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Missing $10,000 package of PAL SNES games recovered

366 points by ryan-c 10y ago

rhcom2 10y ago
I'm happy for a good ending. Reading this story when it first came out definitely made me feel sorry for the people involved. Side note, when I worked at UPS they wouldn't even accept packages wrapped in brown paper for this exact reason. It gets stuck in the machine and ripped off, never to been seen again. When sending a package, put the label directly on the cardboard and write the address in marker on the side.
- 13of40 10y ago
  When I was a young hoodlum, one time I took a piece of a paper shopping bag, wrote my home address on it, and dropped it in a mailbox. About a month later, it was delivered to my house in a zip-lock bag, with the same note the OP got. > When sending a package, put the label directly on the cardboard and write the address in marker on the side. While you've got the marker in your hand, also make sure you black out any barcodes on the box from previous mailings, because supposedly they can make your package get redirected to unexpected places.
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    I have a funny/interesting story about the barcodes. As part of my job I run the mailed appeals for a non-profit. For certain appeals, we included pre-addressed envelopes that were supposed to come back to our office. For reasons we could understand these letters were taking months to reach us, and when we finally got them they had been opened on four sides and then stapled back together with dozens of staples around the edges, and an address sticker on the face of the envelope. These envelopes generally contain a check, and oftentimes the check was getting lost, plus the people who process these gifts were going nuts pulling all of the staples out of the envelopes so they could open them. The Post Office gave us a different explanation every time we called. At first they blamed a graphic we had on the face of the envelope. So we re-ordered the envelope without the graphic. Then they blamed the weight of the paper. So we re-ordered the envelopes with heavier paper. Then they blamed the color of the text and the font choice. So we re-ordered new envelopes with plain black block letters. After all this, these envelopes were still being opened. The post office said our physical mailing address was causing problems, because mail can't actually be delivered. Instead our mail guys go pick it up. Unfortunately, that isn't really something we can change with the volume of mail we get, so we were stumped. Then one day we got a call from our bank lockbox. They wanted to know why they had a bunch of our envelopes. After we got that call, I went to the basement, pulled examples of all of the envelopes I could find and brought them back to my desk. Presorted bulk mail has a barcode on it called an Intelligent Mail Barcode. It contains the postal ID of the person shipping the letter, delivery information (all the way down to route), plus a few variables for options. When our envelopes were proofed, they just included our address on the face. After we approved the envelopes the plant would put a barcode on them. Every single envelope had the same barcode on it. I decoded the barcode by hand, and lo and behold, the barcode contained the delivery instructions for our lockbox PO address. The plant we were using didn't actually calculate a new barcode for our envelope orders, they just used a barcode they had on file for us. We ended up ordering new envelopes with no barcode. Our mail immediately started arriving unmolested. Moral of the story: barcodes matter.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    You might enjoy this article on Postal Experiments: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/po... They tested all sorts of wacky stuff sent through the mail, including an unpackaged flower and a ski, both of which made it to the recipient (but various others did not).
    - rhcom2 10y ago
      Awesome site. I shipped a few car tires when working at UPS that we just slapped the label on and a box of rare earth magnets that was a huge pain to ship. Also some guy's removed testicle to get tested for tumour cells was pretty weird but it just went in a normal box.
      - stevekemp 10y ago
        My test of the UK postal service was to address a postcard to my email address. I figured they could lookup WHOIS on the domain, get the address, and deliver it. Sadly not..
  - byuu 10y ago
    Heh, several people accused that note of being fake because of an obvious spelling error on it ("where the weight of the contests rest.")
  - SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
    > When I was a young hoodlum, one time I took a piece of a paper shopping bag, wrote my home address on it, and dropped it in a mailbox. About a month later, it was delivered to my house in a zip-lock bag, with the same note the OP got. I have to admit I did get a chuckle out of your outrageous act of teenage rebellion. Fight the system!
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  Also, when sending anything important or expensive, put a copy of the address label inside the package itself. Especially important for international shipping.
