Yesterday I sent a letter to a friend of mine in the US. You remember letters? Real letters are written by hand with pen and paper, placed in an envelope, and given to the postal service for quick delivery to the desired recipient. OK, it wasn't a real letter, but it was important, so I sent it registered mail.
I was pleased to see a registration number on the receipt, so today I went to the Track and Trace page of the Swiss post to check on its progress.
Everything looked good, except "Italy"?! The letter is going to the US. So I called the toll free number (good karma) waited through three loops of the "all our agents are busy" recording (bad karma) and finally got a friendly agent who explained:
- We don't offer tracking services on registered mail — OK, so why did it tell me anything at all about my letter?
- The information is correct. We reuse tracking numbers, and this number was also used for a package going to Italy in June, 2005. — Wie bitte? I didn't send a package to Italy, and even if there are two items under the same number, it's clearer to display information for both (or niether)
- If you really want to track it, go to usps.gov, where it should appear in a day or two — I do appreciate good, honest advice (so good karma wins out)
Moral of the story – 1: If you're going to make information available to your customers, it should be complete and correct. Ganz oder gar nichts.
Moral of the story – 2: A toll free number helps when the web pages fails, and honest, helpful advice is always welcome!
