Post office blunders

[Siam_Sam]

@Siam_Sam

There used to be a bar in Bangkok’s Soi Cowboy red-light district called Shadow Bar, owned by an old Vietnam War vet called Shadow Jack. He later sold it, moved upcountry and died in controversial circumstances. But that’s another story. While he still owned Shadow Bar, he came up with the idea of having all his bargirls shave off their pubic hair and hand it in to him. When he had enough, he’d encase it in Plexiglass for bar keychains. I still have one or two squirreled away somewhere myself. And I bought several and mailed them to friends in the US. But one friend told me he received an envelope with a large hole in it (I’d used padded envelopes) and nothing inside but a note from the Postal Service apologizing for the mishap.

@PlainJain

Facinating story but what happened to Shadow Jack!!?

@Drunky_Smurf

I too am interested in the demise of Shadow Jack.

As I said, Shadow Jack moved upcountry. Nakhon Ratchasima province I think it was, in the Northeast, which coincidentally had been the site of a major US Air Force Base during the Vietnam War, so maybe he was “going home.” (There are so many Vietnam War vets still left in that area that it has its own VFW post, or at least did, which I can attest to because while not a vet myself, I did eat there once.) He opened a bar up there with some partners and then suddenly dropped dead. To this day, people believe his shady partners had a hand in arranging his death. Myself, I think it was probably natural causes. He was old and had a passel of health problems. I remember he was deaf as a door, and I believe he also had some major heart and liver problems among other ailments. But the timing of his death was certainly suspicious, coming as it did right after he had just finished setting everything up.

@ftg

Try having a relative living on a street that’s a state name. E.g., 1600 Pensylvannia Avenue.

No matter how well printed it is, complete with the bar code, some idjit pastes a new bar code over it and sends it to a random place in that state. Where the folk there bounce it back, rather than looking at the envelope and seeing where it’s supposed to go.

Bangkok postal codes are very similar to New York City ZIP codes. It doesn’t happen often (that we know of), but occasionally people in the US sending us something have had their letters returned stamped that there’s no such address in NYC.

[Siam_Sam]

Oh, and one final note on Shadow Jack. His place in Bangkok, Shadow Bar, had a short-time room upstairs. Supposedly he had secret cameras installed in the room and kept a personal library of the shenanigans that went on up there with bargirls and their liaisons. It was just for personal viewing, never for blackmail. But after he died, no one could find the tapes. They disappeared, and no one knows what happened to them. I find the story of the cameras and tapes very believable, knowing Shadow Jack. He was quite a character.

[Battle_Pope]

Got home from work on Christmas Eve about 10 years ago to find a large box at my front door addressed to:

Mr B Pscribble
78 Alunintelligible St
Fr Doctors’ Handwriting
blot3smudge5

Apart from the initials of the name it was in no way close to being me, my address or even the State I was in (based on what I could see of the postcode).

I called the post office as I hadn’t ordered anything and their response was essentially: “Don’t really care. If you cant read the address then we probably can’t either. Plus its Xmas eve and none of our drivers would come and get it anyway.”

It was a mixed dozen red and white wines and a merry Xmas was had by me and my friends.

[Annie-Xmas]

I had planed to mail a package to a friend in London on September 12, 2001. Events interveened, and I mailed it on the 19th. She got it in January of 2002!

My brother mailed me something from New Zealand February 2014. It never showed up, and we could not track it down. It showed up “return to sender” at his house in November 2014.

[Absolute]

I had the exact same experience as the OP about three years ago. I ordered a fairly expensive hiking backpack directly from the manufacturer online. It was shipped via USPS. Never arrived, tracking information simply stopped somewhere in Kansas or whatever. I waited a week or two and then asked the manufacturer to ship me another one via Fedex, which they very kindly agreed to do without any hassle.

About 6 months later, the original USPS package arrived on my doorstep. Completely pristine and spotless, as if nothing had happened. I looked at the computer-generated, undamaged label and the address was completely correct. The package had never been opened. This was a rather large package too, not something that could just fall behind a table. No idea how it could have just sat somewhere for 6 months without anyone doing something to it.

I called the manufacturer and they gave me a (Fedex) shipping label to return it to them.

[Siam_Sam]

This one wasn’t exactly regular US Postal Service or a blunder since it was on purpose, but I remember one time when my father was still alive and had sent us a package. He used a private postal service near his home and paid for for air-mail delivery. The package, which we were expecting, didn’t arrive in the normal two or three weeks, and we’d just about given it up for lost when it finally did arrive after a couple of months. It carried surface-mail postage, and you could see where “Air Mail” had been marked out and replaced with “Surface Mail.” I tore of the lid and mailed it back to my father to show him. He confronted the private postal service, and it turns out it was an employee who had been pulling this scam. My father was told she’d quit and moved out of town before her scam was discovered and that he wasn’t the first to complain about something like this regarding her. My father received a letter from the owner of the chain expressing sincere apologies, but the chain is still lucky not to have been sued.