received it in their mail room on Monday, in Kentucky, and scanned it. It should have then shown a status of "received". Somehow, some way, it went right past all of the intermediate statuses to that "Delivered, front desk/reception/mail room".

How would that happen? Having worked for a large, inefficient, impersonal company for some time, I can think of a couple of plausible explanations:

1) New, unfamiliar software. Operator error trying to use it, just innocently fat fingered something, or whatever. No way to back it out once it moves forward through the various statuses. Honest mistake, frustrated mail room clerk.

2) New performance measures backed by some sort of incentives to meet delivery "targets". Knowing there is no way to say otherwise, no accountability, or that he can blame "new software", some lazy, dishonest, and unscrupulous mailroom clerk pads his delivery performance by simply fast forwarding everything in the system to "delivered". Then, when it actually is delivered, there is nothing the poor mail carrier can do, because the system already shows it as "delivered".

The more I think about it, this seems to be the pattern I've witnessed. Upon arrival at the very first mail center, where items should be scanned as "received", they are, instead, promoted to "delivered" right away. Even if that mail center is (as in this case) in Kentucky, and final delivery is in the Seattle area. Then, from there, since status already shows "delivered", all tracking effectively ceases. There is no way in which status can be updated once it hits "delivered" - the system locks them out on that package from there on. So nobody knows where in the hell it actually is, since no one receiving or forwarding the package can change status anymore.

System glitch or dishonest employees working to some sort of delivery targets? Hopefully Ms. DelBene and Mr. Larson can get some answers...