Archive for ‘ June, 2010

singpost/speedpost and vpost suck

So since I’ve nothing else to do, I believe I’ll rant about the modafockin post office in my country, Singpost. Before I begin, you suckers need to buy a proper domain name. I’m one of the laziest persons on Earth so I definitely do not type in the “www” portion of a url. Singpost’s url is “www.speedpost.com.sg”. No “www” doesn’t work, and this doesn’t seem to work for gv.com.sg either by the way. I have no idea why these domains are so odd, because practically every other URL is fine when the “www” isn’t typed in. Come on, I’m on the computer, on an internet browser, and you really want to know if I want to go on the worldwideweb? Get a little artificial intelligence please. Also, not typing “.sg” doesn’t work either. I don’t understand these companies. Does it really matter if you buy a domain without the country’s extension code thing? -.- I guess they have to since it’s a government owned post. Hmm.

ANYWAY, what I wanted to talk about is. The post seems to be broken now. I’m still waiting for a package from janetstore.com that she sent out on the 13th of June. It was sent by air mail and usually takes 10-14 days to reach most countries. So far, I’ve gotten packages from her between 8-10 days. So, It’s already been 17 freaking days since she sent it out. Plus, through the track and trace on the Singpost website, I see that the package arrived in Singapore on the 21st of June. From my experience (and it’s very vast), they hand out packages within 3-4 days of being in the processing centre. And it’s been 9 days!! omagawd~ I just sent an e-mail to the post office yesterday and there’s the auto notification thing that they will reply within 3 working days. Yeah I understand people normally put that so they have some leeway if they fall behind on the labour but.. How much e-mail do you have to receive to only be able to reply it within 3 days? I think the postmen and postwomen at Singpost just wait for the e-mail to reach 3 days old before replying it. Modafockers. And to think they call themselves speedpost. Oh the irony. I guess this is what happens when you allow a monopoly to happen to a post office. A public owned monopoly at that. I think singpost is owned by the government anyway, which private business would name their business after the country?

I also recently tried out vpostUSA which is like a freighting service. vpost is under singpost, they are basically the same company/conspiracy whatever. I used it to buy from sanrio.com because they don’t ship internationally. So I put in the vpostUSA address instead so they’ll ship it to vpost and then vpost will ship it to me.  Whoop de doo I was so excited because I was gonna be receiving sanrio merch and who wouldn’t be excited about that? I bought 2 sanrio items and got a free er, bag kind of thing, you know those cheap kinds but kinda paper and kinda plastic.. Yeah.. Cost me a total of US$53 inclusive of US$10 shipping to my vpost address. So, one day I woke up and to my horror, vpost sent me my shipping invoice and it cost a whopping SG$57.56. diu lei lou mou. kan lu. That’s almost what my items cost. I had a metaphorical heart attack then I subsequently went on to pay my bill. Thank God there was ongoing promotion for POSB credit/debit cards that was 50% off shipping cost (max of $20) for first time customers. So I only paid SG$37.56 for shipping. By the way, vpost charges exorbidant shipping fees because they charge by volumetric weight which is what every freight/post service does so I don’t blame them, honestly I think it’s because of the free bag that they are charging me so much. I think the free bag is the largest item and I doubt sanrio.com would fold the bag (damn I should’ve requested it to be packed in as small a package as possible) so yeah, I think I ended up paying $30 for that bag. Very 无辜 (innocent) kenna (get) charged extra. :(

Dimension
:
52 X 37 X 15cm, 4.8kg
Actual Weight
:
1.3
Chargeable Weight :
:
4.8

More than 3 times the weight charged! Damn disgusting. Anyway, I’m still waiting on the package. I quote vpost, “We will endeavor to deliver to your Item(s) to you within 4 – 6 working days from the date of payment”. I made payment 7 days ago. I know they say working days but, I paid on a weekday (a Thursday, to be specific) so honestly why should working days matter if you already put the package on the airplane for shipment? You mean the airplane will stop in mid air on Saturdays and Sundays because it’s a rest day? -.-

I searched the internet on lousy vpost shipping times after my package arrived at the vpost USA address and the average time is about 2 weeks, that’s 14 days. 2-3 times the time they said it would take. If blatantly lying made you slower, I can see why speedpost crawls slower than a snail. There are some horror stories out there about people paying SG$200 for shipping too by the way. I definitely do not recommend vpost if you want a freight service. More like, I recommend against using it.

From what I gather, they’re also very slow at updating their website except when it comes to their own profits. I received the shipping payment invoice like immediately. But up til now (7 days) they have no updated my item’s tracking service. The website says it takes about 1-3 days to process it. Umm I see. because 7 is less than 3, I got ya, vpost.

Oh well, I will “endeavor” to call Singpost/Speedpost slowpost from now on.

By now you’d think that I have no more stories about the wonderful post office of Singapore. But you’d be wrong! A while back I received a letter from the post office saying that I have to go collect an item from them personally or something because they want to inspect it and they put the weapons and arms bureau and all that snazz on the letter. The item was a keychain. I understand, they think it looks like a weapon, so they wanna check it out, but here’s the extremely super duper clever part, they allowed this through:

But kept this one to inspect:

Which one looks sharper to you uh? Yeah I thought so too.

Anyway I got it collected and I understand their concerns with the item, it wasn’t even any trouble to collect it, just thought it made a funny story to showcase the stupidity of Singpost.