In Praise of Drum Center Portsmouth
Son Nathaniel has become quite a decent drummer, with very little help from his dad. He’s got a set set up downstairs that he purchased with his own money. Cymbals? Well, he helps himself from dear old dad’s stash of brass. And he’s chosen my own personal favorite, a 16″ A Zildjian crash cymbal. (I think it’s the first ever cymbal I ever bought.) But that leaves my practice set without a small crash, so I’ve been watching for a deal.
After many months of searching, the Drum Center of Portsmouth had a 16″ paper thin Zilldjian crash on Reverb. It was the right price, so I bought it. I watched the tracking # with anticipation. It was slated to come on a Monday, but since I’m located so close to them I assumed USPS would probably get it to me faster than that. And sure enough, when it finally got into the system the delivery date got moved up two days. It would actually come on Friday. Cool.
Friday comes along, and I checked the tracking. The tracking has now moved backed to Monday. Uh, ok, I can live with that.
Monday comes. Package is delivered. I ask Nathaniel to grab the package, open it, take the cymbal and smash it, see if it sounds good, and report back to me. He tells me there’s no package. I check the tracking, and USPS says they delivered the package. Uh oh! Have porch pirates pilfered my package? Nathaniel says he didn’t look hard, but it wasn’t on the ground at the mailbox.
When I arrived home, I looked on the ground at the mailbox. No package. Uh. I open the mailbox for the rest of the mail, and there’s a package. It’s in an vinyl envelope, far too small to be a 16″ cymbal. It appears the drum shop has re-used the packaging, as there’s a label under my label. Odd, but maybe they’re trying to reduce-reuse-recycle. Thinking they made a mistake and sent me a t-shirt or something, I open the package. It’s a tens unit! I’m fairly certain a drum shop isn’t selling a muscle stimulation machine.
As I look things over, I notice the address label under mine. It’s from Togus, the VA hospital here in Maine. Now they might be sending a tens unit. I found the name on the address label on Facebook, and sent the fellow a message. He confirms he was expecting a package that day! Apparently what happened is the Drum Center of Portsmouth sent me a cymbal. Togus sent a soldier a tens unit. At the Scarborough USPS distribution center here in Maine (the spot where both packages would end up before going to the customer) the label from my cymbal somehow (ahem) ended up on someone else’s package. (I think an employee took my package, ripped the label off, and stuck it on some random package.) Since my label was on top, the package was delivered to me.
Whew! That was a lot! Now here’s where the praise of DCP comes in. I contacted them, and spoke with Crow. He quickly refunded my money. He opened a claim with USPS. He asked me to forward a photo of the package to him. And then… He provided me with a mailing label so I could mail the tens unit to the soldier who was expecting it! DCP had no responsibility to him. It was not their fault his package came to me. In reality, it should’ve been Togus’s responsibility to re-send a tens unit to their patient. But instead, DCP bought him a label so he could get his medical device more quickly. Thank you DCP for taking care of me, and for taking care of soldier who needed medical equipment. This is excellent customer service (to me) and gracious generosity to a non-customer. I’m happy to tell people about my experience.