Recycling absurdity

[jwg]

I ordered some HDMI cables via Amazon the other day and when trying to track the package I discovered that it was picked up in New Jersey on May 2, 2008 and delivered to some place in Alexandria, VA on Oct 24, 2006!

Since I don't think that UPS runs a time machine I called them up to find out the status - they said it should be delivered tomorrow (I believe that when I ordered it it was supposed to be today).

Their explanation was that they recycle tracking numbers. Why would anyone do something so absurd? UPS Tracking numbers have 18 letters and numbers in them. That should be enough for few 100 million years.

Comments

[rsc.livejournal.com]

And even if they have some plausible reason for reusing the numbers, you'd think they'd clear the associated data first.