17 ms·

SNES preservation project on hold due to missing $10,000 package

360 points by coldpie 10y ago

rasz_pl 10y ago
>The package was insured for 1000 Euros. end of story.
Neliquat 10y ago
Had some shoes ordered that got hung up in the NJ hole for nearly a month. The company had already started a claim by the time they got here. Also DHL to USPS, which the shipper said was the only practical option from their region (poland). I can relate. Hoping his shows up late like mine, but googling the issue did not leave me with much hope. A lesson to insure your valuable shipments at the least.
anonymous_iam 10y ago
I suppose that you have now learned to not trust the United States Postal Service with your $10,000 package. FedEx or UPS do cost a little more, but in this case I think you would agree that it would have been worth it.
- walrus01 10y ago
  If you read, it was sent by DHL from Germany. Within Germany, DHL is the defacto choice for courier. The problem is where DHL hands it off to USPS for US delivery, since DHL has pretty much pulled back from trying to compete directly with Fedex and UPS in the US48 market.
  - SmokyBourbon 10y ago
    That's his point. DHL is shit. Do not ship with DHL.
  - ac29 10y ago
    I get packages from Europe via DHL every week at work. They are never handed off to USPS, they come in a DHL van. However, they certainly might use USPS for some residential deliveries. What DHL doesnt do anymore is US->US (domestic) shipments. International delivery is still definitely handled in the US by DHL themselves.
    - walrus01 10y ago
      I think this might depend on what city you're in. DHL has definitely pulled back from the US: http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20131125-five-years-on-dhl/ http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20131125-five-years-on-dh... http://www.economist.com/node/12607051 http://www.economist.com/node/12607051 There is still a direct DHL presense in larger areas/markets like Seattle, San Francisco or Dallas. But not so much in other parts of the country.
- emeraldd 10y ago
  Sounds like the original package was sent DHL and then dumped to USPS for delivery.
tudorw 10y ago
Good luck, I appreciate your archiving efforts.
mkarr 10y ago
As a hopeful note of optimism: I recently sent a large, expensive package (worth around $1500) cross-country via USPS. The package was sent out mid-December. According to the tracking it made it all the way to the destination Post Office. After that...nothing. It just never progressed. I filed both a mail search requests, and an insurance claim. I received nothing but radio silence on those as well. Fast forward to about a week ago when the package just shows up on my doorstep without notice. Hopefully byuu's package eventually does show up.
- eco 10y ago
  I was hoping USPS had improved. Something similar happened to me but with no resolution. About 12 years ago I returned a phone I bought on eBay that arrived non-functioning. The tracking page just stopped updating after it reached the destination post office. I went to the post office I sent it from asking for help. They told me I had to go to the post office for my return address. I thought it was odd but I did that and was told they had no idea why the other post office would send me there so they referred me back. Got a different employee and they just shrugged and said they didn't know what do it. And that was the end of it. Perhaps I could have gotten to the bottom of it if I was willing to spend a few more afternoons dealing with it but the phone really wasn't worth that much of my time. I've never sent something by USPS since then. Occasionally I receive packages by USPS and dread it every time. Form 3849, even if you can somehow fill it out correctly (good luck!), always just results in them holding the package at the post office as I wait and wait for them to redeliver it. You never know if it's going to be at the post office that day for pickup or if today is the day they actually redeliver it so you're left wondering if you are going to spend 45 minutes in line at the post office for nothing or not. I'll show up there, the person at the desk spends 10 minutes finding my package, apologizes, and hands it over. This last time they said, "Sorry, the carriers are kind of lazy". I ordered a package on Ali Express and after 2 months of not seeing it, I filed a dispute, the Chinese seller was apologetic and offered to refund my money if it didn't arrive in the next 10 days. I was in no rush so I agreed to it. Ali Express's terrible interface led me to accepting the dispute as resolved and you can't reopen it so I just assumed I was out $30 or whatever the items cost. Weeks later I went with my wife to pick up a package at the post office and they brought an extra package to the counter (along with the usual "sorry"). It was my Ali Express items which USPS had never tried to deliver. If not for Ali Express' terrible interface I would have unintentionally taken advantage of some poor Chinese seller because USPS didn't do the one thing they are supposed to do, deliver the mail.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
Maybe it blew over to the neighbors front law, I just found my $130 package over there.
ryanlol 10y ago
>Obviously, it should have been insured for the full value. But please understand that hindsight is 20/20. The sender chose the insurance amount, and had no reason to suspect the package would be lost, and that we would be given no help on the matter. It's not unreasonable to believe a mail carrier would try to avoid the need to pay out 1000 Euros worth of insurance by not losing said package. That's some really high expectations there. If you want to send something to another country and aren't willing to lose it? Buy a plane ticket. It's essentially impossible for the carriers to prevent this from happening given their volumes.
- birdman3131 10y ago
  For UPS anything over $1000 is considered high value and treated differently.
  - eli 10y ago
    You can insure regular mail up to $5000. You can insure Registered Mail up to $50,000. Registered Mail is treated differently (e.g. stored in locked cages in transit, tamper-evident packaging) and comes with delivery verification. It's also, obviously, slower and more expensive.
- brink 10y ago
  > that's some really high expectations there. The USPS is easily on my top 5 list of incompetent companies.
  - legohead 10y ago
    Why is that? They deliver more mail than all the other US carriers combined, and deal with almost half of the worlds mail traffic. For the truly massive amount of traffic they deal with, they are incredibly accurate and fast. If you have lived in another country like I have, you will quickly learn to appreciate the USPS.
    - SmokyBourbon 10y ago
rewrew 10y ago
