Ambitious SNES Preservation Project Ends After $10,000 Of Rare Carts Get Lost In The Mail

USPS who in hell uses USPS? this is so sad really

Damn, so much lost, it will likely end up in the hands of some fool who doesn't know what he has.

Hello, Newman. 😒

Lol. Why only insure it to travel through Europe but not all the way to its final destination

Boy, I do find the header amusing, but I don't wish to seem mailvolent by laughing! But yeah, that sucks.

Well, that's going to hike up the prices of rare games even more!

Poor Collector

For something as valuable as that what a daft decision it was to send by normal mail. Spend the extra $20 or so for full tracking and ensuring the package arrives within 2 or 3 days. Whoevers idea it was to send them the way they did is the one responsible.

I'm envisaging a similar situation to drunken Dylan Cuthbert on a bike with the N64 prototype documents.

Dumb as hell. Not taking out the proper insurance is just stupid. Couldn't he have sent each game individually too?

Doh.

That thumbnail tho

Wow.

PAL copies of Mega Man games? That's rare enough as is....

ugh that is terrible and that collection must have been worth so much......

FEDEX for christ sake !

Bravo for the Newman photo, made me laugh out loud

ohhh man. Set up a crowdfund Byuu, many enthusiasts like myself will chip in. Im a fan of your work and the preservation mission is vital in my opinion.

Man I wish nintendo would release a full catalogue of remade carts, they can even mark them on the back as official replicas and let the joy be spread again.

I was really sad o learn byuu gave up on this. Most people are not aware and don't care that a lot of SNES roms files on the internet are not pure dumps, they have glitches and bugs that are not present in the actual cartridge ROM, mostly due to the precarious dump methods of the past. Preserving the original, final code is something not even the original authors of the games believed to be of importance to safe keep these games for future generations, this is why byuu's work was very important and it's a shame that of all things it was the Postal Services that messed this whole process so badly.

@HappyMaskedGuy What madness!!! Instead of one large parcel, you would have 100 tiny ones! What are the chances of many of those not getting to its destination?!

I have them. I want $5,000 deposited in a Cayman Islands account before I safely return them.

When you send things like this, you always send with DHL or UPS.
Atleast with DHL, its insured worldwide. As a bonus, shipment is express.

Man, and he's making good on it to the sender...

This guy is solid. I hope they turn up so he's not paying all that money.

Why didn't they do it the other way. Send the owner of the games a unit which could be used to rip the roms? Those are gonna be cheaper and easier to replace than those games.

Or even find someone close to the games owner who could rip stuff?

I've sent stuff from US and Japan to myself in the UK and I some of those have been large expensive items. But I always make sure it's insured and if I can keep it with me while travelling instead I will.

As for if I would send anything from my collection to someone else? Hell no. You want to see it or use it you either come to me or I bring it to you.

If only hindsight could help any bit there'd be so many options to choose from

Inside job.
Someone knows someone, trust no one Mulder.
EBay will have a listing of 100 rare pal releases soon.

Feel so bad for the collector, that would be my worst nightmare.
All that time and devotion, such a waste.

@HappyMaskedGuy Easier and less costly to send in bulk than individually.

Doh.

I read this on Eurogamer earlier in the week, and there are numerous links in the comments there to articles about this Byuu guy and his quest to create a highly accurate SNES emulator, why it's important and why these clean ROM dumps are needed despite ROMs for SNES games existing all over the internet. I found it a fascinating read, here's the link for anyone interested:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/

It would be great if this emulator + byuu's clean ROM dumps of the SNES library made it to Nintendo's SNES Mini! Obviously I'm dreaming considering it requires a 3Ghz CPU, but fun to imagine nonetheless.

Ouch. I would have had this insured up the wazoo all the way. I suspect someone possibly tampered with the package and decided to help themselves, although they can't use the games easily in the US anyhow. I'd say keep an eye out on eBay just in case.

Sad news, but good to know. I import a lot from USA and have no idea about the shipping companies out there.

You know somebody kept them...

What the ... Imagine getting the package per mistake... Well hope this project will someday come true.

