Databases.<\/p>\n
Dumbasses.<\/p>\n
There are aspects of my life that are in probably hundreds of different databases.\u00a0\u00a0 There is no way for me to know which databases I’m in and there is no way to correct errors when they’re discovered.<\/p>\n
I live a in small town. Over the past six months or so, fewer and fewer companies will ship anything to me (including Amazon.com).<\/p>\n
Why?<\/p>\n
Because my street address is not in the United States Postal Service (USPS) database.<\/p>\n
For some unknown reason, in many small mountain towns,\u00a0 the post office won’t deliver mail to our street addresses.\u00a0 They force everyone use a PO Box at the post office.\u00a0 (At first I thought it had to do with our harsh winters, but I noticed that people who lived outside of town get their mail delivered to their roadside mailboxes.) So according the USPS, my PO Box is correct and my street address is invalid.<\/p>\n
The shipping companies like UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc. are just the opposite.\u00a0 They won’t deliver to a PO Box, but will deliver to the street address.<\/p>\n
But some idiots at UPS and Amazon decided to use the USPS database to verify shipping addresses.\u00a0\u00a0 Way to go!\u00a0 You’ve just knocked a whole town off the map.\u00a0 In the idiots’ small-minded world, everybody lives in the ‘burbs and everybody has a mailman and the lawns are mowed.<\/p>\n
Why isn’t there an override button?\u00a0 Why can’t I go to the UPS website and create an address record that is correct?\u00a0 It’s like I can’t be trusted to know my own address.<\/p>\n
No.\u00a0 The orders from just about anywhere on-line just get kicked backed in my face.<\/p>\n
I’ve tried to contact UPS, but I don’t expect the effort to go far.\u00a0 The response so far is “I’m sorry your address isn’t in the database.”\u00a0 My reply was that an apology doesn’t fix the problem and to escalate this to someone who can fix it.<\/p>\n
I guess the only alternative is to have the order shipped to a friend, an hour away in the city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Databases. Dumbasses. There are aspects of my life that are in probably hundreds of different databases.\u00a0\u00a0 There is no way for me to know which databases I’m in and there is no way to correct errors when they’re discovered. I … Continue reading