Unfortunately, it has become pretty normal.
Here’s the itinerary of a package (not chips, but worth ~$350) I recently ordered.
- The shipper mailed it out from his post office about an hour away from me.
- Then it was shipped to a distribution center about 1.25 hours away from me.
- Then it was shipped to another distribution center about an hour away from me (not the original one).
- Then it was shipped to yet another distribution center 3.5 hours and several states away from me.
- Then it was shipped to a post office in that distant state.
- Then it went back to the distribution center in that distant state.
- Then after I filed a complaint/inquiry, it quickly wen back to the second distribution center about 1.25 hours away from me.
- Then it went to my local post office, and finally to me.
Had I known, I could have driven one hour to the shipper and back the same day and gotten it right away. Instead it took about 10 days of USPS bouncing this around pointlessly. (Note: The shipping label had my correct address including ZIP.)
As for having no reason to suspect the seller... Well, the reason might that not one but *two* boxes arrived full of paper instead of chips. And neither box apparently had any obvious sign of tampering.
And to repeat myself: The chances that some random postal worker is going to happen to randomly select these two boxes looking for goodies to steal and say
WHOA HEY, PAULSON POKER CHIPS, I LOVE PAULSONS, I’M SO TAKING THESE THEN FILLING THE BOXES WITH REAMS OF BLANK PAPER AND SURGICALLY RESEALING THEM is less than 1/100th of 1% imho.