Owww, fun post office exchanges. Here's my best one.
Had a package coming from Germany with Deutsche Post/NZ Post. Got to New Zealand then just sat here for approx 2 weeks doing nothing. As it was over the Christmas/New Year period I was not too worried but once it got to the second week of January with no movement I decided to follow up.
Spoke to a very nice and helpful customer services rep at NZ Post who told me all about the package and chased it up. She even called my back to get further details and again to update me on what she found (this is more than I can get from the courier and freight companies I use for our business who we spend 10s of thousands of dollars with a year).
Our final conversation went like this:
NZ Post: We have located your package and it is in problem mail as the address is incorrect.
Me: Can you tell me what the address on the package is?
NZ Post: No.
Me: Why not? I can then tell you if it is correct or not.
NZ Post: We can only tell the sender that. It is confidential.
Me: But you have told me everything else about the package and never once asked for who I am. I can provide ID to match the name on the package if you want.
NZ Post: No. We can transfer you to Deutsche Post if you want.
Me: Will they speak English?
NZ Post: No.
Me: I don't speak German. How would that help me?
NZ Post: You could learn German...
Anyway, I asked them to hold the package while I sorted out the address with the sender. He told me the correct address and I took that back to NZ Post 24 hours later who told me the package was already going back to Germany. Arggg.
Turns out when he got the package back the label he printed lists street address as Devon Rd, 10 — as opposed to 10 Devon Rd. NZ Post was looking for and failing to find RD10 (rural delivery).
This was moronic on so many levels because:
1) the address was clearly as I typed above: capital R, little d, comma, space, 10 — not RD10.
2) Perhaps more importantly there is no Rural Delivery 10 anywhere in New Zealand — RD numbers do not go that high!
3) If they had bothered to look at the next line down it read Hamilton (which is a city) with the postcode which is right in the middle of said city... (so not rural).
Anyway, he printed out exactly the same ticket, wrote "not rural" on it shipped it again and it arrived just fine. So stupid.