Shipping to the Village

Sunny sits and watches the front
loader washing machine work all
the time - I guess she finds it pretty
cool too.

Being a in a fly in only location, we try to do most of our shopping online.  It saves us some time, trouble and money . . . most of the time.  We have discovered in our stay here that shipping is not always as simple and easy as it may seem.  First, you have to find a business that is willing to ship to Alaska.  This is much harder to do than I had expected and it's even harder to find places that will honor their "Free Shipping" promotions.  Next, you have to get it here.  This can sometimes be even more difficult than finding a business that ships to Alaska.

The US postal service will only deliver to a PO Box in the village, but this works out very well for us.  It goes from the plane to the post office, where it is picked up and brought to the school - nice and simple.  UPS and Fedex insist on a physical address, though and will not deliver to a post office box.  While we do technically have a physical address, no one in the village actually uses them and neither business rides the plane into the village to actually deliver the package to our door.  We've tried to explain this to them both, but they will entertain no other approach.  When all goes well, UPS and Fedex deliver the packages to the airport in Homer, the planes drop them off in the shed by the airport, and we go down to pick them up.  Not as nice and simple as the post office, but it works.  Sometimes, however, UPS and Fedex use the US postal service to deliver items the last stretch of the journey.  This means when I place my order I have to give a physical address for UPS or Fedex because they accept no PO boxes.  UPS/Fedex then brings the items most of the way and drops them off at the Homer post office which only delivers to a post office box.  Thus they get a lovely stamp on them, "Return to Sender."  I had a conversation with Homer post office about this system but their reply was "It's not our problem."  I'm a little confused that the very location which refuses to deliver mail with a physical address to Nanwalek will accept payment for a service they already know they will not provide, but I suppose that's one way to keep postage rates down.