Marvin 1, USPS 0

[Kigs!]

That is how I found my pack from Marvin, three days later than expected, two houses down from me, where the neighbors were away. The last couple of days included three arrivals of shipments, which all resulted in hell. To make the long story short, USPS screwed up big time. To make it even worse, the last couple of days in NY = heavy rainstorms.

Thanks to Marvin's excellent packing, surprisingly there was minimal rainwater inside the box however. The frags were double bagged in plastic bags, and the frag baggies were again double bagged. The water was ICE cold when I opened them up and everything looked like it was going through zoapox and melting away.

Here are few frags receiving furan2 treatment, one marvins and one of mine which might have caught an infection from it. I only lost one frag and everything has opened up perfectly after a minor trimming of dead polyps.

Wish I took more pictures on that day to show you guys how hopeless it looked but after receiving my pack 3 days after its expected arrival, I was rushing to save some of the sweet zoas Marvin sent me. The minimal loss, Marvin more than made up for through his awesome freebies. Well, I guess the lesson of this extremely long, as usual, feedback is that... a) Marvin's zoas are invincible. b) Evil USPS can be defeated. c) Excellent packaging job does insure higher rate of survival when it comes to shipping live corals. Thanks again for the great pack marv!

 

[surfn]

way to go USPS!

so it made it there in a day, they just delivered all the packages to the wrong house?

 

[Kigs!]

one of them i personally received from my usual postman, second one was delievered later in the afternoon but it leaked during shipping...and they literally tore it open and molested it. this is how the other package came. forget about saving the frags on this one. no fault on the shipper. usps had to toy with the bags inside.

and the 3rd one was marvs, which got lost two houses down. brilliant, aren't they?

 

[surfn]

that sucks about them tearing the package open.

i'm sure once they get the box open, and realize its just water, they probably tear into the bags and mess everything up just out of spite.

i realize some postal workers are just trying to make a living, but most of the ones i have dealt with are just misfits with no little oversight of a responsible suprivisor.

b/c i live in a small town, the local born and bread conservative mountain folk are VERY paranoid of terrorists. i can't even ship stuff via UPS b/c they said they will not ship anything with liquid, or anything that has plant life or any other kind of "life". they are relentless with their questions, and one old lady even preceded to open my package up b/c i was "vague" in my description of its contents.

and i've been turned away from both FedEx and USPS b/c my package contained a small amount of liquid, corals, or plant life.

it just makes no sense. they dont have any sort of company policy on these things....it just all depends on who rings your package up. pretty ridiculous IMO.

makes me wonder how i've had 2 snowbards shipped via USPS without a ding or a scratch. lol

 

[Kigs!]

lolz...I don't know about them messing with the bags out of spite...now that would be just pure evil...but I KNOW they messed with the bags because when I went to inquire about the shipment, they told me "Oh, you the guy with corals? It's delievered." I haven't been called a terrorist yet but I always have to answer my questions carefully when they ask me if there's water inside the shipment. Well, specifically, this one evil lady... and I found that mumbling random words will usually confuse her enough to just take the package.

Honestly, the fact that these zoas survived through hell and a rainstorm of three consecutive days without a heatpack was due to Marvin bagging the frags about four times. It did result in few polyps melting away, but I'm glad that the majority survived... UPS store recently took over a mamas&papas mailing store so they will be handling my shipments from now on...

 

[surfn]

did they at least call the sender? to ask what the liquid was?

cuz i KNOW they dont have any sort of budjet to be able to take water samples to a lab........so why else would they open the bags? lol

do they have some sort of postal expert that knew they were corals upon opening the bag and smelling the stench?

 

[Kigs!]

frankly, I was surprised when the lady referred to my shipment as the coral shipment. I'm not sure if they called the shipper, maybe he can participate in the thread but that's completely upto him since he shouldn't bear any responsibilities for USPS's incompetence.... can you imagine? some old fat dude sitting at the back of USPS smelling shipments..."yes yes... this indeed is one of them coral boxes. call the **** team...harass the corals to your best abilities...!!" ... weird.

 

[Azurel]

frankly, I was surprised when the lady referred to my shipment as the coral shipment. I'm not sure if they called the shipper, maybe he can participate in the thread but that's completely upto him since he shouldn't bear any responsibilities for USPS's incompetence.... can you imagine? some old fat dude sitting at the back of USPS smelling shipments..."yes yes... this indeed is one of them coral boxes. call the **** team...harass the corals to your best abilities...!!" ... weird.

LOL....."Call the **** team" Now that's some funny stuff there I don't care who you are.....


The lady that takes my shipments used to ask me questions about liquids and stuff. I have talked to her a couple of times about what I ship so much and told her that there was a little bit of water and that it was triple bagged. She said as long as there isn't really any chance of leaking from tick poor packing that they cannot turn it away. What they are really looking for is flammables when they ask about liquids, stuff like hairspray in pressure cans etc.....I don't have any issues any more with questions.....Lucky me I guess.

 

[illcssd]

Usps never called, nothing. They just ***** his package. I will be using ups when i re ship his frags. It was an expensive group they decided to kill. O well i guess. Nothing you can do. The lady that takes my package always ask's a million questions because she had someone send a leaker once and she had to deal with it. I'm upset but there is nothing i can do i don't think. Just eat the freakin 50 bucks for shipping.

Ps, kigs, how are the zoo's? and did any sps make it?

 

[Kigs!]

the zoas are doing great austin. i managed to save the pieces of the caps that broke off but the larger main pieces i had to discard. most of the acros and millis(?) bleached away overnight and some were showing signs of bleaching and i threw them out since i have such a small tank. i didn't want to risk any spikes. even the smallest death can cause such an uproar in my tank...and multiple sps dying away was the last thing i needed

 

[MarvinsReef]

hey Vince.. I'm glad they're doing okay for you.. just reminds us that zoas can be very hardy and resilient.. I hope to see the actual frags I sent in your tank doing well..

booo for USPS on this one... but I'm glad you saved all but one frag... now kudos to you man...

 

[Kigs!]

Wish I did something to save them, but your packaging did all the work marv... you had to rub it in that i was being lazy with the pics huh? :hammer:

here are some unbelievable frags marv had sent me. thank you again!

speckled rpes

red wines

PD type I? II?

PD type I? II?

GDs

...creamsicles!!!!!

Now you guys can see why I was seriously depressed when I thought the package was lost. At one point, bombing the USPS was a thought that floated by. j/k. maybe.

 

[weimers75]

I've been turned away at FedEx after I made the mistake of telling them what was in the box. I was told that the location that I took it to couldn't accept any live animals, and I had to arrange for delivery directly with Fedex. She even showed me a booklet that lists all of the prohibited items, and live coral was actually listed. I just took it to a different Fedex and told them it was a "decoration".

I have since started using usps because its cheaper, and so far I have yet to have a problem...maybe 7 or 8 shipments now. However, I usually just say no when they ask the whole liquid question. I'm not sure if it was on this site or not, but someone who worked for the usps said not to say that it was anything alive, because they use a different (less reliable) carrier for live items.