Conversation on Messenger with Geneva Post Office.



ME

"My son, who lives in Japan, sent me a small package on 10 June. At the Tokyo post office, he was told that mail to Switzerland was very slow and that it would take weeks to get to me. I was surprised therefore, to see that it had departed from Japan on the following day (11 June). Arrived at the Geneva Post Office on 15 June, cleared through customs on the same day and is still there today (18 June) marked Sorting-Forwarding. Nobody picks up the phone on the information number. Item is *************** Help!"


GENEVA POST OFFICE
"Hi John, your shipment EG740310628JP has been sorted today and will be distributed to you shortly. With apologies for the delay. I wish you a nice day.


ME
"Thank you. Strange how items I bought from Amazon came directly to Founex (for delivery to my house) whereas my parcel from Japan has now gone all the way to Daillens! I live 20km from Geneva. Geneva-Daillens- Founex is 150 km!! Too bad for global warming."

I read up until Geneva, then it was all clear to me.
Always be vary when sending items from a highly efficient place to a developing region.

To cheer you up, husband got a package today which was ordered in February and refunded for non-delivery in April. Things from Asia either seem to arrive quickly or not, and sometimes sit in the sorting offices for ages.

Whenever I have something delivered by DHL, the tracking shows it arrive in Geneva, then it goes to Zürich.... then back to Geneva, before going out for delivery. Every time. Drives me bloody insane!!

Arriving Switzerland, clearing customs and being forwarded a few days later after a long weekend? Doesn't seem rant worthy.

While maybe a system similar to the pony express with a vast network of mailpeople shuttling letters from street corner to street corner might be more green to you, it is much more efficient to have just a few mail sorting facilities. It seems Switzerland has at least 4 of them.

I ordered a left-handed sushi knife for my son last year from Japan. It was in customs for about 5 days. Well worth it. He does good sushi.

They repacked it very nicely. And charged me 50CHF for the privilege.

I know this is a rant, but boy is that a First World Problem/white whine.

You do realize that all (western Switzerland) Swiss Post packages go through the same sorting office in Daillens, right? This is because it is way more business and environmentally efficient to run one big sorting facility like the way Fed Ex used to exclusively use Memphis for all of its operations. In fact, this is the innovative business model that allowed FedEx to become successful in the 1970s.

Otherwise you just spend ages driving individual packages around, which is not at all good for global warming. Instead your package went to Dalliens in a truck with 1000 others destined for many locations around Switzerland and came back with another 1000 all destined for Geneva. Your package’s share of the emissions is tiny, even if it went all the way there and back, and way way lower than the alternative. (Reality is often different than perception.)

The only reason Amazon avoids this in key urban areas is because they have a special deal with SwissPost whereby Amazon does most of the job themselves including the border/customs and Swiss Post may only do the final ‘last mile’ delivery. If you lived in Lausanne, all your Amazon packages would also always go through Daillens.

I ordered on April 20 a small and inexpensive item from the US that was immediately shipped. On the 26 of April it landed in Zurich ... and was only just delivered today. They’re probably not running at full capacity yet was my guess.

Fedex around the world:


Fedex in Geneva:

Every parcel that I've ever tracked goes to Daillens..

I've tracked a parcel from Morges > Nyon before, it arrived within 16 hours of ordering, next day but still the tracking said Daillens..

Does the stuff really go there or it's just a tracking codes for "it's being sorted"

That's actually not the place Daillens but Mrs. Daillens, a lady who's been employed by the post office for the last 35 years. She owns a large apartment somewhere near the center which has been used to sort out packages since the Zaian War.

Every Swiss radio program goes from whatever studio, to Zurich, and then to whichever transmitter, i.e. stuff from Ticino, Lausanne, etc. ALWAYS passes via Zurich (I know this since I personally designed the transmission systems, currently version #4, that they've used to do this since 1998).

Tom

I'm also annoyed that logistic companies don't have dedicated supply lines ideally to my house. If they put some jets around the world that would fly immediately when I order a package with free shipping, I could have all packages within 24 hours. I just cannot understand that they use distribution centers and mass-shipping instead. So inefficient for me.

You do realize Lib would be constantly hanging around your place, watching the planes land and take off in your drive-way.