The Amazing Service Of U.S. Postal

I'm amazed. The Postal Service (and I'm not talking about the indie rock band, whose website happens to be extremely annoying) amazes me. On close inspection of the above photo you can see that this mailing tube was stamped for delivery on February 5, 2008. You might also notice the lovely "air mail" stamp. And if you're super observant and have any experience at shipping anything outside of these great united states of ours than you'll have surely noticed the bar code of the "customs form". If you're sitting there wondering what's so gosh damned amazing about shipping overseas you'd be on the right track because that's not what amazes me. What does amaze me is that this mailing tube arrived at my gallery a couple of weeks ago. And here it is photographed exactly as it arrived.





That's right. It arrived in that condition. Yes, approximately seven months after I shipped it. Seven months! So, here's the story. I sell things on ebay (Sweet! I'm up to 154 feedback now). Shamless self promotional plug, I know.* Anyway, back in February I sold this screenprinted Sam Flores poster.





I mailed it off to a flat in London and that was that. Or was it? Sadly, it wasn't. An email arrived a week and half to two after I shipped it asking if the order has been shipped and when could it be expected. According to the trusty folks at USPS it should have arrived by that point, but (there's always a "but", isnt' there?) once a package arrives in another country it is out of our hands. "Our" referring to The US Postal Service (again not the band with the annoying website). Once a package arrives on foreign soil it is in their hands and we have no way of knowing what they do with it or how long they take to do whatever it is they do with it. Essentially, there is no way to track it. So, I asked my buyer to please be patient and explained the best I could that it might be another week or two. She was understanding and did wait patiently. After two weeks of waiting (this makes a total of four weeks since the package was shipped) the poster had still not arrived. This situation was very uncomfortable for me. I pride myself on over the top customer service, but given the risk involved when shipping internationally I felt I had done all that I could. There was no way to track the package, but I was able to offer the customer a scanned photo of the receipt as proof that I had indeed shipped the item. Sadly, the customer was out the price of the poster and the shipping cost. I felt bad. Very bad. But I also felt that I had done all that I could do. I said that already, didn't I? Well, I really felt bad. The customer was disappointed, but very understanding to our predicament. Fast forward seven months. THE PACKAGE ARRIVES AT MY SHOP. As damaged as the mailing tube was, as evidenced in the photos, the poster was undamaged inside. My thank you note, button, and stickers* that I include in shipments were also still in the mailing tube. It's amazing that all of that stayed in the tube given the fact that the protective cover on one side of the tube had completely disappeared. So, after all of this, I have the poster back and I was able to refund the customer for the poster. All is good in the world. I'm amazed. Thank you USPS.

The poster has now been framed and hangs happily as part of my current window display.







* Well, I actually do feel a little shame about that pesky self promotional ebay link. But not that much. And not enough to not post it again. See. http://stores.ebay.com/jeff-claassen-gallery.

** Don't hold me to that "stickers in every package" thing. Sometimes I tape up the package and then realize I forgot to include stickers. However, I usually do remember to at least toss in a button.