From what I'm reading, it's probable that the carts are still in New Jersey, going through customs.

Two Weeks Later

The SNES Restoration Project has been Revived

That was quick.

Should have sent them in maybe four different packages, not all at once in one or two packages. The USPS isn't exactly renowned for it's high quality large shipment endeavors for most of it's package stream, so this would have been an unusual request for them. Also, like Poochy mentioned, getting all those carts through US customs post 9/11 is going to activate some trap cards, to make sure there's no bombs or anything.

Too bad to see this happen... Hagane in particular is a rarity from Blockbuster. Not as rare as, say, the Donkey Kong Country 1995 Tournament Edition cart from Blockbuster (I have a functioning one), but still potentially a loss, nonetheless. Hopefully they turn up later, they're still out there somewhere, if not still in customs...

When you control the mail you control...... emulation.

@AlbertXi I use USPS... I don't want one of the first big national mail systems on the planet to be usurped by soulless, monopolistic corporate behemoths, so I don't use UPS, FedEx, etc. whenever possible. (Although it's the workers who make using USPS worthwhile, not the leadership!)

@Hikingguy It's possible to get tracking on shipments, though, so if it doesn't leave one of the way points, it would single that one out and eventually lead to who ever was responsible being ratted out.

...At least, assuming they bought that service. If not, then it's the US collector's fault for cheaping out and not ensuring the process would be completed, to the best of their ability.

I read about this a few days ago, it seems a better method would be for byuu to fly to Europe and backup all of the games there. I understand the frustration of USPS loosing a package, but once had one just arrive very late (three weeks past expected date), so there's still hope it could arrive.

This is unfortunate.

That being said, I too have wondered about the method used to ship the carts (the carrier, lack of insurance, and size of package).

I also wondered why not find a partner in Europe to do the PAL cart dumps there.

I doubt anyone stole it for money. Where would you sell this?

This pains me to hear. Reminds me of the guy who recently had his entire rare book collection stolen by thieves. Hopefully the package turns up. Also, hopefully they learned not to send anything in the mail. haha

@subpopz A box of 50 or 100 SNES carts is pretty sizeable. Each one has to be scanned to make sure they don't contain explosives, post 9/11. This puts quite an unusual burden on USPS, compared to instead sending, for example, four boxes of 25 carts. USPS packages can also be tracked, so if they used at least First Class/Expedited shipping, instead of Standard/Economy/Meh shipping, this issue probably would have been avoided. I would fault the US collector rather than the mail service, in this case.

@subpopz Yeah, just adding in my thoughts.

I don't know how this archive process works but was there not some way he could get the sender in Europe to take the data from the cartridges themselves and send that instead? Either over the internet or in a much cheaper jiffy bag of USB sticks...it's 2017 damn it we don't need to send physical items around the world if the data is all you're after. That's what the internet is for.

I guess hindsight is a wonderful thing and I honestly have no idea how plausible it would have been to just send data and not actual cartridges.

Story needs to be updated. Package was stolen by USPS. Spread the word. https://www.reddit.com/r/emulation/comments/5uckkd/100_snes_pal_game_shipment_update_package_was/

@zip That's not confirmed yet. That's what the receiver thinks is what happened. He needs to contact the applicable Postmaster(s). As one of the comments on that post mentioned, they don't screw around with this. It would be stupid to steal a package in such a manner. They would be busted sooner or later.

Looking at the actual wording of the USPS letter, it sounds like the sender in Europe may have overwrapped the package. The receiver in the US should have told them not to overwrap it, and send the carts in three or four smaller packages, rather than one or two larger packages, with at least First Class shipping on each.

The receiver is making a lot of assumptions here, and immediately calling for Patreon donations makes the receiver's conduct even worse. Make 100% certain of what happened before jumping to conclusions.

Nintendo step in and help this project!!

Ten thousand dollars will buy a lot of good will among gamers!

Also, you could have a copy of the ROMs for future virtual console!!

@PlywoodStick Please stop. Don't even begin with this. Everyone with basic common sense will conclude that the games were stolen.