I'm confused -- has it been verified that this package cleared customs? Because if not that could be the delay here.
- joezydeco 10y ago
  FTA: This person explained that the package had already left DHL's hands and was stuck with the USPS. That would seem to imply it had cleared US Customs and was handed off for final delivery.
  - was_boring 10y ago
    Sometimes. This can also happen before customs so that the company does not have to deal with it. It's amazing the abuse that other carriers do to USPS because they have a constitutional responsibility.
- byuu 10y ago
  Yes, after sitting for 21 days in US customs, it's now stuck in Jersey City, NJ: http://i.imgur.com/XYB1lZS.png http://i.imgur.com/XYB1lZS.png Note the "in transit to destination" is a fake event automatically added 24 hours after no scans. Assuming it wasn't stolen, it's still in NJ. Sitting in a pile for 10+ days for no apparent reason despite being priority mail.
  - martinald 10y ago
    21 days seems pretty excessive to be stuck in customs. I've sent a fair bit of stuff between UK and US and I've never had it take so long to clear customs. Plus they usually explicitly say that it's cleared customs. It seems very odd that it would take that long. Did you pay the right duties and tax on this? It may be that it's still with customs and they have absolutely no idea what a giant box of old SNES games is worth?
    - byuu 10y ago
      > Plus they usually explicitly say that it's cleared customs. It didn't on the last package delivery, at least. > Did you pay the right duties and tax on this? I don't know, sorry. I'm the recipient. > It may be that it's still with customs and they have absolutely no idea what a giant box of old SNES games is worth? I would truly love it if someone from USPS would tell me that, if that were the case. I'd pay their ransom to get the package.
userbinator 10y ago
Why didn't you send the dumping hardware to the PAL donor? This makes me think of another idea to avoid shipping the cartridges themselves around: an interface that allows eventually accessing them over TCP/IP. It could be exposed as a block device or a custom protocol, it doesn't matter as long as you can essentially send an address and get some bytes back, allowing to read the entire address space.
- mcphage 10y ago
  The connecting-to-the-cartridge-and-getting-bytes part is how you dump cartridges. The donor would need that to get data off of the carts they have, and once they've got that part, they're 90% of the way to the dumping hardware anyway.
- byuu 10y ago
  A lot of the pain comes from cleaning every single cartridge. Many old games look like this: http://i.imgur.com/sdRqyl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/sdRqyl.jpg And you need them to look like this: http://i.imgur.com/GbxMxl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/GbxMxl.jpg That takes about a half hour's work. Then you get to open the cart and clean the contacts, another five minutes. Then once it's connected to an SNES and powered on, you have to wait 5-10 minutes to dump it, and then move on to the next cart. It's a full-time job for several months to do a complete PAL set. And that's not even counting scanning the boxes, manuals, cartridges and PCBs :/ It's a lot less effort for the donor to send me his games, and I send them back, and reimburse him on his shipping charges.
  - Arelius 10y ago
    I don't know why you are getting so much crap. It seems entirely reasonable to me that mailing the games to you is a suitable way to solve this problem. And entirely reasonable to expect said packages to not get lost in transit.
    - byuu 10y ago
      Yeah. Truth be told, I've had around 400 mail shipments to complete my US set, and another 900 or so to complete my Japanese set. Even the last 100 games made it just fine. Never lost a package of any importance until now. I honestly didn't expect this package to go missing.
phonon 10y ago
Why not sue DHL? (USPS has sovereign immunity.)
- eridius 10y ago
  Sue them over what? DHL didn't lose the package.
  - ajb 10y ago
    No, but the sender had a contract with them, to deliver the package, not USPS. USPS were acting as a subcontractor in this instance. So legally DHL are liable if anyone is.
    - rasz_pl 10y ago
      But why sue? They will be happy to return full sum of the insurance.
    - eridius 10y ago
      I guarantee you the contract you have with shipping companies doesn't let you (successfully) sue them simply because the package didn't get delivered. No shipping company would still exist today if that were the case, they would have been sued into the ground long ago.
- mmagin 10y ago
  You obviously are unaware of how much lawyers cost.
froh42 10y ago
I was just checking DHL web site over here in Germany for the cost but found something that may be interesting: Aufgrund der Streiks bei Lufthansa im Dezember 2016 wurden für Sendungen in die USA Ableitungen über alternative Transportrouten notwendig. Unter anderem über den Seeweg. Das führt aktuell noch zu stärkeren Verzögerungen bei der Zustellung von Economy Paketen in die USA. Translation: Due to a strike at Lufthansa in december 2016 packages with destination USA need to be redirected using alternate transport routes, amongst other by ship. This results in even bigger delays delivering economy packets into USA. Source: https://www.dhl.de/de/privatkunden/pakete-versenden/weltweit-versenden/laenderseiten/vereinigte-staaten-von-amerika.html https://www.dhl.de/de/privatkunden/pakete-versenden/weltweit... If you have the DHL tracking number you should try tracking. There's also the DHL facebook page where you can start a facebook chat, with good luck your supporter will speak english. (Just try!) https://www.facebook.com/DHLPaket/app/1609168226005546/ https://www.facebook.com/DHLPaket/app/1609168226005546/ From what it looks there's a high chance your package is on a ship somewhere. And even more importantly, the sender should create a "Nachforschungsauftrag" with DHL (ha, one of our bureaucratic german words I can't even find a translation for - it's a request for inquiry of a lost package). Even with domestic packages over here the tracking information sometimes is plain wrong, and I expect it even more so to be wrong if they don't use their usual ways of transport. (No tracking of all those packages in a shipping container on a freighter.) Good luck. (Btw, once I have given up on a package from the US to Germany after 6 months. The day after I gave up and purchased an alternative product my packet arrived ... UGH).
- crystalmeph 10y ago
  DHL says the package is already in USPS' hands stateside, so it's not on a ship.
  - mannykannot 10y ago
    One thing these comments show is that tracking is not accurate.
scott_karana 10y ago
