A Glitch in the System? It is not a story you hear every day, of course. Seth Horvitz, a District of Columbia resident, wanted a flat-panel television. Like many consumers, he searched online. And like many of those online consumers, he found what he was looking for through Amazon, and placed the order. Something went wrong: Seth Horvitz ordered a flat-panel TV through an Amazon.com third-party vendor, but when his package came in the mail, its contents shocked him. Instead of a TV, the DCist.com blog reports Horvitz was surprised by a Sig Sauer SIG716, which is semi-automatic assault rifle. Horvitz said he immediately contacted the seller and reported the delivery to the Metropolitan Police Department. Horvitz did the right thing because it would have been a crime for him to carry an assault rifle through the city to the United Parcel Service (UPS) store to ship it back to the Amazon seller. It's not just that D.C. has tough gun laws - it's also against UPS' terms to ship automatic weapons. The company's terms state: "UPS does not accept automatic weapons, including machine guns, for shipment." A spokesperson for UPS declined to comment on Horvitz's claims or what method the company uses screens for potential violations. (Chenda Ngak) Being the sort of snafu that is not adequately covered by a simple, "Whoops", the question of just what went wrong has yet to be answered. According to Benjamin Freed of the blog DCist, Seth Horvitz said the situation confused local police: "They've never seen anything quite like it." His wife, Seeta, was mortified. Neighbor David Cole described her reaction as, "basically 'get that out of here now.'" Freed also reports that the $2,100 rifle was intended for a Pennsylvania gun shop. It is also worth noting that UPS left the box sitting in the hallway outside Horvitz's apartment. Amazon is remaining tight-lipped, though one might expect the company will want to know a bit more about what happened before saying anything; UPS, likewise, is declining comment. ____________________ Notes: Ngak, Chenda. "Amazon customer receives gun instead of TV". CBS News. August 9, 2012. CBSNews.com. August 10, 2012. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-57490026-501465/amazon-customer-receives-gun-instead-of-tv/ Freed, Benjamin R. "D.C. Resident Orders TV on Amazon, Receives Gun Instead". DCist. August 8, 2012. DCist.com. August 10, 2012. http://dcist.com/2012/08/dc_resident_orders_tv_amazon_delive.php
It's a good thing for the shipper that it was neither an automatic weapon, or a machine gun. This rifle was perfectly legal to be shipped by UPS.
Back when I used to have a job that involved shipping and receiving, our UPS driver advised us to take the extra step of taping the UPS labels to the boxes. He said that they will often come off, and then the drivers have to try and guess which box they go on. In this case, his label was placed over the correct one - I have to wonder if someone did that to cover for stealing a television? If I had been him, I would have reboxed it, and called UPS and informed them of the mistake.
So the big problem here is the missing TV. Either it's in lost and found, or it's stolen. Either way, UPS is liable to get the TV to him. That was the only mistake, apparently. And yes, labels and airbills do disappear, that's why there needs to be stuff inside the box too, so that when they have to open it up to investigate, there's a clue to where it needs to go.
A Glitch in the System? Sometimes bad things do happen - like our war with Iraq for Nuclear materiels...
A missing TV isn't why this made national news. Were supposed to get breathless over the idea that a rifle was left at this guy's front door. Never mind that it was not assembled, nor was there any ammo present, assuming someone went to the bother of assembling it. I have to feel sorry for the intended recipient; who knows what sort of hoops they will have to jump through to get the DC Police to ship their rifle to them. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if it were to be caught forever in some sort of Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare from which there is no escape. I guess in that case, UPS will be on the hook to reimburse them for the rifle's value.
I realize that if he had gotten a toaster instead, it would have been a pointless story. But given the last few weeks, a gun being involved makes it a story. The TV is still missing, right? Or is that so much of a bore that they don't bother covering it. I'm sure now that the rifle is in the hands of police, that's the main question left to this guy. News article commentary (which shouldn't ever be read, I know) has even suggested the guy was doing something suspicious, since he opened the package first. Are gun boxes really labeled that obvious, and if it was, then why would UPS have left an obvious gun on the doorstep? Or TV, for that matter? Again, UPS handled the thing badly, even if the gun wasn't the news.
Per UPS, firearms are to be shipped in "plain, brown wrappers": http://www.ups.com/content/us/en/resources/ship/packaging/guidelines/firearms.html The recipient couldn't know what it was without opening it, though it's pretty obvious that he knew it was not the television he was expecting. The driver had no reason to suspect anything was wrong. I could be wrong, but if the recipient had called UPS, and told them that he not only did not receive his television, but that the delivery driver had dropped off a rifle that is illegal in the city of Washington DC, they probably would have had a driver over to his home right away.