@zip "Common sense" is not proof. Do they have absolute proof that's what happened? If not, then they need to contact the applicable Postmaster(s) and postal inspector(s) to determine what really happened, then take the appropriate steps to resolve the situation. If even that doesn't work, they can contact the Postmaster General. Getting all jumpy isn't going to help.

@PlywoodStick So do you actually believe the post machine ate all 100 games since a month and nobody noticed a thing?

@zip That's an automated message, a human didn't make that up and write that. If they really think a person wrote that as some kind of trick or treat joke to get some old game carts, then the receiver really doesn't know what's going on. That's why he needs to investigate what really happened.

@AlbertXi You can't really choose the parcel service inside the US when you send something from here over the Atlantic. You can only choose the service that will ship the package from Germany to the US border - for example DHL - but everything after that is not in your hands anymore.
Although I have to say every time I ordered something from ebay.com to Germany, they usually offered USPS (for the shipping to the US border, after that it's DHL again) so I always assumed it was very common in the US.

I sell a lot of stuff online and buy a lot online, and I have to say that one of the worst mail systems I have ever dealt with has got to be USPS. Hopefully they find this package, because that is truly a terrible thing to happen.

@MegaVel91 And clearly effective yeah?
Go ferment your passive aggressive BS elsewhere buddy boy

@Damo I don't think all 100 games were rare. Maybe at most a couple were.
The owner had 400 PAL games (out of an estimated ~530 game library) and was lending them 100 at a time.

Still, there's definitely going to be a few people watching for PAL SNES games on ebay from a US seller. (which is quite unusual since there's very little demand in the US for PAL games, aside from perhaps the few exclusives like Terranigma)

Not for nothing if you ship anything that valuable never use the USPS. UPS or Fedex would have had no problems.

For a high value item using USPS, let alone 1st class is just a really really poor decision. Not getting full insurance is an even worse decision (thought getting insurance claims back from USPS is a horrible horrible process.) I didn't trust my N3DS charging cradle thorugh 1st class and paid expedited from Japan. Why would nobody do at least that for thousands of dollars of rare collectibles, let alone UPS/FedEx?

I think the sender who entrusted their product to a low quality service ultimately made the error here. They're not to blame for it going wrong, but they made the mistake by taking the giant risk.

Not sure why anybody is blaming the recipient. He didn't pack and ship it that service, and if he said it would be ok, it's still the shipper that chose to do it.

@shani That's just what the shippers are offering you. UPS/FedEx (and DHL) are all available in DE, but you have to ship it from UPS/FedEx, not the Deutche Post (who owns DHL.)

Here in the States, we treat USPS as the last resort most of the time. It's the government mail system, it's always 1930 in there, and is infamous for its unreliability and terrible, terrible staff (not the delivery people but the counter staff and sorting facilities.) The big thing is it's cheap, and it's usually WAY cheaper than UPS/FedEx. So you'll see that offered by many shippers and the only option on lower cost items as any other carrier would be USD $50+ for international shipping. So if you're ordering a game or accessory or something it's worth the risk for the big cost savings. If you're ordering a console, or thousands of dollars of collectibles, nonononono, absolutely no, it's worth the $50+ in shipping to get it done right.

But at a minimum getting an expedited service is trackable and insured and usually works out pretty well. And in the US, Priority Mail has actually become fairly decent since they're treating it more like UPS does. First class is "dartboard service". You throw darts to determine if it will ever be seen again after it leaves your hands. But hey, it's only a few dollars!

Maybe they just fell between the mailman's seat like from Christmas Vacation..

@NEStalgia Ah, that explains why USPS was offered in all those Ebay auctions (usually smaller, less expensive items, but also smartphones) and why it was so much cheaper (like ~20$ cheaper, IIRC) than the other options if there were any. I didn't know it could be that terrible (funny thing with the "dartboard service" ^^).

But what you wrote makes sense, to ship the items with UPS from here in the first place. The thing is, while UPS does exist here, it's not nearly as common as DHL (which is the #1) or even Hermes (the #2 - although it has a bad reputation, I never had a problem with them), GLS (not that common) or DPD (really unreliable).
The same goes for FedEx.

