Golf Shoes Part II

When we last left our story, I was in contact with Tim S. at New Balance.  After he and I had finished he directed me to an online form to fill out.

It, of course, had a lot of the stuff on it that Tim and I had already gone through.

I filled it out and submitted it.

A day later I got an email which asked me to send the shoes to an address in Missouri. 

Ok, so I take an old box and put the shoes in it and off to the post office I go.

There is a long line to talk to a clerk, so I use the self service machine and it's going to cost me $14 to ship it.  This is not the fast route either.  But for $0.41 more, I can send it two day and get tracking!

Well, ok, I'll sign up, not for the tracking, but just to hurry the process along.

It's about 2:02 pm and there is a PO worker emptying all of the boxes, including the one I'm about to drop the shoes in.  Of course it takes a lot of time to answer the security questions and enter the box dimensions.  The box is empty and the guy has left the lobby.

I get it all done and get the stamp from the output port.  "Make sure the bar code is to the left of the stamp!"  Ok, I can do that.  The stamp is not very big and there is square bar code and I make sure it's to the left of the stamp portion.  Into the box the shoes go.  It makes a nice hollow sound as they crash to the bottom of the recently emptied box.

I then need to buy some stamps as Barb has created a bunch of Easter cards and I'm going to stamp and get them into the system too.  When the stamps are printed, I reach down to get them and lo and behold there is another printed item and it looks suspiciously like another bar code.  Hmm, what to do, what to do?

Well, I'd better talk to someone and see what is up.

There is a service door with a door bell.  I ring it.  No answer.  I ring it again.  Still nothing, so I get to the back of the line to talk to a PO employee.  This is not wasted time as I am busy with the stamps and Easter cards. 

I get to the counter and explain what's happened to the nice lady (is that sexist?).  She sadly shakes her head.  "We don't have anyone to get your package back."  "You might have to pay again and redo it!"  Of course without getting the box back, it will be hard to repay...

"Will the box make it to its destination if it doesn't have the bar code on it?"  I ask this twice and you'd think this would be easy to answer.   But it was never answered.

They finally find a guy in the back room and he opens the bin and in about 15 seconds my package is on the counter.  I slap on the bar code right next to the square bar code and off it goes.

"Can I give you these envelopes?" I stupidly ask.  One of the tenets in cross examination is to never ask a question if you don't know what the answer is going to be.  My question wasn't quite that, but it came close.  She, the nice lady, picks up one of the cards and starts to frown.

Barb has made the cards with some level of sophisticated decoration.  I ribbon binds it shut.  What I'm hinting at is that there is some thickness in these. 

The lady's frown gets worse.  Off she goes and talks to another clerk.  She comes back.

"Is there any powder in these?"  "Nope, just inspired beauty and decoration."

That seems to satisfy her.  But she starts tapping keys.  "You need to add 11 cents to each envelope."

Why didn't I just toss them into a mail box I wonder to my self.

"Ok, give me 13 11 cent stamps."

She does.  Visa gets another transaction.  I spend some more time adding stamps to the envelopes.

Finally I'm done and now they go into a mail slot in the lobby.

I go home.  I yell at Barb for making such thick cards.  She denies it.  "You should have asked her to measure them.  This is meaningless without a good number.  You could have measured them all and we'd have a mean and confidence intervals!"  That's a good point.  I'm not sure the Post Office knows much about data descriptions, but it might have been good to know.

So I'm bruised and my Visa cards is suffering rug burns and my shoes and Barb's cards are on the way.

I open my email.  New Balance wants to know how my experience with product support has gone.  "Tell us if it was good or bad!  Just click on one of these links!"

I don't know if it was good or bad.  Let's see what Missouri has to say.  The links remain unclicked.  Missouri is supposed to send me an email too.  The shoes should be there.  I could check the tracking number, but I'd be depressed if the shoes were in Arkansas or something.  I shall wait. 

Stay tuned for part III...