- byuu 10y ago
  I was really stunned that Deutsche Post in Germany not only accepted the package, but were the ones to recommend it be shipped this way. They really should have known better, what with doing this for a living and all. It wasn't reasonable for the sender to know about the USPS' bulk processing machines and their tendency to tear off brown wrapping paper.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Congrats on locating the package. This govdeals.com site looks nifty. I may need to peruse it for, uh, research.
- Natsu 10y ago
  I know what you mean. Anyone need a DNA Analyzer? https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=296&acctid=3227 https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=296&a...
sml156 10y ago
Are these the same SNES games that 1 or 2 weeks ago were worth $5000
- mynameisvlad 10y ago
  It was always 10k: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13646438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13646438
  - byuu 10y ago
    It's always been $5,000 - $10,000. It's extremely difficult to assign an exact value because PAL game prices are extremely fluid. One day a game can go for $50, the next day the only copies are all $200 and another copy won't show up for three years.
    - mynameisvlad 10y ago
      Sure, I was more replying to the insinuation that the value went up now that they've been found, by showing that it was always reported as 10k.
koolba 10y ago
While I love a happy ending as much as the next guy, this is a bit troubling: > It wasn't until the story really started to take off that on February 16th, finally a manager at the USPS Consumer Affairs department took note of the case. > And I mean that literally: he told me straight up the reason he was contacting me was because of the news articles he had encountered on this case. Welcome to a future where only voices that broadcast their grievances loudly over social media get answered.
- neom 10y ago
  I used all my LinkedIn inMail credits to send the article link to all the senior people I could find who work at USPS. heh. ;)
- astrodust 10y ago
  It's not the future. It's been like this since the first newspaper appeared. For decades I've seen situations resolved only because a local paper or broadcaster took up the cause. It's routine.
- ginko 10y ago
  This makes me wonder: What does happen to the packages that just get lost in transit? I presume it must be a sizeable amount considering the number of packages being shipped nowadays.
  - phire 10y ago
    After a holding period, they get auctioned off.
    - byuu 10y ago
      Yep. Mine was sitting there for 45 days ... of the 60-90 required before items can be auctioned off. It had my address clearly visible on the package still. They could easily have delivered it. If not for the media attention, these most likely would have ended up on a govdeals.com listing, and going for an absolute fortune (tons of collectors know about that site.) Then again, maybe they only try to recover mail right before they list it for sale. Can't know for sure, but glad I don't have to find out.
overcast 10y ago
Happy Valentines Day!
astrodust 10y ago
What an emotional rollercoaster this has been. It's also a lesson in not putting all your eggs in one basket. Shipping these out incrementally, and via a system that has the proper insurance in place, would have been a better move. Hindsight and all that.
- byuu 10y ago
  We actually did. His collection was 400 games. I asked to split it into four smaller shipments. But what I failed to take into account was that I really could not afford to replace even 100 PAL SNES games. They're just too expensive anymore. I hate that blame is being placed on him for the shipping. He was doing me the favor. It was my fault for requesting so many games to be sent at once.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    Prices of SNES games have gone crazy recently. I'm seeing the same with Gameboy/Gameboy Colour, but not with Gameboy Advance. Anyway, I'm very happy that the games got to you eventually.
    - khedoros1 10y ago
      I wonder if it has to do with the people that were kids when those were new being 30-40 now. Maybe it's a good time to stock up on GBA games before they skyrocket in a couple of years.
    - byuu 10y ago
      The scary part is I keep saying that each and every year. They just keep getting more and more insane. Even two years ago when I bought Iron Commando for the Super Famicom, the $240 asking price was insane. It's at $1500 now for a complete copy. I passed on Pokonyan for $100, thinking that was too high, and a year and a half later ended up paying $800 for it. How many years can the prices keep doubling like this? How can anyone afford to collect these games at these prices? The whole thing feels like a giant hyper-inflated bubble.
  - 10y ago
ryanlol 10y ago
>Further, I understand they can't go to these lengths for every single lost piece of mail. But surely there has to be some sort of middle ground here? It should not be so impossible to escalate a case when something of significant value goes missing. It's not. You just have to insure it for the correct value...