I wouldn't even know where I could ship something with UPS or FedEx. I think they do have parcel shops, but I've never seen any.

I'm sorry, but they're idiots for trusting the US Postal Service for something so valuable. They lose, misplace and mis-ship items constantly.

UPS next time! Don't be cheap with shipping when the goods are invaluable!!!

Should have gone with FedEx.

@shani Not that there aren't horror stories from every parcel company (the infamous videos of the FedEx driver throwing a PC monitor over a fence and calling it delivered) and lost or damaged packages sometimes from all of them, but the difference is when you get one of the big companies it's one rogue delivery driver that threw a fit on the job. There's patterns with USPS that you often hear of similar accounts of delivery people sticking the mail bag in a storm sewer, or tossing it in the woods to get rid of it because they wanted to go home. And they're down to using subcontractors that amount to "guy with a van" often enough for delivery. It's just a pretty low budget service all the way round.

There's some ugly politics involved that are shorting them for cash though, where Congress likes to use them as a bank to take money from to plug their spending in other areas, so while the USPS is a joke, I feel a little bad mocking them because not all of it is their own fault (though some of it is...) I get a laugh every time they complain about the internet creating a crisis for them because nobody sends letters anymore, as though they missed the whole invention of the telephone last century, and as though online shopping hasn't multiplied their parcel business 2000%.

The real fun is when you need to actually GO to the post office though. The counter staff could not possibly be more disinterested. And they're the same from location to location like they're made in a factory. Usually there's one person who's highly professional and doing all the work, and 4 people standing around watching them avoiding any and all work moving like sloths. And you feel bad because you know that one person doing all the work isn't making any more money than the 4 doing nothing.

Generally if I have a return to a retailer or an RMA or something, I skip the "free" (which usually USPS) returns label and opt to provide my own shipping and send it out UPS if it's something other than a cheap item. "Free" can be waaay too expensive

That's surprising though that UPS & FedEx locations aren't more common there. They present themselves here like they're all over every city in every country. Which for delivery they are, but I'm surprised it's hard to send with them. I know here in addition to their own stores/depots, they also partner with office supply stores, so, if there's any of those around, they might take packages.

*Disclaimer that I've actually been having reliable service for the past year or so with Priority....but while I've had maybe 8 missing or delayed packages, ever from the commercial carriers, I've had maybe 30 or 40 from USPS. And we won't talk about the ones that were ripped half open by what could only have been a Godzilla like beast by all appearances

@NEStalgia That's interesting, a lot of what you wrote can be applied to Germany as well. The counter staff at Deutsche Post behaves quite similar to what you described about your post offices. What's also striking is that almost all of their staff are old people, which is very unusual for any service provider.
And there are a lot of similarities regarding the staff in each post office, almost as if they were robots or 'from the same factoriy', as you put it. And there's always the odd young guy/girl putting in more effort than the others.^^ But the rest of them are very slow and at the same time act very entitled, as if they were doing a great and important job.
I always assumed this attitude was a relic from the past when they were still public servants (back when the Post still belonged to the state) but it seems like this is just the general work ethic of people in post offices.

What you wrote about contractors with USPS also sounds familiar with the situation at Hermes here. Their parcel deliverers are private contractors as well and some - not all - of them don't put in a lot of effort (like leaving the package on the stairs although they're not allowed to do that; or in the case of GLS, they don't even ring your bell but drive directly to a shop to leave the package there). Though I'm pretty certain they're just under immense pressure because Hermes pays them a low salary while expecting them to make a lot of deliveries. So they probably don't have a lot of time to spend per package.
Luckily, most free RMA labels are DHL-labels here. But even when I had RMA labels from Hermes, the return arrived safely at the retailer. From my experience the problems with services like Hermes are mostly regional, but I'd assume it's become worse since Hermes doesn't pay their contractors nearly as much as DHL pays its staff.

Hehe, it doesn't surprise me that UPS and FedEx present themselves like that. ^^ Everyone wants to appear globally active nowadays, as if that meant something. BTW, since DHL does that too, how common are they in the States?
One of my friends actually works (or worked) as a driver for UPS and he said they pay quite handsomely. Maybe UPS and FedEx are just more active in the B2B sector in Germany, that would explain why they're almost invisible here.