> I've already maxed out my 401K loans on the Japanese game set, and it will probably be 2-3 years before I finish dumping and scanning all of those games to sell them for money. I always feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I read things like this. Is any labour of love worth your potential future? As much as I admire his dedication, it's not a choice I'd make... :( Maybe it's just because I'm a bit of an ops guy, and it feels like leveraging a single point of failure. :P
- mjolk 10y ago
  > Is any labour of love worth your potential future? Kind of a funny question on a site for people doing startups.
  - mwfunk 10y ago
    A startup isn't a labor of love; if it was, it'd be a hobby, not a startup.
    - mjolk 10y ago
      If your startup isn't a labor of love or you're not driven by a strong dislike of an alternative career path, then almost every startup would die the second the founder(s) do the math of income opportunity cost of trying vs stable employment.
      - scott_karana 10y ago
        Hardly. People do "risk vs reward" assessments all the time. Balancing "use some savings to live off ramen for two years" vs "implement something people will pay for" might not be very difficult, depending on their existing rate of savings, income, state of mortgage, monthly expenses, etc.
  - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
    No, it's not. Most startups fail. Most people need retirement savings. That seems a poor investment.
chrishacken 10y ago
I'm a developer at USPS; if you send me the tracking number I can try to pass this along to someone.
- bradjohnson 10y ago
  "I will provide my full name, address, the tracking#, and the missing mail search ID to anyone who can contact me from an @usps.com e-mail address." RTFA
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrishacken 10y ago
    >RTFA Providing me with the email would have been more helpful. Regardless, I sent him an email. Not sure if I'll be able to do anything, but we shall see.
    - AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
      He obscured it, looks like, probably to avoid spam bots: > You can message me on Twitter @byuu_san or you can contact me via e-mail at setsunakun0 at hotmail dot com. (That's a zero at the end, not an O.) EDIT: On behalf of byuu, thanks for looking into this.
    - bradjohnson 10y ago
      Long day. Suppose I could've been less snarky. Good on you for trying to help.
Larrikin 10y ago
>First, because I don't speak any German, and feel very uncomfortable traveling to a foreign country on my own. I know most Germans speak English, but that doesn't ease my concerns all that much. It's scary to me to travel alone, sorry. Found this odd. What is scary about traveling to a presumably a big city in one of the richest countries in the world?
- cr0sh 10y ago
  The only way I could read this is the the author has some kind of personality quirk or anxiety issue. Strange (to us), but understandable (he/she isn't alone).
- bussiere 10y ago
  Not all people are socially able to do that. Each people have their fear ... Some are heights , dogs , cats , fire , gun ... It's not rationnal but it's how it is ....
- syntheticnature 10y ago
  As an extrovert who had experience travelling solo, I once found myself travelling to Germany at the last minute due to being the only person on the project with a passport (and, I'll note, German not a language I'd had any acquaintance with at the time). It provoked significant worry from me, especially given that my directions to the site involved public transit and directions of the "know it when you see it" sort. So I can understand the concerns. Heck, I ran into issues later when I left my phrasebook behind. I couldn't remember the word "Geldautomat" and was out of cash. Fortunately I did find someone who spoke enough English to help. That said, I found the Germans I met along my journey to be far friendlier than the typical American stereotype of them, and the trip went just fine (and many more like it, later) -- but I was already a seasoned traveler who was used to all the aspects of long-distance air travel.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  Yeah, I'm Australian and can speak a tiny bit of German but hardly needed it when I went to Berlin. I reckon the German education system must be great because the average person over there seems to have very good English.
filmgirlcw 10y ago
Would physically visiting the facility in Jersey City help at all? I don't know how far byuu lives from there, but perhaps he could send a surrogate in his place to try to get information face to face. That might be grasping at straws (theoretically they should have location information available over the phone), but it might be worth a thought.
- rickyc091 10y ago
  Seeing as I've had a fair share of packages being "lost" by USPS I can shed some light on this matter. You typically get the round about from USPS. You can visit the post office where it's suppose to be, the workers and customers waiting in line will get annoyed at you. USPS will end up telling you that they'll take down your info and give you a call. When you receive the call, it's a courtesy call to give you a case number and tell you that they will look into it. Do they ever? Who actually knows... The problem typically lies with the drivers and the sorting phase (getting onto a truck). Sometimes the workers will cut corners and forget to scan the package. It's faster to throw it on the truck than individually scan every box. As you can imagine some barcodes are messed up so they have to type it in manually. I've had packages show up for with an initial scan at the point of delivery location. I will say it's gotten a lot better these days, but it varies depending on facility. So back to the problem... if they don't scan it from the sorting to the truck phase. The driver could just "lose" it on the truck or during the route. Sometimes it's accidentally and falls in a crevice somewhere. I've had a package show up a year letter. Other times it's blatant tampering. I was shipping out an used iPhone, stupidly use the same Apple shipping box my new one came in, and it was MIA on the tracking for two days. The tracker just stated "enroute", then the package magically started moving again. A one day shipment took four days to complete. When my customer received the item, the phone was gone, but everything else was intact. I mean there was no doubt that the driver had stolen the phone. Resolution? None. USPS called me and said they would look into it. Never really learned what happened, but I'm guessing the driver is still out there somewhere plucking away at packages. I've lost my fair share of packages with USPS. If I've learned anything, it's to ship with UPS if you really want to make sure it arrives at the destination. If you look at the shipping rates, USPS is the cheapest, followed by FedEx, then UPS.
quickoats 10y ago
