- Thread starter
- #14,271
I got chicks just this week shipped Express mail from Ohio to Colorado. They were mailed on Tuesday and I was able to get tracking to Denver when they arrived around 7am on Wednesday morning. Since I have had a lot of chicks shipped to me, I am pretty knowledgeable about the timing and route they take to Colorado Springs. I generally try to get them in Colorado Springs instead of adding another day for them to arrive at my home post office.
Anyway, the mail is trucked from Denver to Colorado Springs and express mail arrives twice a day once at around 9am and then again around 2:30pm. I am generally called to see if I want to pick chicks up once they are in Colorado Springs. When I didn't get a call by 4pm, I called the Colorado Springs general mail facility and asked them to check to see if the chicks were there. The person who answered the phone asked for the tracking number then read to me the same information that I got online. I explained that I had good reason to believe that the were at the facility and just not scanned in. She said it wasn't possible and gave me some goofy explanation about the mail being flown to my home post office and then when I told her that was not likely she gave me 1-800 number to Express Shipping and said they may have additional information.
I called the number and got a young man that was located somewhere in the country and had no ideal about the distance from Denver to Colorado Springs (about 50 miles or about a 1 hour drive). I explained how the mail is generally processed and moved and he said he would look to see if he could get additional information. He was able to tell me that the package left Denver at 8am and said that from what I told him that the chicks were likely in Colorado Springs.
Since I work in Colorado Springs, I was already in the Springs so I went to the general mail facility, waited in line for 30 minutes until I was able to talk to a clerk. I explained about the chicks, the scanning, the phone calls and he said he didn't hear any chicks at the post office. I said they came in Express and was likely back in the Express mail area. He then said he would check and walked off saying here chicky, chicky, then was back in a minute or so saying nope no chicks here. Since I have been throughout that entire facility, I knew that there was no way that he went to the Express mail area which was at the far rear of the the huge building in a minute. I asked if he could, please call the Express mail area to which he said no, I asked if he could check with the dock and he said no. I asked can you go back to the dock and he said they were not allowed to. I said well then I will go to the dock myself to which he just smiled and said can I help who is next.
I drove around to the dock area which the general public is not suppose to be in but since this wasn't the first time I had go to the dock I knew that you just had to hit the buzzer on the gate and it would open. Once I parked, I walked up to the people entry and again rang the bell and when no one answered in about 5 minutes I just walked in and flagged down the first worker I spotted. Thankfully, he was a very nice guys and agreed to help me. We stopped at the office area and he asked if anyone had seen some chicks and a couple of the people said oh this must be the chick lady. I took it from that comment that the clerk must have called back to let them know I was headed that way. None of them knew anything about chicks, so the nice worker said come on let's go back to Express mail. Once we got there, some guy popped out of the office and looked like he had been woke from a nap. I asked did he have any chicks back there and he said yea I think there are some over in this bin and sure enough there was my chicks.
I asked how long they had been there and he said they just came in and he had not had time to scan them yet. I said from them leaving Denver this morning at 8am and you are telling me they have been on a truck all day. He just stared at me because he knew they had been there since morning and he was just to lazy to do his job. I told him get these scanned out right now and I was taking them with me. He said he couldn't scan them that I would have to take them back up to the clerks. I lost it and refused to take them back up front and asked the nice post worker to show me the way back out to the dock. I grabbed my chicks and off we went. I half expected someone to call the police or stop me but I made a get away with my chicks. All chicks were in great shape which I don't think would have been the case if they had sat there until the next morning to be delivered to my home post office.
The whole kicker was that even though express says one day, the post office did not guarantee until the next day at 3pm which was 2 days and several of the people at the post office pointed this out to me. It was like why are you so upset since it is not guaranteed until tomorrow. Oh, well if the chicks are dead but you will get your package by the guaranteed time.