- eridius 10y ago
  Insuring it doesn't help you in recovering the package. It just mitigates the loss. I fully expect that both byuu and the donor would much prefer to have the 100 SNES games than to have a $10k payout.
  - ryanlol 10y ago
    The higher the insurance amount is, the more likely it is that it'll be worth it for the company to look for your package.
    - eridius 10y ago
      Perhaps in theory; is there any evidence that the USPS actually operates this way?
      - ryanlol 10y ago
        I feel that the fact that they were able to recover this package with what seems to be relative ease is evidence of that.
        eridius 10y ago
        Why would you say that? What got this resolved was someone with influence at USPS seeing the news story and intervening. The insurance amount was completely irrelevant to this. Also, it apparently wasn't all that easy. They searched, came up with nothing, and then had to request a second search in order to find it.
Keyframe 10y ago
All good that ends well! Just looking at those SNES cartridges makes me feel good!
nogbit 10y ago
"My package was sitting in Atlanta, GA for well over a month with my address clearly visible right on the box." WOW, and they would just put that up for auction. That is the definition of theft. Don't apologize for that.
- ars 10y ago
  They did not actually put it up for auction, there is a long process before that happens. Don't falsely accuse people! The post office goes to great lengths with undelivered mail they open the boxes and try to find any kind of address, perhaps an invoice or other clues.
  - byuu 10y ago
    Do you think my address being plainly visible and highly legible right at the top left of each box counted? Because they had it for at least 40+ days just sitting there collecting dust. Even though I had my missing mail search in, just idling and going nowhere. You're right though, there's the possibility that they don't actually try to deliver the mail properly until right before they are getting ready to auction it. However, I'm very glad I didn't have to find out whether or not that was the case.
    - ars 10y ago
      Until they open it all the way (remove the brown paper) they would not have seen the address. They would only open it as part of the process to eventually auction it. So I can totally imagine it sitting there waiting for someone to claim it (like you did), without anyone seeing the address. Stop being so negative, it's not good for you.
- dsymonds 10y ago
  No, that's not the definition of theft. Theft is the criminal (i.e. against the law) stealing of someone's property without their permission. This situation would have been complying with the law, stupid as it may be. It's much closer to abandoned property or salvage.
justinator 10y ago
I'm a little confused. In the original story, they didn't mention that: > Apparently, their machine ripped the shipping label right > off the box. And so the USPS sent me just the label in an > envelope, and proceeded to berate me to ship better next > time, even though I was the recipient. They just wrote, > As of the time of writing, February 14th, 2017 — this > package has yet to arrive. It has been stuck in the Jersey > City, NJ 07097 bulk mail processing warehouse with > absolutely no movement. I was under the impression that the package simply vanished, rather than being given evidence that something else was up, like damage to the packaging. Why not just tell me about the latter, first? It does shift blame a little...
- crooked-v 10y ago
  Presumably the author didn't get the label in the mail until after they made the post mentioning the NJ warehouse.
  - justinator 10y ago
    The day of the first, "lost package", and receiving the letter are the same: February 14th. https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/ https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/: As of the time of writing, February 14th, 2017 — this package has yet to arrive. https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/found-package/ https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/found-package/ On February 14, 2017, I received the following letter from USPS: They totally left out this when making their initial post. Part of the package arrived, with a letter by USPS - the package didn't mysteriously vanish. It's a little different story. I don't know why they wouldn't have mentioned it. In the initial story, he blamed USPS for being incompetent on taking control of the delivery; in the second he blames Deutsche Post for a bad packaging job.
    - byuu 10y ago
      I received the letter with the torn off label about six hours after having published that article, and after Kotaku ran the original story. I was swamped with updates so I didn't get the chance to get to my mailbox sooner in the day.
loeg 10y ago