I know we're straying extremely off-topic here, but I find it very interesting to learn about these things about other countries, mostly because usually you don't hear or learn about them unless you actually live in that specific country.

@shaneoh

Damn right.

@shani Haha, that's really interesting! So the sloth and entitlement of postal employees is apparently some fundamental part of human nature that transcends culture and language. There goes my image of DP as an efficient, business-like postal service, right out the window!

Though maybe it is a relic of the government-job mentality there, since here the USPS is still a government entity. Or, it's a quasi-government entity. Officially it is, however they pride themselves on not actually being tax payer funded and operating as a business on their own (and then the rest of government keeps taking their money to apply to other things.)

It's frightening how much of a cookie cutter template all the delivery services seem to be no matter where you are! Although not delivering the package at all and taking it to a store is pretty awful...it's kind of the opposite of a delivery service

DHL comes and goes. I see their trucks fairly often, but here, they pretty much specialize in ONLY international shipments, so they're either delivering stuff coming in from elsewhere or picking stuff up to go elsewhere. They did try starting up a full US service 10 or 15 years ago to compete with UPS and FedEx, they built this huge fleet of mustard yellow delivery trucks and airplanes and even ran a Super Bowl commercial that was pretty neat with a UPS and FedEx truck stopped at either side of a railroad crossing having to wait for a huge freight train loaded with mustard yellow DHL cargo containers. And...then nothing. The service kind of fizzled and they must have lost a fortune. But they're still around as a pretty big import/export service aimed mostly at business. And they also have a service where they deliver things to the post office to be delivered by USPS to houses. I've had a lot of Amazon packages that start as DHL and end as USPS.

Yeah FedEx, though they do a lot of consumer stuff too, is probably more associated with B2B here as well, though not as much as DHL. And UPS is pretty much everywhere, they're really enormous here.

Technically USPS is the biggest since they have to cover absolutely everywhere and probably still handle the most volume by being the cheapest. But a lot of online retailers don't use them at all for anything not going overseas.

Hehe, it's surprisingly on-topic for an article about USPS losing an import shipment. More on-topic than most of the Switch related threads have been going! I agree, it's really interesting to hear about these kinds of things from elsewhere. You always get the marketing image but never hear about how it really works on a daily basis somewhere else!

@NEStalgia Hehe, you're right, it's not as off-topic as I thought.

It's interesting to see that DHL overseas fills a role quite similar to UPS here (trying to get a foothold in general but then giving up and specializing instead), because if I'm not mistaken UPS does a lot EU-wide shipping as well. But I think in that area DHL is still more active in Europe. The others like GLS and Hermes also pride themselves on operating EU-wide, but I'm not quite sure how active they really are in the other countries.

Oh I didn't know USPS was a (quasi-)government entity, that would explain a lot. ^^ Although I'm generally not against nationalization, because there are other examples of privatized companies that got a lot worse.
For example, everyone hates the Deutsche Bahn, the former state-owned rail transport service. To optimize profits, they spend as little as possible on their railroad network so that it barely works. Which means the trains have to drive slower to be safe. That's why DB is infamous for being late. And every time when the railroad freezes during winter or when the air-conditioning inside the (overcrowded) trains fail in summer so that people pass out and have to go the hospital, DB's standard reaction is "Oh, we didn't think that would happen, it took us by surprise!"
Sure, it's not as bad as in third world countries, but definitely worse than in other European countries that I've visited. They're a really unorganized bunch - talk about the international bias of Germans always being on time and well organized.
Recently, they've got more competitors, but the DB still has a monopoly and reluctantly lets its railroads to smaller competitors.
Similarly, our ex state-owned Telekom (T-Mobile is part of them) also has a bad reputation regarding stationary phone and internet access. Although they don't have a monopoly anymore, they still own the last part of the DSL line (the part where it connects to the houses) and are infamous for messing things up for their competitors. Like, you order internet with a different company and the Telekom technician who has to come to your house to activate the line might postpone the appointment or not show up or make up some reason why he can't activate it right now. It's gotten better because of consumer protection laws and because cable is becoming more common.
But still, you won't find many people who have anything good to say about our former state-owned companies. ^^

Just another reason why the ever in-debt, always inefficient USPS needs to be defunded and sold.

usps is over payed.
theyve been sending packages to the wrong addresses lately around here.
honestly would anyone here want me to show up on yer porch asking for my package?