i have difficulty imagining what kind of creature would ask all of us kind and well-meaning folk for help with this kind of elaborate "it was not me!" scheme. must have been for a girl. was it worth it? a lot of us actually love SFC and pulling our heartstrings like this and so transparently is turning my stomach. does it really take 13 years to develop an emulator? and these days, with actual cartridge hardware? there are many dumpers and many PAL carts all over the world. it is slightly impressive for you to have considered and thought out and written such deliberately organized FAQ-like introduction to your immediate world of paranoid guilt process almost as if one were wrought with some kind of self-illuminating regret. i am so sorry.
- bykovich 10y ago
  what in the fuck
tiglionabbit 10y ago
I love the Super Nintendo. So it's good to see someone is aiming to preserve it perfectly. I thought existing ROM dumps were good enough, but seeing as he already has this "icarus" program to read them, there's something more he needs for perfection? Since he's handling the cartridges personally, it's a bit of a shame he has to give them all back. Wouldn't it be kinda neat to make an uber-cartridge that contains all chip configurations from every Super Nintendo cartridge in existence, so it could play any game on the hardware that game expects?
bane 10y ago
I'm very sorry to hear about this. Shipping stuff internationally can be hair raising when it goes wrong. I used to regularly ship about $500k worth of computer equipment all over the place and it one time got caught up in German customs. A colleague of mine in Germany had to drive from Munich to Frankfurt and back many times over the course of several weeks to get it sorted out. IIR the problem was some minor form had been filled out incorrectly (by me). Huge mess. Hopefully this collection will turn up soon. One thing >Although I can't afford to host this content (it weighs in at hundreds of gigabytes) I really urge you to get in contact with Jason Scott about getting a copy of your archive to the Internet Archive. These scans and dumps could be priceless and it makes sense to have as many backups of it as you can. At any rate, thank you very much for all your hard work, time and expense in doing what it is you do byuu.
- mynewtb 10y ago
  An Atom with 1TB disk is just about 10 bucks at ovh/kimsufi. Alternatively there would be many people able and willing to mirror such collection on their own servers.
  - orf 10y ago
    The bandwidth is the issue I'm guessing. Servers from Hetzner (in Germany) come with 10TB of traffic included
    - SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
      BitTorrent?
- lucaspiller 10y ago
  Also /r/datahoarder. Plently of people there would be willing to help out. I bet there is even somebody willing to drive to your house to fill up a hard disk :)
rayrod2030 10y ago
I live in Jersey City and once had a $4200 apartment deposit check stuck in the USPS system for about two weeks before it finally turned up at its final destination. It was mailed from Jersey City to a Hoboken address so literally should have taken two days tops. Hopefully this is a similar situation and this package shows up soon.
BrianT 10y ago
What about contacting the postal inspectors? https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/ https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/ They maybe able to open a case for you
sethx 10y ago
DHL from the US to Germany or Eurpope is absolutely rubbish. The problem is that you most likely used DHL Global Mail, which is not the same as DHL Express. DHL Global Mail delegates the shipment to the cheapest carrier possible, which in this case is USPS. Once they do the handover, you effectively lose all tracking ability. My story with them: http://webtrack.dhlglobalmail.com/?id=27838&trackingnumber=GM275325376500362251 http://webtrack.dhlglobalmail.com/?id=27838&trackingnumber=G... That's more than one full month for a package that contained nothing more than a teeshirt. On top of that, the package never arrived at the final destination, and might be stuck in customs, for all i know. I never got a notification, and will actually contact DHL soon myself, because their service is absolutely laughable. As a logistics company, they had one job. And they failed.
- throwanem 10y ago
  I haven't had notable difficulty with them, but I also only use them for shipments from overseas that require customs clearance and ID verification at pickup time - an odd set of requirements for SBCs, but there you go. Their depot in my town is at the airport, and the airport is on the light rail line, so it's no real inconvenience to just pick up packages there.
gargravarr 10y ago
Last year, I tried to buy a very-difficult-to-find bluetooth adapter for my car stereo. I found one on eBay in the US, won the auction for slightly more than I wanted and then paid to have it shipped to the UK. After a week, the tracking information stopped being updated, right after USPS took over the package. After a month, I tried to get in contact with the couriers. This was difficult, because the package was shipped with the eBay Global Shipping Program, which does a fair job of obfuscating which carrier is actually taking it. USPS didn't want to know, the tracking number wasn't valid as far as they were concerned. Eventually I contacted eBay asking where the package was. Overnight, I was refunded, saying the package had obiviously been lost. I did my best to contact them and ask for the package to be found, but nobody wanted to know. I eventually spoke to a woman in eBay's customer services, but nothing ever came of it. In my situation, at least I got my money back, and I know it's not quite the same as this poor guy's, but I can understand the frustration of dealing with tracked shipments. Especially for rare items that are difficult or impossible to replace - all you want is the package itself. Shipment tracking is supposed to prevent this happening - after all, if the package gets lost, it's likely in the same place as the last scan! You'd think the money the couriers have invested in the tracking system would incentivise them to use it to find lost packages.
prirun 10y ago
I sent a laptop from IN to TN, with tracking (back in the 90's) and insurance. It never got there. After several weeks, I filed a claim with the USPS, and they weren't going to honor it. Their records showed that I turned it in to the local post office, then nothing - no further tracking whatsoever. I had to threaten to escalate things before they would pay, and then it took forever to get the money. They said in the future, if you want to be sure of a delivery, you have to send it registered mail: with that, every time a transfer of any kind occurs, it is done with paperwork, signatures, tracking, and under lock and key. Of course it costs an arm and a leg too.

