Wednesday, October 31, 2007

It's probably just me

A scary little story for you...

The property taxes are due on the house tomorrow. Yesterday Jim told me that he needed me to take care of a portion of it. (I would have liked a little more notice as to the dollar amount of my portion, but that's a different story.) So, he told me how much and I figured that instead of FedExing him a check, I could just send it directly to the town clerk, especially since it has to be sent Priority (not Standard), which FedEx guarantees for delivery by 4:30pm. (Uh, I guess when you're out in the boonies, 4:30 counts for early.) So, I call the town clerk for the street address (can't use PO boxes with FedEx), I writes me check, prepares me shipping label, and drops it off with the rest of the company FedEx packages.

I should tell you that my company allows us to ship personal stuff using their FedEx account so long as we reimburse them for the cost. Since a Priority letter costs about $6 with their account, this is way cheaper--and much more convenient--than using the Postal Service!

So fast forward to this afternoon. I go on to fedex.com to track the shipment and I see that it's been delivered--to another address. A residential address--4 miles up the road from the Town Office! A couple of blocks off the state road! WTF?!?!?!?!?!?

Now I'm starting to freak out. What's up with the f%&!@'n FedEx guy? This money's due tomorrow! How the f@&k are we going to get the check from this house to the town clerk? Could the FedEx tracking be so very wrong? So I try calling the Town Clerk's office. I get the voice mail. They normally close at 2 (shit!), but on Wednesday they have office hours from 5 to 7:30 (whew!). So now I gotta wait what feels like an eternity until they reopen.

At 5:10 I try calling. Busy signal. I hang up and try again. Busy. Busy for a good 10 eff'n minutes. And now I'm thinking "great, she's got the phone off the hook." Finally, it rings. The Town Clerk answers. I start to calmly tell her that I'm calling to confirm that they received my FedEx with a portion of our property taxes, and she says "Elizabeth [my last name]?, and I say "yes," and she says "a check for $XXX," and I say "Yes! I was concerned because the FedEx tracking said it was delivered to a different address," and she says "oh yes, they delivered it to my house."

Huh?

Yeah, apparently when the office is closed in the afternoon, the FedEx guy delivers town stuff to her house. WTF?!?!?!?

I don't get it. It must be a rural area thing., but I'm guessing that's what's always going to make me the city mouse.

Oh, and by the way--the name of the street she lives on is... Poverty Row.

The irony of this does not escape me.


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Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No it is not just you. We were in foreclosure a couple of months ago and when we sent the settlement agreement through FedEx they delivered the check to the wrong address. They couldn't even tell me what business they delivered to. Turns out they delivered it to a building that the mortgage company just bought but hasn't started using yet. All worked out and our house is now out of danger but it was a very long day...