> took them to Deutsche Post for assistance in packaging them up. They ended up taping my two boxes together, and then wrapping the box in thick brown wrapping paper. If you've ever shipped or received anything internationally, you know packages get really beat up. Taping two boxes together and then wrapping that makes absolutely no sense. I'm glad this was resolved well, but you can avoid a lot of headache by not trying to ship homebrew packaging internationally.
- stouset 10y ago
  It sounds like Deutsche Post did this, not the original sender.
  - byuu 10y ago
    Yep. The guy is not a big-time games distributor. He's a guy with a childhood collection that offered to lend it to me for a few weeks. There were definitely mistakes made on our part. But what I really can't forgive is ... once the outer wrapper came off, my address was still plainly visible on the box. I can't for the life of me understand why they shipped it to their undelieverable mail / govdeals.com auction site location.
Humdeee 10y ago
> Had this case not been escalated to the media, it likely would have gone up for auction in a bin with other electronics sometime in March. I'm just picturing some guy in a back corner of an auction room hesitantly putting up a numbered sign to an rambling auctioneer and getting the whole package for $20 bucks.
- byuu 10y ago
  They do it all online now, and all the big-time retro game sellers on eBay know about govdeals.com now. The auction would have gone for thousands of dollars, easily.
Animats 10y ago
They ended up taping my two boxes together, and then wrapping the box in thick brown wrapping paper. Somebody failed Shipping 101.
sigil 10y ago
> There is a very real issue in that [USPS's] machines are ripping the labels right off of packages. I recently sent a USPS package that "disappeared," and they offered the same explanation. A month later it magically showed up at the receiving end. This wasn't a brown paper package or anything -- it was packaged for me by UPS employees in a UPS store and mailed US postal service by them. Wondering if there's some new (flaky) label scanning tech in play at USPS?
makomk 10y ago
I think postal staff really don't like to lose items in general. Here in the UK, I ordered a couple of metal pill bottles a few years ago. What I received was a clear plastic Royal Mail bag apologising for the damage to my parcel, contents: one loose metal container, one bubble mailer containing the other item and a circular tear exactly the size of the loose item. Clearly one of them had made a bid for freedom somewhere in mail processing and someone had gone to the trouble of matching up the completely unmarked and unbranded loose item with the corresponding hole it escaped through.
xupybd 10y ago
"I am ashamed at having to abuse my position and ask for help in getting this story out there. It's not something that most people can do, and in any other circumstance, is not something that I would ever do." No reason to be ashamed at this. All the free time invested into this project gave the author a little fame. They used that fame to further the interests of the project. Win win.
- byuu 10y ago
  Thank you very kindly. But I mean, it's not fair in the sense that other people have packages they really care about, but can't get help on. That and the fact that I probably took someone else's place in the queue to find their lost package :(
  - xupybd 10y ago
    On the flip side, this media attention may help motivate the USPS to improve their systems. So while some may have lost a place in a dysfunctional queue, there is a chance future customers will not have to wait as long.
losteverything 10y ago
Well done. As I said. It is a government agency and upper forces will create action. We always like to say "if it had an address it will get there. - eventually. " Despite the awful reputation, every carrier I know takes great pride in delivering. Most people take it for granted and remember the bad experience. Like seeing the cop hiding in the hill once and always driving slow everytime you pass it -even though the cop is not there 95% of the time.
asveikau 10y ago
I didn't comment at the time, but I found the prior comment thread a little unsettling: people trashing on USPS and irrationally holding UPS and FedEx in very high regard. It's not like the other guys are universally honest and true. I had one experience a few years ago where it seemed pretty clear that a UPS employee stole a laptop. I have seen FedEx tracking claim they did a delivery attempt when I have a camera at my door suggesting nobody was there all day. At one prior address I had, UPS literally never attempted any deliveries on Saturday, and wrote "business is closed" in tracking - at my apartment. I think people are really quick to assume that government employees are lazy and out to screw them, and so something like UPS or FedEx which are private should automatically be better. In truth, I really appreciate the post office. They work hard for us. They're our public servants.
noonespecial 10y ago
The owner's address was clearly on the package. They knew whose it was and clearly did not intend to make the effort to deliver it. Until they were publicly embarrassed. That sucks.
fapjacks 10y ago
The USPS is something right out of a dystopian hellhole. I bristle every time I have to deal with some awful error of theirs.