360 points by coldpie 10y ago

>The package was insured for 1000 Euros. end of story.

Had some shoes ordered that got hung up in the NJ hole for nearly a month. The company had already started a claim by the time they got here. Also DHL to USPS, which the shipper said was the only practical option from their region (poland). I can relate. Hoping his shows up late like mine, but googling the issue did not leave me with much hope. A lesson to insure your valuable shipments at the least.

anonymous_iam 10y ago

I suppose that you have now learned to not trust the United States Postal Service with your $10,000 package. FedEx or UPS do cost a little more, but in this case I think you would agree that it would have been worth it.

walrus01 10y ago
If you read, it was sent by DHL from Germany. Within Germany, DHL is the defacto choice for courier. The problem is where DHL hands it off to USPS for US delivery, since DHL has pretty much pulled back from trying to compete directly with Fedex and UPS in the US48 market.
- SmokyBourbon 10y ago
  That's his point. DHL is shit. Do not ship with DHL.
- ac29 10y ago
  I get packages from Europe via DHL every week at work. They are never handed off to USPS, they come in a DHL van. However, they certainly might use USPS for some residential deliveries. What DHL doesnt do anymore is US->US (domestic) shipments. International delivery is still definitely handled in the US by DHL themselves.
  - walrus01 10y ago
    I think this might depend on what city you're in. DHL has definitely pulled back from the US: http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20131125-five-years-on-dhl/ http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20131125-five-years-on-dh... http://www.economist.com/node/12607051 http://www.economist.com/node/12607051 There is still a direct DHL presense in larger areas/markets like Seattle, San Francisco or Dallas. But not so much in other parts of the country.
emeraldd 10y ago
Sounds like the original package was sent DHL and then dumped to USPS for delivery.

tudorw 10y ago

Good luck, I appreciate your archiving efforts.

mkarr 10y ago

As a hopeful note of optimism: I recently sent a large, expensive package (worth around $1500) cross-country via USPS. The package was sent out mid-December. According to the tracking it made it all the way to the destination Post Office. After that...nothing. It just never progressed. I filed both a mail search requests, and an insurance claim. I received nothing but radio silence on those as well. Fast forward to about a week ago when the package just shows up on my doorstep without notice. Hopefully byuu's package eventually does show up.

eco 10y ago
I was hoping USPS had improved. Something similar happened to me but with no resolution. About 12 years ago I returned a phone I bought on eBay that arrived non-functioning. The tracking page just stopped updating after it reached the destination post office. I went to the post office I sent it from asking for help. They told me I had to go to the post office for my return address. I thought it was odd but I did that and was told they had no idea why the other post office would send me there so they referred me back. Got a different employee and they just shrugged and said they didn't know what do it. And that was the end of it. Perhaps I could have gotten to the bottom of it if I was willing to spend a few more afternoons dealing with it but the phone really wasn't worth that much of my time. I've never sent something by USPS since then. Occasionally I receive packages by USPS and dread it every time. Form 3849, even if you can somehow fill it out correctly (good luck!), always just results in them holding the package at the post office as I wait and wait for them to redeliver it. You never know if it's going to be at the post office that day for pickup or if today is the day they actually redeliver it so you're left wondering if you are going to spend 45 minutes in line at the post office for nothing or not. I'll show up there, the person at the desk spends 10 minutes finding my package, apologizes, and hands it over. This last time they said, "Sorry, the carriers are kind of lazy". I ordered a package on Ali Express and after 2 months of not seeing it, I filed a dispute, the Chinese seller was apologetic and offered to refund my money if it didn't arrive in the next 10 days. I was in no rush so I agreed to it. Ali Express's terrible interface led me to accepting the dispute as resolved and you can't reopen it so I just assumed I was out $30 or whatever the items cost. Weeks later I went with my wife to pick up a package at the post office and they brought an extra package to the counter (along with the usual "sorry"). It was my Ali Express items which USPS had never tried to deliver. If not for Ali Express' terrible interface I would have unintentionally taken advantage of some poor Chinese seller because USPS didn't do the one thing they are supposed to do, deliver the mail.

jasonkostempski 10y ago

Maybe it blew over to the neighbors front law, I just found my $130 package over there.

ryanlol 10y ago

>Obviously, it should have been insured for the full value. But please understand that hindsight is 20/20. The sender chose the insurance amount, and had no reason to suspect the package would be lost, and that we would be given no help on the matter. It's not unreasonable to believe a mail carrier would try to avoid the need to pay out 1000 Euros worth of insurance by not losing said package. That's some really high expectations there. If you want to send something to another country and aren't willing to lose it? Buy a plane ticket. It's essentially impossible for the carriers to prevent this from happening given their volumes.

birdman3131 10y ago
For UPS anything over $1000 is considered high value and treated differently.
- eli 10y ago
  You can insure regular mail up to $5000. You can insure Registered Mail up to $50,000. Registered Mail is treated differently (e.g. stored in locked cages in transit, tamper-evident packaging) and comes with delivery verification. It's also, obviously, slower and more expensive.
brink 10y ago
> that's some really high expectations there. The USPS is easily on my top 5 list of incompetent companies.
- legohead 10y ago
  Why is that? They deliver more mail than all the other US carriers combined, and deal with almost half of the worlds mail traffic. For the truly massive amount of traffic they deal with, they are incredibly accurate and fast. If you have lived in another country like I have, you will quickly learn to appreciate the USPS.
  - SmokyBourbon 10y ago

rewrew 10y ago

I'm confused -- has it been verified that this package cleared customs? Because if not that could be the delay here.