@shaneoh Or worse, some greedy fool who DOES know. These two need to be watching eBay.

That sucks. I ship USPS all the time and I never had any problems where I am at. I hope they had insurance.

@AlbertXi The USPS is better than the competition at least. You get good prices, a reasonable range of delivery times, Saturday deliveries and at no extra charge, and no requirement to be present for delivery (which also means no searching around for rare hard-to-find branch offices that are closed all weekend and have ridiculously early closing times even on weekdays if you can't be present).

@HappyMaskedGuy No thanks, I like where I ferment my so-called passive aggressive BS just fine. : P

How about you instead peddle your own BS elsewhere, and take your alcohol with you?

@shani Hehe, yeah our nationalized entities usually go the other way around, or are kind of stuck in an in between. Generally we don't do nationalization at all aside from USPS and one railroad (Amtrak), but unofficially we have these big semi-regulated monopolies or duopolies that while not officially government, effectively are, as they pretty much collude directly together. So it's one of those things that we all know it's a private company and we also know they're tied at the hip with government.

Railroads are an interesting one for me, since I'm kind of a railfan. (I'll always be mad that 2K Games ruined Railroad Tycoon on PC! ) I'm pretty surprised to hear that DB has gone so downhill. I'm not TOO familiar with them, but I have some amount of familiarity due to the fact that a lot of model train manufacturers happen to be German, and thus their catalogues are always filled with DB models, and I have a habit of researching the history of things when I see them, so I've read their history somewhat I've always heard about how much better trains are in Europe than here (though I've heard from some people that work in the rail industry that it really isn't, that a lot of safety features get shortcuts taken) but what you describe of DB sounds a lot like what one of our big (private) RR's in the 70's turned into as it spiraled into oblivion, the Penn Central. The collapse of that company led to the creation of Conrail and Amtrak that were nationalized RR's. Amtrak still exists (with USPS-like questionable service in some places, great service in others, and the same questionable air conditioning you described of DB!), while Contrail (freight only) got spun off back into a number of private RRs once things became stable. Our passenger rail right now is pretty spotty. Freight rail is actually doing great. It's consolidated into only 4 or so major companies, and most of the small ones are gone, but it's been successful and stable for a long time. Passenger....we've really lost so much passenger rail. Amtrak is solid in the northeast, and owns their own track, but outside the NE, they lease track from a lot of freight RRs. Freight rail isn't built for speed or smoothness, and trains often get delayed for an hour or more because it had to wait for a huge freight train to pass first. That's for long inter-city trains. Intra-city is usually run by some municipal transit agency that more often than not does a horrible job. And most of the small and light rail has vanished entirely.

I'm going to guess that the problem with rail in DE is the same as in the US, and is why it's different from the rest of the EU: The prominence of the auto industry there. Here the auto industry back in the 60's did everything they could to sabotage small rails (competed with selling cars, parts, tires, so they used their power to buy them all up and shut them down, and government regulated rail far more than auto, and applied highway construction taxes to rail, etc. effectively taxing rails to pay for their competitors to replace them.) Since DE's the only other place with such a huge and powerful car industry (well, and Japan but their structure is SO different) I bet the pattern of it eroding rail was similar there!

If you have an interest in railroads and want to watch how bad bad can get, google around for Penn Central. It got REALLY bad to the point they had trains going 10MPH (8KPH or so?) or slower and would wobble back and forth on roadbeds made of mud, and freight derailments were a weekly occurrence. Somehow government was surprised when the company announced they were closing. It was the first "too big to fail" company failing. The effect of it rippled through big business worldwide as it was once one of the most powerful companies. Technically Penn Central was a merger of two companies that were already dead. The merger just took two bankrupt companies and made one really big bankrupt company that was internally at war with itself. I remember some of the track they left behind on rails around here....it was like riding a snow sled on gravel and swayed like a fishing boat in a monsoon Thankfully that track has all been replaced and is nice now, but it took decades to rebuild their decades of neglect! A lot of that track was left over from the 1920s! It's a funny, but sad thing to watch.