366 points by ryan-c 10y ago

I'm happy for a good ending. Reading this story when it first came out definitely made me feel sorry for the people involved. Side note, when I worked at UPS they wouldn't even accept packages wrapped in brown paper for this exact reason. It gets stuck in the machine and ripped off, never to been seen again. When sending a package, put the label directly on the cardboard and write the address in marker on the side.

13of40 10y ago
When I was a young hoodlum, one time I took a piece of a paper shopping bag, wrote my home address on it, and dropped it in a mailbox. About a month later, it was delivered to my house in a zip-lock bag, with the same note the OP got. > When sending a package, put the label directly on the cardboard and write the address in marker on the side. While you've got the marker in your hand, also make sure you black out any barcodes on the box from previous mailings, because supposedly they can make your package get redirected to unexpected places.
- Declanomous 10y ago
  I have a funny/interesting story about the barcodes. As part of my job I run the mailed appeals for a non-profit. For certain appeals, we included pre-addressed envelopes that were supposed to come back to our office. For reasons we could understand these letters were taking months to reach us, and when we finally got them they had been opened on four sides and then stapled back together with dozens of staples around the edges, and an address sticker on the face of the envelope. These envelopes generally contain a check, and oftentimes the check was getting lost, plus the people who process these gifts were going nuts pulling all of the staples out of the envelopes so they could open them. The Post Office gave us a different explanation every time we called. At first they blamed a graphic we had on the face of the envelope. So we re-ordered the envelope without the graphic. Then they blamed the weight of the paper. So we re-ordered the envelopes with heavier paper. Then they blamed the color of the text and the font choice. So we re-ordered new envelopes with plain black block letters. After all this, these envelopes were still being opened. The post office said our physical mailing address was causing problems, because mail can't actually be delivered. Instead our mail guys go pick it up. Unfortunately, that isn't really something we can change with the volume of mail we get, so we were stumped. Then one day we got a call from our bank lockbox. They wanted to know why they had a bunch of our envelopes. After we got that call, I went to the basement, pulled examples of all of the envelopes I could find and brought them back to my desk. Presorted bulk mail has a barcode on it called an Intelligent Mail Barcode. It contains the postal ID of the person shipping the letter, delivery information (all the way down to route), plus a few variables for options. When our envelopes were proofed, they just included our address on the face. After we approved the envelopes the plant would put a barcode on them. Every single envelope had the same barcode on it. I decoded the barcode by hand, and lo and behold, the barcode contained the delivery instructions for our lockbox PO address. The plant we were using didn't actually calculate a new barcode for our envelope orders, they just used a barcode they had on file for us. We ended up ordering new envelopes with no barcode. Our mail immediately started arriving unmolested. Moral of the story: barcodes matter.
- mikeash 10y ago
  You might enjoy this article on Postal Experiments: http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/postal-6-4.html http://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume6/v6i4/po... They tested all sorts of wacky stuff sent through the mail, including an unpackaged flower and a ski, both of which made it to the recipient (but various others did not).
  - rhcom2 10y ago
    Awesome site. I shipped a few car tires when working at UPS that we just slapped the label on and a box of rare earth magnets that was a huge pain to ship. Also some guy's removed testicle to get tested for tumour cells was pretty weird but it just went in a normal box.
    - stevekemp 10y ago
      My test of the UK postal service was to address a postcard to my email address. I figured they could lookup WHOIS on the domain, get the address, and deliver it. Sadly not..
- byuu 10y ago
  Heh, several people accused that note of being fake because of an obvious spelling error on it ("where the weight of the contests rest.")
- SmellyGeekBoy 10y ago
  > When I was a young hoodlum, one time I took a piece of a paper shopping bag, wrote my home address on it, and dropped it in a mailbox. About a month later, it was delivered to my house in a zip-lock bag, with the same note the OP got. I have to admit I did get a chuckle out of your outrageous act of teenage rebellion. Fight the system!
CamperBob2 10y ago
Also, when sending anything important or expensive, put a copy of the address label inside the package itself. Especially important for international shipping.
byuu 10y ago
I was really stunned that Deutsche Post in Germany not only accepted the package, but were the ones to recommend it be shipped this way. They really should have known better, what with doing this for a living and all. It wasn't reasonable for the sender to know about the USPS' bulk processing machines and their tendency to tear off brown wrapping paper.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

Congrats on locating the package. This govdeals.com site looks nifty. I may need to peruse it for, uh, research.

