Mail Mishaps

Carol 83

Flower Girl
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I'm sure we've all had them, missing trees, plants, broken pots, etc. For some reason Amazon and UPS can find my house but FedEx cannot. They always deliver to my neighbor who usually stumbles across the yard a few days later to bring me my box. Once it was a Camellia that spent three days outside on his porch in January, luckily it survived. Good luck reporting it, you'll be stuck on an automated loop that will make you tear your hair out. But this one is a different story. Our friend @Clicio was kind enough to send me some BRT seeds back in October 2020. I never received them and we just chalked it up to international mailing problems. Imagine what a surprise when I received a small package from Brazil today, dated October 2020. Who knows where this was for almost two years, pretty bizarre. Please feel free to share your shipping nightmares here. mail mishap.jpg
 
In December 2020 just after Christmas, I sent a box from my town here on Long Island to southern Rhode Island.

I could have driven it there myself in 4 hours.
It took 30 days....
 
My worst mail disasters: I collect Syracuse China Millbrook stoneware. It's a pattern from the 1940s, 50s, diner ware with a zillion different items. I have never lost a Millbrook piece in shipment. My mother loves Denby Twilight, and I have amassed a collection for her and gifted her pieces over the years. I found a seller in California with a teapot, some breakfast plates and mugs. I won the bidding and she shipped. Following the tracking, I saw that my box was stuck in one California sorting center for 10 days, then started moving again. The box arrived with 2 plates intact, every other item smashed. The seller had packed it all with just loose packing peanuts in the box:mad: About a year later a found a seller with 4 mugs, bought them. She packed them lip to lip and the mugs were immobile in the box, seemed like a good plan. If she had placed a layer or two of cardboard between the mugs they would have survived. Instead two of the mugs chipped on the lip and a third mug had a hairline fracture.
 
My worst mail disasters: I collect Syracuse China Millbrook stoneware. It's a pattern from the 1940s, 50s, diner ware with a zillion different items. I have never lost a Millbrook piece in shipment. My mother loves Denby Twilight, and I have amassed a collection for her and gifted her pieces over the years. I found a seller in California with a teapot, some breakfast plates and mugs. I won the bidding and she shipped. Following the tracking, I saw that my box was stuck in one California sorting center for 10 days, then started moving again. The box arrived with 2 plates intact, every other item smashed. The seller had packed it all with just loose packing peanuts in the box:mad: About a year later a found a seller with 4 mugs, bought them. She packed them lip to lip and the mugs were immobile in the box, seemed like a good plan. If she had placed a layer or two of cardboard between the mugs they would have survived. Instead two of the mugs chipped on the lip and a third mug had a hairline fracture.
I hope you were reimbursed for the ruined items. I once received 4 pots and every one was smashed to smithereens. Thankfully, the potter replaced them with new pots at no charge.
 
I'm sure we've all had them, missing trees, plants, broken pots, etc. For some reason Amazon and UPS can find my house but FedEx cannot. They always deliver to my neighbor who usually stumbles across the yard a few days later to bring me my box. Once it was a Camellia that spent three days outside on his porch in January, luckily it survived. Good luck reporting it, you'll be stuck on an automated loop that will make you tear your hair out. But this one is a different story. Our friend @Clicio was kind enough to send me some BRT seeds back in October 2020. I never received them and we just chalked it up to international mailing problems. Imagine what a surprise when I received a small package from Brazil today, dated October 2020. Who knows where this was for almost two years, pretty bizarre. Please feel free to share your shipping nightmares here. View attachment 443689

Well, well, well...
You got lucky here, lady.
Now it is completely forbidden to send Brazilian native seeds abroad.
So you've gotten your BRT seeds, it's summer and you can sow them!
Good luck!
 
Mine has a happy ending.
@Anthony kindly sent me some Tamarind seeds from Trinidad, which is a Caribbean island not very far from South America.
I waited for six months and we gave up, considering the package lost. To my surprise two weeks later the parcel arrived, I sowed the seeds and voilà!
Now I have some Tamarind trees being trained as bonsai!
 
Mine has a happy ending.
@Anthony kindly sent me some Tamarind seeds from Trinidad, which is a Caribbean island not very far from South America.
I waited for six months and we gave up, considering the package lost. To my surprise two weeks later the parcel arrived, I sowed the seeds and voilà!
Now I have some Tamarind trees being trained as bonsai!
Seems we both had happy endings!
 
Well, well, well...
You got lucky here, lady.
Now it is completely forbidden to send Brazilian native seeds abroad.
So you've gotten your BRT seeds, it's summer and you can sow them!
Good luck!
Thanks again, I certainly wouldn't want you to go to jail for sending me some seeds! I wonder what kind of journey they have been on for two years.
 
My pots once got delivered to the sender instead of me. The carrier, GLS, claimed it was delivered AND lost.
Then there's the envelope stealing postal dude that has a friend living on ***lane while I live on ***street. Every time something looks valueable on the outside of the envelope, it gets delivered to the friend at the lane. Every now and then he feels bad and brings opened envelopes without the content. Great to hear that one of your friends died and the burial was three months ago.
 
Earlier this year I shipped out some pots to a guy in California......the box ended up in Guam. Then took a week to get shipped to Hawaii......then another week to get to California.

I've also sent pots to Japan, they arrived a little over a week or so.

The mail always has me wondering.
 
I hope you were reimbursed for the ruined items. I once received 4 pots and every one was smashed to smithereens. Thankfully, the potter replaced them with new pots at no charge.
These were both Ebay purchases. I contacted the sellers directly and ended up paying only for the undamaged pieces and a % of the shipping. In another Ebay purchase the box arrived in perfect condition and with a couple of little egg cups included as a surprise. One of the little free cups had a repaired chip on the bottom edge. Did I mind? Not at all:)
 
I once had a Fed Ex success. Back in 1995 I
mailed a phrag besseae plant IN BLOOM, a fairly fragile flower as phrag orchids go, the plant arrived in Hong Kong still in bloom. I had packed it in one of the styrofoam containers used to ship concentrated sulfuric acid bottles. It was extra rigid, and had bracing perfect for holding the flower pot in place. The package took 5 days to get from Chicago to Hong Kong, flower was still open when it arrived.
 
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Recently - 2 months ago, I sent 3 trees to Ireland...and they never arrived. The track and trace said they hadn't left the country (The Netherlands).

4 weeks later I get a phone call from someone in Amsterdam, nowhere near where I live - other side of the city. She'd just received a box from CYPRUS which seemed to have dead plants in it.

Someone had stuck ANOTHER official address label over the Ireland destination, addressing it to Cyprus (island south east of Greece and Turkey).

Not only had my box gone to the wrong country but the return address was ALSO wrongly addressed to this woman who had never sent anything to Cyprus in her life.

Miraculously, the plants actually all survived and are all pushing out new growth now.
 
So my first attempt with some of the seeds failed. It seems I didn't prepare them correctly. This go around I nipped them with a nail cutter and soaked them for 24 hours. Looky, looky @Clicio .brt seeds.jpg
 
I had ordered a bunch of little rare Japanese and Trident maples a couple months ago. They were very well packed, cushioned, Insulated, with wet soil. Labels all over the box saying "Live plants - keep from extreme heat or cold"....
Our mail carrier left them outside our gate in full sun on a triple digit day. Fortunately the seller had insured the shipment and I got a refund. But I'd rather have live trees.
 
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