Phone companies..that's a whole different mess... Sounds fairly par there too, though at least DT only tries to interfere with theircompeitors customers. Here, there's a few regional monopolies (AT&T some places, Verizon some places, etc.) Generally they don't make their own appointments to install their own services. I was telling ThanosRexx the other day that I'm just about done with wired internet, I want mobile/wireless for the future only! No Netflix with our awful data caps, no big game downloads, but the phone companies are just so terrible. They mismanage their wireless systems too, but at least you don't have to stand around waiting for appointments they keep rescheduling.

Can't say it was better when it was Bell (the big monopoly under AT&T back in the day)....in fact it's probably better now. It's just a situation where "the phone company is bad and the cable company is even worse" !

I suppose bureaucracy is the default human condition, no matter where

@NEStalgia Well the trains themselves are actually pretty good (maybe because they also want to sell them outside of Germany ), it's just the railroad network itself and some lack of organization (I assume). Of course the railroads are not that bad everywhere, some routes (like Cologne-Frankfurt or Berlin-Wolfsburg) are pretty good actually, but many others are basically on the minimum level to still be able to function.

Still, despite our big car industry, many people do use the trains, it just depends on the route, the person's situation and preferences - and of course the price.
We have regional, slower trains (which actually often have to stop midway to be overtaken by highspeed trains) which are especially used by younger people or people who are commuting to work on a daily basis, but mostly for smaller distances like 50-200km. These are less expensive, of course.
And then there are highspeed trains for larger distances, also for travel to other nearby countries like the Netherlands, Switzerland etc. These are more costly and partly used by business people, but also everyone else who can afford it and doesn't prefer driving a car.
Recently though -.because a few years ago long-distance coaches were finally allowed - DB got more competition and started launching more budget price offers (for highspeed trains), which I've actually used a lot in the past year. So the situation might change, after all, despite us being a auto-loving country, awareness for climate change has increased dramatically (and DB is actually using that for marketing).

I watch quite a lot US shows and follow the news of course, and I always wondered why you rarely see or hear from train services at all, so I assumed it's because traveling by car or airplane is just more popular in the US (of course, it makes sense in such a geographically huge country).
Here, flying is of course less common, because the distances are not that big, so usually you either take the car or the train (or recently, a coach, but it's still not that common) if you want to travel to another city. So in fact, rail isn't that far behind cars, while flying inside the country is rather unusual and sometimes even frowned upon.

I'd say the situation with phone companies and wired internet has actually improved here, because of the competition, advanced technology and regulation. The Telekom was actually urged to treat their competitors better and not to sabotage them.
At the same time, cable internet is spreading, it's just faster and cheaper, while being more reliable at the same time. Also, cable takes the Telekom out of the equation.
I've been on a wired cable connection for the past 2,5 years and I have to say it's way better than anything else I had before.
Wireless (mobile) internet usually works well too, but it's not that reliable, so I wouldn't want to trade my wired internet for that.

