My bad service story is still ongoing, and the bad service in question has been inflicted upon me and a friend up in Memphis, TN by the United States Postal Service.
Okay, so. She and I recently sent each other packages via priority mail, with delivery confirmation and all that jazz. I sent mine last Tuesday, she sent hers last Monday. Both of us waited for a couple of days. Neither of us got our packages. Well, okay, there's no actual guarantee - and this is a disclaimer for USPS - that the packages will actually be delivered in 2-3 days. Fine. Just to check, I go look up the confirmation number on the package I sent her and the site tells me it was delivered. Okay.
I talk to her and she never received the package. Neither did anyone else who lives at her house. Nothing.
So it was misdelivered.
My first impulse is to blame my post office. In the last two months, they've lost two of my paychecks, cost me a renters' insurance policy, and nearly caused my electricity to be cut off because the mail I sent out never got to its intended recipients and vice versa. So there's precedent here. I go to tell them the story, and they give me the number for the USPS hotline. I call and give the delivery confirmation number and the woman on the other end goes, "Yeah, it was delivered Thursday at such-and-such time."
I go, "Uh, then you delivered it to the wrong address, because my friend never received a Priority Mail package and neither did anyone who lives at her house."
Silence on the phone. "Well... uh... then you need to go get your confirmation number so we can find it."
I filed a formal complaint today because, a week later, neither of us had gotten anything and the post office has still done exactly jack to help.
That isn't the bad part. That happens all the time, unfortunately.
My friend emailed me about an hour ago to tell me that the package she had sent to me a week ago had finally been returned. Not only was it returned in terrible condition - banged to shit and halfway ripped open - it was returned with a Canada Post return sticker on it.
I live in Texas.
WTF, USPS. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.
I have never had this happen before. I'm honestly amazed. It wasn't my end, either - it was hers. I sent three other packages at the same time I sent the priority package. All three were regular post. All three arrived at their intended destinations (one of them Canada, ha) without a single hitch. I might understand if one got returned or misdelivered... but they were both misdelivered from her post office: one to God knows where, the other to Canada.
Apparently Memphis's post office just really, really fails. Either that, or they're hiring poorly trained monkeys to sort their mail these days.
As amusing a mental image as that is, I'm... rather irritated at the moment. Go post office, you fail.