Natsu 10y ago
I know what you mean. Anyone need a DNA Analyzer? https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=296&acctid=3227 https://www.govdeals.com/index.cfm?fa=Main.Item&itemid=296&a...

sml156 10y ago

Are these the same SNES games that 1 or 2 weeks ago were worth $5000

mynameisvlad 10y ago
It was always 10k: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13646438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13646438
- byuu 10y ago
  It's always been $5,000 - $10,000. It's extremely difficult to assign an exact value because PAL game prices are extremely fluid. One day a game can go for $50, the next day the only copies are all $200 and another copy won't show up for three years.
  - mynameisvlad 10y ago
    Sure, I was more replying to the insinuation that the value went up now that they've been found, by showing that it was always reported as 10k.

koolba 10y ago

While I love a happy ending as much as the next guy, this is a bit troubling: > It wasn't until the story really started to take off that on February 16th, finally a manager at the USPS Consumer Affairs department took note of the case. > And I mean that literally: he told me straight up the reason he was contacting me was because of the news articles he had encountered on this case. Welcome to a future where only voices that broadcast their grievances loudly over social media get answered.

neom 10y ago
I used all my LinkedIn inMail credits to send the article link to all the senior people I could find who work at USPS. heh. ;)
astrodust 10y ago
It's not the future. It's been like this since the first newspaper appeared. For decades I've seen situations resolved only because a local paper or broadcaster took up the cause. It's routine.
ginko 10y ago
This makes me wonder: What does happen to the packages that just get lost in transit? I presume it must be a sizeable amount considering the number of packages being shipped nowadays.
- phire 10y ago
  After a holding period, they get auctioned off.
  - byuu 10y ago
    Yep. Mine was sitting there for 45 days ... of the 60-90 required before items can be auctioned off. It had my address clearly visible on the package still. They could easily have delivered it. If not for the media attention, these most likely would have ended up on a govdeals.com listing, and going for an absolute fortune (tons of collectors know about that site.) Then again, maybe they only try to recover mail right before they list it for sale. Can't know for sure, but glad I don't have to find out.

overcast 10y ago

Happy Valentines Day!

astrodust 10y ago

What an emotional rollercoaster this has been. It's also a lesson in not putting all your eggs in one basket. Shipping these out incrementally, and via a system that has the proper insurance in place, would have been a better move. Hindsight and all that.

byuu 10y ago
We actually did. His collection was 400 games. I asked to split it into four smaller shipments. But what I failed to take into account was that I really could not afford to replace even 100 PAL SNES games. They're just too expensive anymore. I hate that blame is being placed on him for the shipping. He was doing me the favor. It was my fault for requesting so many games to be sent at once.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Prices of SNES games have gone crazy recently. I'm seeing the same with Gameboy/Gameboy Colour, but not with Gameboy Advance. Anyway, I'm very happy that the games got to you eventually.
  - khedoros1 10y ago
    I wonder if it has to do with the people that were kids when those were new being 30-40 now. Maybe it's a good time to stock up on GBA games before they skyrocket in a couple of years.
  - byuu 10y ago
    The scary part is I keep saying that each and every year. They just keep getting more and more insane. Even two years ago when I bought Iron Commando for the Super Famicom, the $240 asking price was insane. It's at $1500 now for a complete copy. I passed on Pokonyan for $100, thinking that was too high, and a year and a half later ended up paying $800 for it. How many years can the prices keep doubling like this? How can anyone afford to collect these games at these prices? The whole thing feels like a giant hyper-inflated bubble.
- 10y ago

ryanlol 10y ago

>Further, I understand they can't go to these lengths for every single lost piece of mail. But surely there has to be some sort of middle ground here? It should not be so impossible to escalate a case when something of significant value goes missing. It's not. You just have to insure it for the correct value...