joezydeco 10y ago
FTA: This person explained that the package had already left DHL's hands and was stuck with the USPS. That would seem to imply it had cleared US Customs and was handed off for final delivery.
- was_boring 10y ago
  Sometimes. This can also happen before customs so that the company does not have to deal with it. It's amazing the abuse that other carriers do to USPS because they have a constitutional responsibility.
byuu 10y ago
Yes, after sitting for 21 days in US customs, it's now stuck in Jersey City, NJ: http://i.imgur.com/XYB1lZS.png http://i.imgur.com/XYB1lZS.png Note the "in transit to destination" is a fake event automatically added 24 hours after no scans. Assuming it wasn't stolen, it's still in NJ. Sitting in a pile for 10+ days for no apparent reason despite being priority mail.
- martinald 10y ago
  21 days seems pretty excessive to be stuck in customs. I've sent a fair bit of stuff between UK and US and I've never had it take so long to clear customs. Plus they usually explicitly say that it's cleared customs. It seems very odd that it would take that long. Did you pay the right duties and tax on this? It may be that it's still with customs and they have absolutely no idea what a giant box of old SNES games is worth?
  - byuu 10y ago
    > Plus they usually explicitly say that it's cleared customs. It didn't on the last package delivery, at least. > Did you pay the right duties and tax on this? I don't know, sorry. I'm the recipient. > It may be that it's still with customs and they have absolutely no idea what a giant box of old SNES games is worth? I would truly love it if someone from USPS would tell me that, if that were the case. I'd pay their ransom to get the package.

userbinator 10y ago

Why didn't you send the dumping hardware to the PAL donor? This makes me think of another idea to avoid shipping the cartridges themselves around: an interface that allows eventually accessing them over TCP/IP. It could be exposed as a block device or a custom protocol, it doesn't matter as long as you can essentially send an address and get some bytes back, allowing to read the entire address space.

mcphage 10y ago
The connecting-to-the-cartridge-and-getting-bytes part is how you dump cartridges. The donor would need that to get data off of the carts they have, and once they've got that part, they're 90% of the way to the dumping hardware anyway.
byuu 10y ago
A lot of the pain comes from cleaning every single cartridge. Many old games look like this: http://i.imgur.com/sdRqyl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/sdRqyl.jpg And you need them to look like this: http://i.imgur.com/GbxMxl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/GbxMxl.jpg That takes about a half hour's work. Then you get to open the cart and clean the contacts, another five minutes. Then once it's connected to an SNES and powered on, you have to wait 5-10 minutes to dump it, and then move on to the next cart. It's a full-time job for several months to do a complete PAL set. And that's not even counting scanning the boxes, manuals, cartridges and PCBs :/ It's a lot less effort for the donor to send me his games, and I send them back, and reimburse him on his shipping charges.
- Arelius 10y ago
  I don't know why you are getting so much crap. It seems entirely reasonable to me that mailing the games to you is a suitable way to solve this problem. And entirely reasonable to expect said packages to not get lost in transit.
  - byuu 10y ago
    Yeah. Truth be told, I've had around 400 mail shipments to complete my US set, and another 900 or so to complete my Japanese set. Even the last 100 games made it just fine. Never lost a package of any importance until now. I honestly didn't expect this package to go missing.

phonon 10y ago

Why not sue DHL? (USPS has sovereign immunity.)

eridius 10y ago
Sue them over what? DHL didn't lose the package.
- ajb 10y ago
  No, but the sender had a contract with them, to deliver the package, not USPS. USPS were acting as a subcontractor in this instance. So legally DHL are liable if anyone is.
  - rasz_pl 10y ago
    But why sue? They will be happy to return full sum of the insurance.
  - eridius 10y ago
    I guarantee you the contract you have with shipping companies doesn't let you (successfully) sue them simply because the package didn't get delivered. No shipping company would still exist today if that were the case, they would have been sued into the ground long ago.
mmagin 10y ago
You obviously are unaware of how much lawyers cost.

froh42 10y ago

I was just checking DHL web site over here in Germany for the cost but found something that may be interesting: Aufgrund der Streiks bei Lufthansa im Dezember 2016 wurden für Sendungen in die USA Ableitungen über alternative Transportrouten notwendig. Unter anderem über den Seeweg. Das führt aktuell noch zu stärkeren Verzögerungen bei der Zustellung von Economy Paketen in die USA. Translation: Due to a strike at Lufthansa in december 2016 packages with destination USA need to be redirected using alternate transport routes, amongst other by ship. This results in even bigger delays delivering economy packets into USA. Source: https://www.dhl.de/de/privatkunden/pakete-versenden/weltweit-versenden/laenderseiten/vereinigte-staaten-von-amerika.html https://www.dhl.de/de/privatkunden/pakete-versenden/weltweit... If you have the DHL tracking number you should try tracking. There's also the DHL facebook page where you can start a facebook chat, with good luck your supporter will speak english. (Just try!) https://www.facebook.com/DHLPaket/app/1609168226005546/ https://www.facebook.com/DHLPaket/app/1609168226005546/ From what it looks there's a high chance your package is on a ship somewhere. And even more importantly, the sender should create a "Nachforschungsauftrag" with DHL (ha, one of our bureaucratic german words I can't even find a translation for - it's a request for inquiry of a lost package). Even with domestic packages over here the tracking information sometimes is plain wrong, and I expect it even more so to be wrong if they don't use their usual ways of transport. (No tracking of all those packages in a shipping container on a freighter.) Good luck. (Btw, once I have given up on a package from the US to Germany after 6 months. The day after I gave up and purchased an alternative product my packet arrived ... UGH).

