It’s November 3, and something is missing. What’s missing? Oh yes, my Amazon package.
I shouldn’t be surprised. Since we moved out of town a year ago it’s rare that I actually get packages I order online. It’s more likely that I’ll see a refund on my credit card. When I say “move out of town” I want to note that I am literally on the town boundary. So we aren’t talking about delivering to the Bear Lake road or anything. I can literally see town from my bedroom window. But regardless of where the boundary is, we are rural folk now and seem to have adopted all the conveniences and inconveniences of rural life.
This is a little bit of a concern for me, as some, not all, but some Christmas gifts that I will be purchasing for my family members require some sort of delivery service. So I needed to find the root cause of this problem. Is it me? Is it the house or is it the address?
I started my search with Amazon. In my order box, I got a notice saying that, “Sorry we can’t deliver your package, go find out more from our third party provider.” Click – third party provider, Intelcom or something. “Sorry we could not deliver your package, it will be returned to the merchant,” go talk to the merchant. Click – merchant. Amazon… wait a second. Am I on a merry go round? Click – “Sorry we can’t deliver your package…” Yeah! I got that message but where’s the person to talk to? Where’s the customer service or to see about a refund? Will I even get a refund? To repeat what my colleague just said in the next cubicle, “This is f— tiresome.”
I think the most frustrating thing about all of this is that these companies are all about finger pointing and not about helping, listening or serving the customer. To save my sanity, I moved on from problem lamenting to problem solving.
So what can we do to prevent future purchase failures and future frustration? I consulted the experts at our local Canada Post. Truthfully in this case had the delivery been Canada Post I probably would have gotten my package. The staff know me, know where I live and do what they can to make sure the mail gets delivered, to at least one of my three new addresses.
Three addresses?
The mailing address at my, new to me, acreage, is a series of digits and letters that is longer than memorizing the square root of pi. But, that isn’t the only address. I am now the proud owner of a legal land location address and the physical address also known as the emergency address. Blimey, how many addresses does one property need?
The issue is that not only are there now three addresses for one piece of property, but I don’t exactly know which delivery services are going to be used and which address to punch into my order. So I asked the nice lady at the Canada Post counter. She told me that the only way I can cross my t’s and dot my i’s and hope that Christmas is not going to be a big disappointment with gifts getting sent to Timbuktu is to give as much information as I can. So fill in the postal address, as well as the emergency address with the lot number.
This should work for Amazon, but you aren’t out of the woods yet. Some online retailers won’t recognize the Rural Route mailing addresses, and need a street address, others don’t recognize the physical address. So there isn’t a silver bullet, and until some visionary somehow finds a way to streamline the online ordering system so that it is rural friendly where there are little boxes to put in all the information you are going to be taking a gamble this Christmas.