eridius 10y ago
Insuring it doesn't help you in recovering the package. It just mitigates the loss. I fully expect that both byuu and the donor would much prefer to have the 100 SNES games than to have a $10k payout.
- ryanlol 10y ago
  The higher the insurance amount is, the more likely it is that it'll be worth it for the company to look for your package.
  - eridius 10y ago
    Perhaps in theory; is there any evidence that the USPS actually operates this way?
    - ryanlol 10y ago
      I feel that the fact that they were able to recover this package with what seems to be relative ease is evidence of that.
      - eridius 10y ago
        Why would you say that? What got this resolved was someone with influence at USPS seeing the news story and intervening. The insurance amount was completely irrelevant to this. Also, it apparently wasn't all that easy. They searched, came up with nothing, and then had to request a second search in order to find it.

Keyframe 10y ago

All good that ends well! Just looking at those SNES cartridges makes me feel good!

nogbit 10y ago

"My package was sitting in Atlanta, GA for well over a month with my address clearly visible right on the box." WOW, and they would just put that up for auction. That is the definition of theft. Don't apologize for that.

ars 10y ago
They did not actually put it up for auction, there is a long process before that happens. Don't falsely accuse people! The post office goes to great lengths with undelivered mail they open the boxes and try to find any kind of address, perhaps an invoice or other clues.
- byuu 10y ago
  Do you think my address being plainly visible and highly legible right at the top left of each box counted? Because they had it for at least 40+ days just sitting there collecting dust. Even though I had my missing mail search in, just idling and going nowhere. You're right though, there's the possibility that they don't actually try to deliver the mail properly until right before they are getting ready to auction it. However, I'm very glad I didn't have to find out whether or not that was the case.
  - ars 10y ago
    Until they open it all the way (remove the brown paper) they would not have seen the address. They would only open it as part of the process to eventually auction it. So I can totally imagine it sitting there waiting for someone to claim it (like you did), without anyone seeing the address. Stop being so negative, it's not good for you.
dsymonds 10y ago
No, that's not the definition of theft. Theft is the criminal (i.e. against the law) stealing of someone's property without their permission. This situation would have been complying with the law, stupid as it may be. It's much closer to abandoned property or salvage.

justinator 10y ago

I'm a little confused. In the original story, they didn't mention that: > Apparently, their machine ripped the shipping label right > off the box. And so the USPS sent me just the label in an > envelope, and proceeded to berate me to ship better next > time, even though I was the recipient. They just wrote, > As of the time of writing, February 14th, 2017 — this > package has yet to arrive. It has been stuck in the Jersey > City, NJ 07097 bulk mail processing warehouse with > absolutely no movement. I was under the impression that the package simply vanished, rather than being given evidence that something else was up, like damage to the packaging. Why not just tell me about the latter, first? It does shift blame a little...

crooked-v 10y ago
Presumably the author didn't get the label in the mail until after they made the post mentioning the NJ warehouse.
- justinator 10y ago
  The day of the first, "lost package", and receiving the letter are the same: February 14th. https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/ https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/lost-package/: As of the time of writing, February 14th, 2017 — this package has yet to arrive. https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/found-package/ https://byuu.org/emulation/preservation/found-package/ On February 14, 2017, I received the following letter from USPS: They totally left out this when making their initial post. Part of the package arrived, with a letter by USPS - the package didn't mysteriously vanish. It's a little different story. I don't know why they wouldn't have mentioned it. In the initial story, he blamed USPS for being incompetent on taking control of the delivery; in the second he blames Deutsche Post for a bad packaging job.
  - byuu 10y ago
    I received the letter with the torn off label about six hours after having published that article, and after Kotaku ran the original story. I was swamped with updates so I didn't get the chance to get to my mailbox sooner in the day.

loeg 10y ago

> took them to Deutsche Post for assistance in packaging them up. They ended up taping my two boxes together, and then wrapping the box in thick brown wrapping paper. If you've ever shipped or received anything internationally, you know packages get really beat up. Taping two boxes together and then wrapping that makes absolutely no sense. I'm glad this was resolved well, but you can avoid a lot of headache by not trying to ship homebrew packaging internationally.

stouset 10y ago
It sounds like Deutsche Post did this, not the original sender.
- byuu 10y ago
  Yep. The guy is not a big-time games distributor. He's a guy with a childhood collection that offered to lend it to me for a few weeks. There were definitely mistakes made on our part. But what I really can't forgive is ... once the outer wrapper came off, my address was still plainly visible on the box. I can't for the life of me understand why they shipped it to their undelieverable mail / govdeals.com auction site location.

