WE’VE EXPERIENCED A PPU! (POSTAL PHUCK UP)

Since the days when Art worked nights and had to sleep during the day, he’s used something to make white noise to help him sleep. We used to have a box fan in our bedroom, leaning against the wall, just for the noise it made, or really, for the noise it drowned out.

Several years ago my daughter gave him a small clock/radio/noise machine for Christmas. The nice thing about this was that he could take it with him when we traveled, and we could use it with the electrical cord or with batteries.

About four weeks ago the sound machine part of the combo just stopped working. No warning…..it just stopped. I immediately began searching the internet, starting with Amazon in Great Britain, thinking that I could have it mailed cheaper from England than from the states, but all they had were noise machines with running water, lapping waves, raging thunderstorms or chirping birds.

The first three noises would keep me up all night, and the last one would make me think it was morning……oh, and I guess there was another option, a heartbeat. Is it me, or would that just be kind of creepy, hearing a heart beating loudly all night long?…..I’d be thinking of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Telltale Heart”. Oh well, they wouldn’t ship these machines to Italy anyway, so I had to check Amazon in the U.S.

I found the same machine that Art had, and since it had lasted for so many years, I figured I’d might as well order another one. Additionally we’d still have the option of using it for travel. So, I ordered one, expecting that it would arrive at my sister’s house within a few days. Well, that was my FIRST mistake.

Eventually (after about two weeks!) the sound machine did arrive, and my sister packed it up to mail. I told her to make sure the clock/radio was taped securely to the inside of the box, having heard bad things about the state of affairs within the Italian postal system. I also advised her to list it as a “sound machine” rather than using the word clock, since clocks are not allowed to be mailed from the states to Italy. (Also prohibited are prescription drugs, albums of any kind, playing cards, artificial flowers and lots of other things that will have you shaking your head.)

Okay, so the package was wrapped and ready to go. This is when the SECOND mistake occurred. My sister must have copied our address from the address cards we had made, because on the last line of the address, she wrote “ITALIA”, not ITALY. One of the rules for international mailing is that the country name MUST be written on the bottom line, IN ENGLISH. My sister reports that the window clerk in Plainview did write "Italy" on the last line.

The package was mailed on Tuesday, June 13. We expected it to arrive within a week or so, especially since we’d recently had very good experiences with mail sent both from Italy and from the states. Time went on, but still we continued to wait, and eventually we decided that it must have either been confiscated by customs or stolen.

Until today, when it showed up, delivered by the private company that now takes care of parcels for the Italian postal service. And that’s when we saw the FOURTH mistake. (No I didn’t’ forget the THIRD mistake, it’s coming in a minute)

Italian addresses are written differently than U.S. addresses. Just as in the states, the name goes on the first line, the street address goes on the second line, but the third line is where the difference occurs. This line contains the CAP (the Italian equivalent of the ZIP code), the city name, and the province.
And as stated before, the LAST line of the address would be the country name in English. Because U.S. postal equipment is set up to read the bottom line of any address, this ensures that items going overseas are immediately separated from the domestic mail.

At this point we can only speculate about what happened, but here’s our theory (and keep in mind that we’re both former postal employees, so we have some idea of how these things usually work): Because the bottom line of the address said “Italia”, not “Italy”, we think that this line was completely missed, and instead the third line of the address was read….the line with our Italian postal code. This was the THIRD mistake.

Possible contributing to this problem was the fact that “Italia” was written on the right hand side of the address, rather than being on the left hand side of the address. If it had been at the left margin, directly under the postal code, maybe it would have been more easily seen. Maybe the "Italy" written in ink was too light to be read?

Although there isn’t an 05010 ZIP code in the U.S., the package must have been sent either to an area whose ZIP code begins with 050, if that exists, (Vermont???) or possibly it was rejected in Louisville and sent to a clerk for manual coding. In the end, a person had to look at it to figure out the problem, and guess what this brilliant (NOT!!!) clerk did???? THEY COMPLETELY OBLITERATED THE ENTIRE THRID LINE OF THE ADDRESS, AND SIMPLY WROTE “ITALY” ON THE LAST LINE. This was the FIFTH mistake! This meant that our package would go to Italy, but once here, all that was showing was our name and street address.

Luckily the package did have a customs form….the long form, which wasn’t even needed, or at least it didn’t used to be needed for a package under four pounds. (Again, I’m confused about how this could have been handled so badly at the station when it was mailed? Isn’t the smaller green customs form used for parcels under four pounds? And do we no longer have the “small packet rate”? Our package was well under 4 pounds, yet it cost $22.40 to mail, WAY more than we pay to mail the same size package from Italy to the states!!! That’s quite a switch!)

So…..once the package arrived in Italy a real person eventually took a look at the customs form, read the rest of the address, and was able to route the package correctly. And today, SIXTEEN days later, we received the package, undamaged and unopened. After having paid $22.90 for a small (just over two pounds) package, we certainly expected faster service than sixteen days!

Of course we’re really glad the package wasn’t lost, stolen or confiscated, but as former postal employees we just can’t believe that someone would completely obliterate an address line! What an idiot!

Sooo…one mistake led to another and another, and another, and our feelings for the U.S. Postal Service, once our employer, have been, well, severely tested. We realize this was a series of mistakes, but ultimately feel that whoever blacked out our postal code, city name and province was the person who was most at fault in the delay. Had this been handled correctly, the third line should have been left untouched and the word “Italy” simply written boldly and clearly on the bottom line.

What can we learn from this? Well, for people mailing stuff to a foreign country, make sure you know how to correctly address the letter or package. Also know what items are prohibited and what are legal to mail. For window clerks, check the way items going to a foreign country are addressed. Fill out the correct customs form. Check for different rates and the expected delivery time. Educate your customers….educate yourself. For nixie clerks (do those still exist???), NEVER EVER obliterate an address! The information could turn out to be needed somewhere further down the line. Let’s all work together to avoid another PPU.

I’ve forwarded this sad tale to a friend at the Post Office, and although we realize we’ll never know exactly what happened, we’d at least like to raise awareness about how easily a piece of mail can be misdirected.

And here's the package, just so you can see what NOT to do....