My Nightmare with Pony Express

Hello everyone!

I had a terrible experience with Pony Express, a courier service that left me speechless.

I've dealt with a dozen or so courier services in my life, but this one takes the cake. Russian Post looks like a paradise compared to this nightmare.

How it all started

It all began with a lot of weirdness and greed.

When I placed my latest order on iherb, I discovered that my go-to delivery option, Boxberry, was only available with an extra fee, while the free option was this weird 'Global Air Locker with Tracking' thing.

I'd heard some negative stuff about Pony Express before, and I wouldn't have chosen it myself. But somehow, when I was checking out, my chosen Global Air Locker turned into Pony Express, despite it not being listed as a free option at the time. Yeah, it was a real mess.

At first, everything was business as usual - the package was tracked, and the updates were coming in regularly. That was until Pony Express decided to enter the scene.

On June 30th, after the package arrived in St. Petersburg and was presumably handed over to Pony Express, things started to get weird.

The tracking info is displayed in some kind of tracking system I've never seen before - it's confusing. I mean, shouldn't it be in chronological order? Or at least the opposite?

Nope, first it shows the 'current' status, and then the timeline, with the older date coming after the newer one.

If the tracker is to be believed, the delivery was supposed to be on July 1st. But on July 1st, despite the recipient being home all day and the phone being on, neither a text nor a call came, and of course, no courier showed up.So, I decided to dig deeper the next day, and what did I find?

Okay, okay, let's give them another day.But nope, on the next day, I was met with complete silence - no call, no text, no courier.

I was hoping to get some answers, so I headed to their official website to see if their customer support could help me out. And that's when the adventure began...

The call

I tried calling the number listed on the website a whopping 11 times.

The first few times, after selecting the next option, the call would just get dropped.

Then, I finally managed to get through... not to an operator, but to a voice bot that cheerfully read me the same info I could get from the tracker and offered me a choice:

1) Read the info again

2) Connect to an operator

I had to answer 'yes' or 'no' to each question.

And yeah, I wish I'd recorded it.

I was surprised by how well the system handled my initial 'no' response, but when I tried to answer 'yes' to the second question, it got rejected multiple times with a comment that basically said 'I don't understand what you're trying to say.' I guess the bot can only handle answers that allow the call to be completed. After a few notifications that basically said 'I'm not getting it,' the system told me to go fill out a form on the website and hung up.

So, I'm sitting here, trying to get through to someone, and it's like that old joke about 'do you want to hear a story?' I'm on call after call, screaming into the phone 'yes, yes, YES, DA, DA, DA!' But, unfortunately, that response seems to be programmed to only work a certain number of times.

Trying to contact them through the website

But that wasn't the end of it.

After getting nowhere with the phone, I decided to try and contact them through the website. Yeah, good luck with that.

It just led to me getting frustrated and wanting to throw my laptop at the wall. Every time I tried to submit my request, the website would give me an error message, saying I needed to fill out all the required fields with stars next to them (which, of course, I had already done). And to make matters worse, it would highlight the entire form with my message in red, as if I was the one who was confused.

After banging away at the keyboard for what felt like the 18th time (yes, I'm persistent – I had to reopen and refill out the form every time), I finally managed to submit my request. But after waiting a few hours for a response that never came (not even a confirmation email), I decided to call again.

This time, I got lucky and was transferred to an operator on the 5th try. Yay!

The nice lady checked my information and politely told me that yes, 'your shipment was added to the delivery list on July 1st, but it wasn't sent.' Huh?

Why was the delivery status still saying 'unsuccessful delivery attempt' because the recipient wasn't available? If the courier never even got the package?

When I asked her when I could expect the courier to arrive today (since the tracking info said it should be delivered the next day, July 2nd), she told me that there wouldn't be a courier and couldn't be one, because the package wasn't even added to the delivery list.

??????!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, basically, you can just ignore all the nonsense on the website about the delivery status, because it has absolutely nothing to do with reality.

To get any actual information, you need to be patient and have a lot of stress tolerance.

And finally, the cherry on top.

The company doesn't even bother to protect their customers' personal data. Not at all.

The package was ordered by my dad, and I called customer support from a different phone number, obviously. But they just went ahead and gave me all the information, including the recipient's name, address, and phone number, without even asking me a single question. And to make matters worse, they offered to let me change or update the address and phone number, even though I hadn't provided any of that information except for the order number.

I have to say, when the delivery guy showed up, I ended up opening the door instead of my dad. He looked pretty stern and asked for my dad's last name, which I gave him, and then he just dropped off the package and left.

He didn't ask for my passport or anything, and it seemed like he didn't care who actually received the package as long as he got the last name right.

So, in theory, anyone could just use the tracking number to get their hands on the stuff you paid for, as long as they're willing to hassle with customer support.

My final verdict

Good luck dealing with this guy!

P.S. I did finally get a response via email, by the way. How's that for a response time?

It's funny, the email said they 'should' have delivered it. Normal, right? Guess not.

At this point, it's a mystery who owes what to whom, but one thing's for sure - this company is moving at a snail's pace and seems to be missing a few key components, including a functioning head.

Thanks to everyone who stopped by! Hope my review was helpful.