Humdeee 10y ago

> Had this case not been escalated to the media, it likely would have gone up for auction in a bin with other electronics sometime in March. I'm just picturing some guy in a back corner of an auction room hesitantly putting up a numbered sign to an rambling auctioneer and getting the whole package for $20 bucks.

byuu 10y ago
They do it all online now, and all the big-time retro game sellers on eBay know about govdeals.com now. The auction would have gone for thousands of dollars, easily.

Animats 10y ago

They ended up taping my two boxes together, and then wrapping the box in thick brown wrapping paper. Somebody failed Shipping 101.

sigil 10y ago

> There is a very real issue in that [USPS's] machines are ripping the labels right off of packages. I recently sent a USPS package that "disappeared," and they offered the same explanation. A month later it magically showed up at the receiving end. This wasn't a brown paper package or anything -- it was packaged for me by UPS employees in a UPS store and mailed US postal service by them. Wondering if there's some new (flaky) label scanning tech in play at USPS?

makomk 10y ago

I think postal staff really don't like to lose items in general. Here in the UK, I ordered a couple of metal pill bottles a few years ago. What I received was a clear plastic Royal Mail bag apologising for the damage to my parcel, contents: one loose metal container, one bubble mailer containing the other item and a circular tear exactly the size of the loose item. Clearly one of them had made a bid for freedom somewhere in mail processing and someone had gone to the trouble of matching up the completely unmarked and unbranded loose item with the corresponding hole it escaped through.

xupybd 10y ago

"I am ashamed at having to abuse my position and ask for help in getting this story out there. It's not something that most people can do, and in any other circumstance, is not something that I would ever do." No reason to be ashamed at this. All the free time invested into this project gave the author a little fame. They used that fame to further the interests of the project. Win win.

byuu 10y ago
Thank you very kindly. But I mean, it's not fair in the sense that other people have packages they really care about, but can't get help on. That and the fact that I probably took someone else's place in the queue to find their lost package :(
- xupybd 10y ago
  On the flip side, this media attention may help motivate the USPS to improve their systems. So while some may have lost a place in a dysfunctional queue, there is a chance future customers will not have to wait as long.

losteverything 10y ago

Well done. As I said. It is a government agency and upper forces will create action. We always like to say "if it had an address it will get there. - eventually. " Despite the awful reputation, every carrier I know takes great pride in delivering. Most people take it for granted and remember the bad experience. Like seeing the cop hiding in the hill once and always driving slow everytime you pass it -even though the cop is not there 95% of the time.

asveikau 10y ago

I didn't comment at the time, but I found the prior comment thread a little unsettling: people trashing on USPS and irrationally holding UPS and FedEx in very high regard. It's not like the other guys are universally honest and true. I had one experience a few years ago where it seemed pretty clear that a UPS employee stole a laptop. I have seen FedEx tracking claim they did a delivery attempt when I have a camera at my door suggesting nobody was there all day. At one prior address I had, UPS literally never attempted any deliveries on Saturday, and wrote "business is closed" in tracking - at my apartment. I think people are really quick to assume that government employees are lazy and out to screw them, and so something like UPS or FedEx which are private should automatically be better. In truth, I really appreciate the post office. They work hard for us. They're our public servants.

noonespecial 10y ago

The owner's address was clearly on the package. They knew whose it was and clearly did not intend to make the effort to deliver it. Until they were publicly embarrassed. That sucks.

fapjacks 10y ago

The USPS is something right out of a dystopian hellhole. I bristle every time I have to deal with some awful error of theirs.