These sound particularly bad, but I’m worried that the reliance on automation is causing unexpected problems that the use of humans would have precluded. I’ve had two experiences this year alone. One was with some bulb seeds I ordered from Europe and followed all the rules of importing using a small lots of seeds permit. The other was when I ordered an herb plant (a species that is an alternate to catnip) from Ohio to my home here in Southern California. In the seed case, the package traveled very quickly to the inspection station near LAX airport. But when they mailed it on to me, they failed to sufficiently cross out all the bar codes on the package leaving the new label with my address as the sole readable barcode. So it literally went round and round inside the central Los Angeles mail processing station for three weeks, and finally it was kicked out by some computer that detected that it had gone round and round too many times. But instead of sending it on to me, it sent it back to the inspection station! They thoroughly crossed out all the barcodes and pointed it out to the postal service when they put it back in the mail. But when I got it a week later (I live 13 miles/21 km from LAX), my address had been handwritten on the package and I was unable to “track” it. But it finally made it too me. I think it went through the system manually. In the plant case, it very rapidly made it to the local distribution post office whose area includes my home city. I was able to track it all the way there. But then instead of showing up at my local post office the night before it would have been delivered to it, which is only a 30 minute drive, it showed up in Phoenix, Arizona on a Saturday night on the weekend they had near record high temperatures (120°F/49°C). That post office sent it back on Monday and it eventually made it back to my local distribution post office and then it was delivered to me the next day. Luckily it survived the experience. I believe in the herb plant case, no humans were involved after the package entered the system, until it was delivered to my local postal worker to deliver it to me. --Lee Poulsen San Gabriel Valley, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a Latitude 34°N, Altitude 340 ft/100 m > On Jul 15, 2024, at 05:57, Robert Lauf via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote: > > All, > I had been hoping to provide a progress report long before now, but held off until I had some positive news to report > For background, the carrier (DHL) has screwed this thing up about every way they could. Because of the size of the order, US and EU both required two boxes. One US and one EU box left Johannesburg right away and the others inexplicably sat there for a week before they went out. > After some other delays, both EU boxes have now been delivered to Martin for distribution. > The US boxes were delayed in Customs in ATL. The first one sat for so long that DHL sent it back to South Africa, despite telling me everything was in order. The second one finally cleared and should be delivered to APHIS today. The first box has now returned from South Africa and is back in the queue to clear Customs. According to DHL, all is supposedly in order. If it hasn't cleared by Weds, DHL will contact me for anything more they need. Naturally I'll be watching from my end and will contact them if I don't hear any updates. > This has been like three weeks in The Twilight Zone and I have no logical explanation for all the back and forth, other than sheer incompetence on the part of the carrier. It appears (I'm speculating here) that the DHL agent in SA put all the docs inside the boxes, not realizing that Customs inspectors can't open the box! Only APHIS can open it, but of course, it has to clear Customs first. > Once these boxes are free of DHL's clutches, I'll be tracking them as UPS does the ground shipment to Bridget, and will provide further updates later in the week. > Luckily dormant bulbs are pretty tough. > Bob > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net > https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… > Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> > PBS Forum https://… _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…