crystalmeph 10y ago
DHL says the package is already in USPS' hands stateside, so it's not on a ship.
- mannykannot 10y ago
  One thing these comments show is that tracking is not accurate.

scott_karana 10y ago

> I've already maxed out my 401K loans on the Japanese game set, and it will probably be 2-3 years before I finish dumping and scanning all of those games to sell them for money. I always feel a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I read things like this. Is any labour of love worth your potential future? As much as I admire his dedication, it's not a choice I'd make... :( Maybe it's just because I'm a bit of an ops guy, and it feels like leveraging a single point of failure. :P

mjolk 10y ago
> Is any labour of love worth your potential future? Kind of a funny question on a site for people doing startups.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  A startup isn't a labor of love; if it was, it'd be a hobby, not a startup.
  - mjolk 10y ago
    If your startup isn't a labor of love or you're not driven by a strong dislike of an alternative career path, then almost every startup would die the second the founder(s) do the math of income opportunity cost of trying vs stable employment.
    - scott_karana 10y ago
      Hardly. People do "risk vs reward" assessments all the time. Balancing "use some savings to live off ramen for two years" vs "implement something people will pay for" might not be very difficult, depending on their existing rate of savings, income, state of mortgage, monthly expenses, etc.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  No, it's not. Most startups fail. Most people need retirement savings. That seems a poor investment.

chrishacken 10y ago

I'm a developer at USPS; if you send me the tracking number I can try to pass this along to someone.

bradjohnson 10y ago
"I will provide my full name, address, the tracking#, and the missing mail search ID to anyone who can contact me from an @usps.com e-mail address." RTFA
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- chrishacken 10y ago
  >RTFA Providing me with the email would have been more helpful. Regardless, I sent him an email. Not sure if I'll be able to do anything, but we shall see.
  - AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
    He obscured it, looks like, probably to avoid spam bots: > You can message me on Twitter @byuu_san or you can contact me via e-mail at setsunakun0 at hotmail dot com. (That's a zero at the end, not an O.) EDIT: On behalf of byuu, thanks for looking into this.
  - bradjohnson 10y ago
    Long day. Suppose I could've been less snarky. Good on you for trying to help.

Larrikin 10y ago

>First, because I don't speak any German, and feel very uncomfortable traveling to a foreign country on my own. I know most Germans speak English, but that doesn't ease my concerns all that much. It's scary to me to travel alone, sorry. Found this odd. What is scary about traveling to a presumably a big city in one of the richest countries in the world?

cr0sh 10y ago
The only way I could read this is the the author has some kind of personality quirk or anxiety issue. Strange (to us), but understandable (he/she isn't alone).
bussiere 10y ago
Not all people are socially able to do that. Each people have their fear ... Some are heights , dogs , cats , fire , gun ... It's not rationnal but it's how it is ....
syntheticnature 10y ago
As an extrovert who had experience travelling solo, I once found myself travelling to Germany at the last minute due to being the only person on the project with a passport (and, I'll note, German not a language I'd had any acquaintance with at the time). It provoked significant worry from me, especially given that my directions to the site involved public transit and directions of the "know it when you see it" sort. So I can understand the concerns. Heck, I ran into issues later when I left my phrasebook behind. I couldn't remember the word "Geldautomat" and was out of cash. Fortunately I did find someone who spoke enough English to help. That said, I found the Germans I met along my journey to be far friendlier than the typical American stereotype of them, and the trip went just fine (and many more like it, later) -- but I was already a seasoned traveler who was used to all the aspects of long-distance air travel.
brokenmachine 10y ago
Yeah, I'm Australian and can speak a tiny bit of German but hardly needed it when I went to Berlin. I reckon the German education system must be great because the average person over there seems to have very good English.

filmgirlcw 10y ago

Would physically visiting the facility in Jersey City help at all? I don't know how far byuu lives from there, but perhaps he could send a surrogate in his place to try to get information face to face. That might be grasping at straws (theoretically they should have location information available over the phone), but it might be worth a thought.

rickyc091 10y ago
Seeing as I've had a fair share of packages being "lost" by USPS I can shed some light on this matter. You typically get the round about from USPS. You can visit the post office where it's suppose to be, the workers and customers waiting in line will get annoyed at you. USPS will end up telling you that they'll take down your info and give you a call. When you receive the call, it's a courtesy call to give you a case number and tell you that they will look into it. Do they ever? Who actually knows... The problem typically lies with the drivers and the sorting phase (getting onto a truck). Sometimes the workers will cut corners and forget to scan the package. It's faster to throw it on the truck than individually scan every box. As you can imagine some barcodes are messed up so they have to type it in manually. I've had packages show up for with an initial scan at the point of delivery location. I will say it's gotten a lot better these days, but it varies depending on facility. So back to the problem... if they don't scan it from the sorting to the truck phase. The driver could just "lose" it on the truck or during the route. Sometimes it's accidentally and falls in a crevice somewhere. I've had a package show up a year letter. Other times it's blatant tampering. I was shipping out an used iPhone, stupidly use the same Apple shipping box my new one came in, and it was MIA on the tracking for two days. The tracker just stated "enroute", then the package magically started moving again. A one day shipment took four days to complete. When my customer received the item, the phone was gone, but everything else was intact. I mean there was no doubt that the driver had stolen the phone. Resolution? None. USPS called me and said they would look into it. Never really learned what happened, but I'm guessing the driver is still out there somewhere plucking away at packages. I've lost my fair share of packages with USPS. If I've learned anything, it's to ship with UPS if you really want to make sure it arrives at the destination. If you look at the shipping rates, USPS is the cheapest, followed by FedEx, then UPS.

