Way back in June or sometime thereabouts, I pre-ordered the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD from Amazon.com. Shortly thereafter, I moved into a new house. In the intervening time, I ordered many, many things from Amazon and had them shipped to my new address. I updated my Amazon account with the new address and removed—or so I had thought—all traces of the old.

And yet, when Amazon shipped my DVDs via US mail on October 21st, they shipped them to the old address. On October 23rd, the US Post Office in Beaverton, Oregon (where I used to live) received the package and noticed that I had filed a change of address form with them and that my mail was being forwarded to my new address, which is also in Beaverton. Therefore, they promptly shipped my package to Richmond, California to be processed. Today, October 27th, my package departed from Richmond, California with an unknown destination. Most likely Cleveland. I imagine all packages go to Cleveland when they die.

Meanwhile, every time I walk through any store I pass by big prominent display cases containing hundreds of the very DVDs I ordered, and I feel like someone who has stood in line for three hours at an amusement park ride only to get to the front just as the ride is shut down for repairs.

Thanks, USPS. Thanks, Amazon. Oh, and by the way, don’t bother ever sending that copy of Quicksilver I pre-ordered two years ago. I bought it from Borders instead.

Update: The latest status on the USPS tracking page says that my DVDs have been returned to the sender because the addressee “failed to claim the item”. Sigh. I thought the mail was something that got delivered to you, not something you had to drive to California and claim.