My ‘missing’ packages:  Did lightning strike twice?

By Alex P. Vidal

 

“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”—Gilbert K. Chesterton

IN January this year, I lost a package containing a Bose SoundLink Revolve+ Portable and Long-Lasting Bluetooth 360 Speaker-Triple Black worth $299 (around P14,651) I ordered online when the United States Postal Service (USPS) in New York City presumably “delivered” it on a wrong address.

I made a total of six trips to the USPS offices in Corona and Elmhurst to locate the package (just in case it wasn’t yet “delivered”) to no avail.

Each visit, I tried to talk to the postal manager but everybody was so busy and the best “help” they could provide was to ask me to dial a certain hotline number—only to be given a run around by a computer-generated voice directing me to press different numbers and “wait while your call is being processed.”

Nothing happened.

Since I couldn’t anymore cancel the transaction and because I so love the lost product, I tried my luck with the USPS one last time in February; and before I could a suffer a heart attack after being subjected to the same ordeal by that pesky computer-generated voice, I quit.

Charge to experience. The post office fiasco should give me a lesson. I will never order any item online again. No more.

 

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Lo and behold, after only 10 months on December 14, I kind of suffer from amnesia when I again ordered online a Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, a top of the line headphones, which was on sale for $339 (P16,611) from its original price of $379 (P18,571).

At around past five o’clock in the afternoon on December 16, I received this email about the status of my order number WH12798577 from Bose: “Hello Alex, Thank you for shopping with us. Your order has been delivered.”

I pressed the “track your order” and was directed to a link where it stated that the item has been supposedly “delivered” by UPS on Wednesday, December 16 with time marked at 7:25 pm Maspeth, New York.

It was only past five o’clock in the afternoon and the monster snowstorm that battered the Northeast and East Coast was only starting.

Avoiding the storm outside, I hurriedly checked our gate but found nothing.

I went back and checked three more times but failed to see any package inside and outside the gate.

I checked my email and clicked “Trying to find your package?”

The following advisory appeared: “Sorry! This happens sometimes. Please check your front porch, side door, back porch, garage area, bushes, and mailbox to make sure it’s not hiding or jammed. Also, ask your neighbors if they may have received it for you. If your package still hasn’t turned up in 3 more days, please contact us.”

When I checked our “front porch, side door, back porch, garage area, bushes, and mailbox” as per instruction, the snow outside was already piling up as the major winter storm began dumping what could end up being a foot of snow on New York City Wednesday evening.

 

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Did lightning strike twice for my packages this year?

Can I still recover the “missing” UPS package?

If it was really delivered as stated in the email and in the text message I received on my phone, was the package buried under the avalanche of thick snow?

We will know when I check in the morning after—or after the storm is over.

Elsewhere there were reportedly hundreds of crashes on slick roads.

The winter storm was starting to stretch from northern North Carolina to as far north as southern Maine.

More than two inches covered New York’s Central Park as of 7:20 p.m. Wednesday, the National Weather Service said, and forecasts call for 8 to 12 inches for parts of the city.

NBC News, quoting state police, reported that the storm was thought to have played a role in a crash that killed two people on an interstate in Pennsylvania that involved dozens of vehicles.

“Vehicles were being towed away, traffic was rerouted and I-80 westbound in Clinton County is expected to be closed until Thursday morning, state police and transportation officials said. Police said it was ‘vitally important’ that people limit nonessential travel during the storm,” NBC News reported.

In Virginia, state police said they responded to around 200 crashes Wednesday, including one in which a North Carolina man died. Slick roads were a factor in the deadly crash, a police spokeswoman said.

The snowstorm could be the biggest New York City has seen in years, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

“This is going to be a serious storm,” the mayor said Tuesday in urging residents to prepare.

De Blasio reportedly canceled in-person classes for Thursday due to the storm, but after changes made by the Covid-19 pandemic, it would be different than in past years.

 

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two local dailies in Iloilo)