quickoats 10y ago

i have difficulty imagining what kind of creature would ask all of us kind and well-meaning folk for help with this kind of elaborate "it was not me!" scheme. must have been for a girl. was it worth it? a lot of us actually love SFC and pulling our heartstrings like this and so transparently is turning my stomach. does it really take 13 years to develop an emulator? and these days, with actual cartridge hardware? there are many dumpers and many PAL carts all over the world. it is slightly impressive for you to have considered and thought out and written such deliberately organized FAQ-like introduction to your immediate world of paranoid guilt process almost as if one were wrought with some kind of self-illuminating regret. i am so sorry.

bykovich 10y ago
what in the fuck

tiglionabbit 10y ago

I love the Super Nintendo. So it's good to see someone is aiming to preserve it perfectly. I thought existing ROM dumps were good enough, but seeing as he already has this "icarus" program to read them, there's something more he needs for perfection? Since he's handling the cartridges personally, it's a bit of a shame he has to give them all back. Wouldn't it be kinda neat to make an uber-cartridge that contains all chip configurations from every Super Nintendo cartridge in existence, so it could play any game on the hardware that game expects?

bane 10y ago

I'm very sorry to hear about this. Shipping stuff internationally can be hair raising when it goes wrong. I used to regularly ship about $500k worth of computer equipment all over the place and it one time got caught up in German customs. A colleague of mine in Germany had to drive from Munich to Frankfurt and back many times over the course of several weeks to get it sorted out. IIR the problem was some minor form had been filled out incorrectly (by me). Huge mess. Hopefully this collection will turn up soon. One thing >Although I can't afford to host this content (it weighs in at hundreds of gigabytes) I really urge you to get in contact with Jason Scott about getting a copy of your archive to the Internet Archive. These scans and dumps could be priceless and it makes sense to have as many backups of it as you can. At any rate, thank you very much for all your hard work, time and expense in doing what it is you do byuu.

mynewtb 10y ago
An Atom with 1TB disk is just about 10 bucks at ovh/kimsufi. Alternatively there would be many people able and willing to mirror such collection on their own servers.
- orf 10y ago
  The bandwidth is the issue I'm guessing. Servers from Hetzner (in Germany) come with 10TB of traffic included
  - SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
    BitTorrent?
lucaspiller 10y ago
Also /r/datahoarder. Plently of people there would be willing to help out. I bet there is even somebody willing to drive to your house to fill up a hard disk :)

rayrod2030 10y ago

I live in Jersey City and once had a $4200 apartment deposit check stuck in the USPS system for about two weeks before it finally turned up at its final destination. It was mailed from Jersey City to a Hoboken address so literally should have taken two days tops. Hopefully this is a similar situation and this package shows up soon.

BrianT 10y ago

What about contacting the postal inspectors? https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/ https://postalinspectors.uspis.gov/ They maybe able to open a case for you

sethx 10y ago

DHL from the US to Germany or Eurpope is absolutely rubbish. The problem is that you most likely used DHL Global Mail, which is not the same as DHL Express. DHL Global Mail delegates the shipment to the cheapest carrier possible, which in this case is USPS. Once they do the handover, you effectively lose all tracking ability. My story with them: http://webtrack.dhlglobalmail.com/?id=27838&trackingnumber=GM275325376500362251 http://webtrack.dhlglobalmail.com/?id=27838&trackingnumber=G... That's more than one full month for a package that contained nothing more than a teeshirt. On top of that, the package never arrived at the final destination, and might be stuck in customs, for all i know. I never got a notification, and will actually contact DHL soon myself, because their service is absolutely laughable. As a logistics company, they had one job. And they failed.

throwanem 10y ago
I haven't had notable difficulty with them, but I also only use them for shipments from overseas that require customs clearance and ID verification at pickup time - an odd set of requirements for SBCs, but there you go. Their depot in my town is at the airport, and the airport is on the light rail line, so it's no real inconvenience to just pick up packages there.

gargravarr 10y ago

Last year, I tried to buy a very-difficult-to-find bluetooth adapter for my car stereo. I found one on eBay in the US, won the auction for slightly more than I wanted and then paid to have it shipped to the UK. After a week, the tracking information stopped being updated, right after USPS took over the package. After a month, I tried to get in contact with the couriers. This was difficult, because the package was shipped with the eBay Global Shipping Program, which does a fair job of obfuscating which carrier is actually taking it. USPS didn't want to know, the tracking number wasn't valid as far as they were concerned. Eventually I contacted eBay asking where the package was. Overnight, I was refunded, saying the package had obiviously been lost. I did my best to contact them and ask for the package to be found, but nobody wanted to know. I eventually spoke to a woman in eBay's customer services, but nothing ever came of it. In my situation, at least I got my money back, and I know it's not quite the same as this poor guy's, but I can understand the frustration of dealing with tracked shipments. Especially for rare items that are difficult or impossible to replace - all you want is the package itself. Shipment tracking is supposed to prevent this happening - after all, if the package gets lost, it's likely in the same place as the last scan! You'd think the money the couriers have invested in the tracking system would incentivise them to use it to find lost packages.

prirun 10y ago

I sent a laptop from IN to TN, with tracking (back in the 90's) and insurance. It never got there. After several weeks, I filed a claim with the USPS, and they weren't going to honor it. Their records showed that I turned it in to the local post office, then nothing - no further tracking whatsoever. I had to threaten to escalate things before they would pay, and then it took forever to get the money. They said in the future, if you want to be sure of a delivery, you have to send it registered mail: with that, every time a transfer of any kind occurs, it is done with paperwork, signatures, tracking, and under lock and key. Of course it costs an arm and a leg too.