Friday, December 20, 2013

Christmas disaster (hopefully) averted

Had ordered a Christmas gift for my mom and had selected the overnight delivery option so it would get here well before we began our trek north, next week. Figured I was in the clear when the shipper shown was +UPS and *not* +FedEx "SmartPost". Was happy when I saw that the package had gotten to the local shipping facility at 12:20 ...and was chilling on the couch, with the tracking page open, waiting for the truck to show up.

Then, shit fell apart. A little after 17:00, UPS updated the tracking page to say that "package delivery has been rescheduled to Monday by 3PM (or evening for home deliveries)". There was never an "on truck for delivery status". There was no "delivery miss" status. Nope: they simply hadn't bothered to even try to deliver it.

*WHAT THE FUCK??*

Looked up the facility on Google to see if I could call and come pick it up - the location is less than 3mi from my house. Go to the information page and see that, while they're open until 19:00 Monday through Thursday, on Fridays the facility fucking closes at _17:00_. Wasn't even any point in calling them.
Needless to say, I went ballistic. This was two late-deliveries, in a row, from Amazon. Granted, both were due to crappy service from the shipping companies, but that's cold-comfort when you're looking at not being able to give someone their Christmas gift.

I let the apoplexy fade, and then hit the "call me" button on Amazon's site. First attempt was a failure: sounded like the CSR was talking through a couple inches of insulation. Hung up the phone, all spun-up, again.

Chill. Must chill...

Hit the "call me" button, again. This time, the (different) CSR came in loud and clear. I pre-apologized for my rather irritable state and explained the situation. She offered the resolution of shipping a new version of the item directly to my travel-destination vi their next (business) day shipping option with shipping fees waived. Was a fair offer, so we went through the process of placing the new order. On the plus side, the replacement item was also 10% cheaper (last minute price-drop on the product!).

Hopefully, by the time we arrive at my mom's house, her Christmas gift will be there waiting for us.

Hopefully, Amazon bitch-slaps their shipping companies for 2014. This is the second order in a row that had shipper-caused late-delivery. So, at this point both FedEx and their USPS proxy have fucked me and UPS has tried to fuck me. The sandpaper condom treatment from the different shipping services is getting old.
Maybe shit like this is why Amazon was pie-in-the-sky'ing about the drone-based delivery?









1 comment:

  1. Amazon seems to have screwed up more than a few people's gifts this year. I've seen a few others say that something they ordered has been delayed, another person had an order canceled completely, and I had to send Rob out to buy something that was supposed to be on its way but was redefined as "temporarily out of stock" a week after I had placed the order.

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