But yeah, bureaucracy can get in the way sometimes. ^^

Yeah, rail sounds like it functions pretty much the same in some regards, but you have a lot more of it from a passenger perspective, and more importantly, it has a better public image. You're right you never really see much mention of anything rail (unless there's a wreck) here because nobody even thinks of rail anymore. It's almost invisible. Of course freight is everywhere, but passenger, the biggest cities have their subways and regional rails, but inter-city rail while it exists is just so little used. Which is a shame. To me, rail is infinitely nicer to air. Might not be as fast, but it's not really that much slower considering all the waiting around required for planes. I'd rather be in motion for 10 hours, than in-flight for 5 and waiting around airports and going through security for 6 There's "decent" rail coverage from Boston down to Washington D.C., and down from Seattle through California, but step outside that and it's pretty patchy often with one train rolling through a day. Maybe 2. It really surprises me that air is so much more overwhelmingly popular in the modern age of electronics considering all the restrictions on electronics use and battery transportation on air versus the almost "anything goes" nature of rail. But to make rail prominent, they'd need to convince consumers why they should use it, and with Amtrak prices, they're not making a very good argument against air. It's almost as expensive! BUT as with all things a lot comes to the politics of it. For many decades the government helped subsidize the auto industry, built the roads, built the airports and traffic control for the airlines....but let the railroads try to do it on their own, pay for their own rails, stations etc. I guess it's karma. The railroads threw their weight around and controlled industry unfairly for 150 years, so everyone was eager to punish them by paying for their replacement, but it went too far and cut too deep into the rail industry, and once public opinion forgot about trains, it's hard to convince them to return to it.

I heard they were going to try the sleeper car service again...something they used to do back in the steam era, where they take the train car to the station in the middle of the night while you sleep, then decouple it and leave it there, so when you wake up, you're at your destination. That kind of service might sell in the modern world. You get to sleep through your travel and just wake up with it all over and done with. No time wasted! Maybe if they can't compete with the airlines on price anymore they can out-compete them on service.

It's funny to hear of "cable" referred to in a positive way. They're usually the most hated among companies here. Comcast and Warner are poster children for terrible businesses, and the third is AT&T itself, the original monopoly phone company...which is also its own cable company.) Usually people would rather deal with the phone companies than the cable companies! Telecom is probably the worst-service, worst-value industry we have, overall, including cable and mobile. Every other industry, no matter how good or bad has its redeeming qualities or understandable reasons why they operate like they do. That industry? It just doesn't have any. Ironically Telekom through T-Mobile is pretty much the ONLY pressure on the industry to do anything different at all and has done a lot to shake things up (or as far as AT&T and Verizon will let them....remembering that AT&T and Verizon are actually the re-merged together parts of the original AT&T/Bell that was broken into 50, then re-meged into 20, then 8, now 2 companies...but of course there's no collusion at all ) So from our end, Telekom is the only ray of hope for that industry! Who knows, maybe AT&T will make the phone business better on your end someday!

Edit: That last line made me gag a little even typing it....the idea of AT&T making anything better anywhere is too unbelievable for it to be a funny joke

Oh dear!

@MegaVel91 I appreciate the invite, but I think I will continue to peddle my wares in this particular sector for the time being.

Would you care for some pie of the humble variety? Goes well with a pint of Bitter.

Okay, I'm out of ideas. No hard feelings though I ended up enjoying myself for some reason.

@HappyMaskedGuy Same here. First time I've started something like this where it ended with a positive note.

@MegaVel91 I think we are a similar vein of human. Pleasure to make your acquaintance!

@HappyMaskedGuy You too!

Yay for friendly aquaintances!

@MegaVel91 So- are you getting Switch on launch day? 😊

@HappyMaskedGuy Sadly, no. I couldn't get a pre-order fast enough and at the moment, I'm strapped for money. So it's gonna have to wait. : (

@MegaVel91 Damn. Sorry dude I made the financially catastrophic decision to re-pre-order one, after already deciding I couldn't afford it the first time I cancelled. I'm currently so delusional that I'm convinced I need 1-2 Switch in my life.

Soon as you get one, I want that friend code! Lol

@3MonthBeef Didn't realise that, but how does that alleviate their extreme incompetency?

@3MonthBeef I was referring to government (ie, public) funding, not private funding.

USPS' meritless source of income gives them no incentive to perform their tasks properly, much less in a quality manner, which is why they always make huge mistakes like this and are ever in debt. Amazon giving them more money to perform a new service won't change the source of USPS' incompetence, in general.

It's not Amazon's fault that USPS is always in debt and incompetent. It's the fact that USPS receive funds no matter what their performance is. Defunding them from public funds and selling them to a private source would be the beginning of fixing their issues. It would also save the American taxpayer money, which they could choose to spend on private, competitive, quality mailing services like UPS or FedEx.

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