More trouble with the post office and RockAuto.com bad service

Last week the fuel pump on our truck went out and I decided to order at RockAuto.com because it was a few bucks cheaper and I didn’t have to worry about getting it from Kingman.

Unfortunately I only saw the USPS option at RockAuto.  Now I looked at the site and it says I could have used UPS or FedEx.  Since we had rain in the forecast for the weekend, I thought it would be ok to pick the pump up this afternoon at the Meadview post office.

With incredible reliability, if it’s important, the post office will screw up.

I was TRYING to track the package last night and it took hours to finally get the info I wanted to see, that it left the Las Vegas sorting facility.

Then it took more hours to check the tracking again this morning and when the USPS site finally worked, I found that my package is available for pickup at my PO box in BULLHEAD!

So I called RockAuto and after some hold spoke with a MORON, I believe his name was Tom.  He did confirm that they sent it to Meadview 86444, but of course the USPS tracking didn’t work for him either (apparently it’s “normal” to have to try 10 or 20 times) and he informed me that the package is probably at the Meadview post office for pickup.  That I was looking at the tracking info stating that it was in Bullhead 80 miles away seemed irrelevant to him.  And of course there was nothing he would do to assist.  So I don’t think I’ll order from RockAuto again.

I tried to call the Bullhead post office, but at first found only their national 800 number.  You have to talk to a machine (I HATE those) and after many times of pushing 0 I got to another very unhelpful person.  After giving her the 22-digit tracking number, she advised that her system was down.  Geez, what a surprise.

I asked whether she could call the Bullhead post office and of course she could not.  So I said since she’s too lazy to call them, maybe she could give me the number.    That I called her lazy deeply offended her and no, I didn’t get the phone number from her.

After some more web searches I found the Bullhead post office number online and I spoke to a very helpful lady.  She actually looked for my package and it’s in the bin with other misdeliveries that go to Kingman tonight.  She said just about every day they get 15 to 20 misdeliveries that were supposed to go to Kingman.

How can that be?  Printed label, bar code, state of the art sorting facilities …

Another question is why the online tracking says that that package is ready for pickup at the Bullhead PO box INSTEAD of stating that it’s going to Kingman:

I could have saved myself the aggravation of the calls if the post office tracking had been accurate and stated that the package was in transit.  It’s obviously incorrect that the package is available at the PO box.

I’m fully aware that UPS and Fed Ex also make mistakes, but with 90% of my shipping going through the private carriers, 99% of my shipping problems are with the post office.  And I’m not even for privatization of the post office, but they just need to charge another $2 for priority mail so they actually ship packages where they’re supposed to go and on time.

Since my last rant about the post office, they returned several shipments from Amazon as “undeliverable.”  It wasn’t important stuff, but we had spent literally hours to order several items with free shipping and they ended up as 4 different shipments. When I finally looked the order up at Amazon, I was shocked to see that all were returned as undeliverable.

So now I have to make several phone calls to let people know that I won’t be stopping by until tomorrow.  And with lots of luck, I’ll finally get the fuel pump tomorrow afternoon.

In the future, I’ll just go to Auto Zone in Kingman.

And I hope my day gets better.

Why doesn’t someone open a private mailbox place in LMC or Meadview?

URL emailed to service@rockauto.com and of course submitting a complaint to USPS.com would take half an hour filling out required fields, so I’ll pass.