The travels of Carmen Sandiego and Waldo - Long

[Aethian]

Smart post is particularly bad because it always seems like neither FedEx nor the USPS care about them.

We care...at least our office cares. Course we are at a 97.2% scan rate.

[raudf]

Well, Princess Peach came sneaking in without any scans of any sort from the 14th until it hit the post office and apparently, it's a Fedex screw up again. Last scan was leaving the Smartpost... which I suspect never happened. It's like they said, "Ooppsssss, we just found this, so we won't scan it until we hand it over to the post office!" Which is exactly what happened, because the first scan since the 14th was... the post office scanning her in. Yeah.... I'm dubbing it, Slowpost, long lost cousin of Slowbro.

[suburbandecay]

Smart post is particularly bad because it always seems like neither FedEx nor the USPS care about them. The website woot.com now uses an icon of a snail with a package on its back to denote smart post shipping. Some of the tracking results from woot get pretty epic.

[raudf]

I wish I knew what micro-deity of shipping I ticked off that my packages seem to go Smartpost. I have no problem with any of the other shippers, including my local USPS carrier who used to like to leave my packages at the end of the driveway. And I've never had bad luck with Smartpost until recently!

[Aethian]

Damn how are you having such bad luck with shipping?

[raudf]

That was the line of bull I was fed and I should have demanded a supervisor.


Aannnddd, it looks like I have a third Smartpost package that may be on walkabout. This one is with Newegg. No tracking update since the 14th and Fedex is claiming an estimated delivery date of... today.

I shall dub her Princess Peach, for she is not in this castle.

[suburbandecay]

I just don't want to be told "Oh, our trucks go everywhere and the package goes with it." Yes, that's what one of the customer support people said at Fedex.

Wow, I'm pretty sure I would be livid if I was fed that line of bull. The only way it could get any worse would be if it was true. I guarantee you when I unloaded freight I didn't leave anything on the truck unless I couldn't lift it.

[wolfie]

I call Tiger Direct back to ask about reshipment and ask if they can send it air freight this time

You'd know that Murphy had a grudge against you if that one was late as well, and the last line on the tracking page was "plane crash".

[raudf]

See, I'd have been understanding of that sort of thing. Heck, I'd have understood errors like suburbandecay describes. I just don't want to be told "Oh, our trucks go everywhere and the package goes with it." Yes, that's what one of the customer support people said at Fedex.

[UncleImpy]

The last time I ordered computer parts from Tiger Direct, the shipment was a day late, and I was wondering where the hell, so I check the UPS page and find on the last line:

....Train Derailment.

And sure enough, a quick check of the last location and 'train derailment' in Google and there's a huge news story about a massive freight train in Montana derailing. I call Tiger Direct back to ask about reshipment and ask if they can send it air freight this time

[KiaKat]

Over Christmas, my company ships out a ton of packages. Some of them get delayed by weather, some have to go across the country, and some just spin in circles for a while.

One package had the dubious honour of being scanned as "arrived" at the same time as it was being scanned OUT of our store. I had to call our shipping company and pre-empt the error, so they could reset it and track it correctly.

The only reason I knew was because I have the app on my phone, and it told me "yo, apparently the shipping company developed teleportation technology, because your package just arrived at its destination on the other side of the country!"

[suburbandecay]

As someone who used to work for Fedex (Express and Ground at different periods), I don't think that package ever left Memphis the first three times. It was probably scanned to go into a trailer, but never actually made it in. It got moved into overflow and was rescanned as back in Memphis over and over again until it actually left. #2 sounds like it was scanned into the right trailer and then promptly loaded on the wrong one. Either that or it was loaded onto the right one and then never offloaded at the facility before the truck went on to CO.

As for the damage, it either go crushed on a slide or was bottom loaded under an engine block. I've seen both situations a number of times.

[raudf]

Well, it looks like whomever found Waldo beat him up pretty damn well. In fact, the tape on the box looks almost as though it had been opened, but I suspect it was a huge red, white and purple elephant that sat on him. The tape is pretty much torn open on both ends and the "top" tape split ways with itself on most of the seam.

Unfortunately, due to a 6 month check up for the mini-raudf, I wasn't home to refuse him. In a shocking display of courage, the USPS carrier apparently got out of his truck, went past my parents dogs (three houses of the same family, the dogs roam the three freely. They keep the skunks and other irritating/dangerous animals away from the kids) and placed the package on the porch. Without honking the horn and waiting in the car like he usually does. Dad would have saved him the trouble, since he'd been on the alert that if Waldo showed up, he might need help getting into the house.

So... two return labels. Now I gotta split Waldo up into two and send them both back. Just as well, since I don't think Waldo would survive a trip without losing one of the two items in him. I'd keep the items, but I kinda need the money for a motherboard for my computer since it just fried. Yes, I did everything to diagnose it and nothing worked.

[wagegoth]

I have everything delivered to me at my job, and FedEx here is awesome.

UPS here is not awesome. I ordered four items from Sears. I pay for delivery, as I don't want to pick it up at the store. That was my mistake. UPS, which has a drop box and regular deliveries to our building claimed they couldn't find it. Really. The tallest building in the entire town, three times taller than the next tallest building, and which takes up the entire side of the block, on the main street.

Then, when I contacted Sears for the refunds the CSR told me that it had been delivered. I then had to explain that it was delivered back to the DC, which was 2,000 miles from my office. I got my refund.

I've never ordered from Sears since.

[raudf]

Actually ifn it works like what i deliver, which is the low end USPS option, its actually a bit more complicated than that, and having run into the guys handling the FedEx stuff here, i can tell you a few things. First should be the clue in that sentence, it may not be the same everywhere, but here in St Louis, FedEx doesn't actually deliver to Post Office. The flow there is that it hits the FedEx terminal, a lot of the freight is palletized and delivered by the pallet to your nearest DDU (basically the nearest carrier unit, in the city it might not be your local station, outer areas though it will be except in rare occasions), while some is bagged and delivered to the station by First Choice Courier (not sure whether bags come directly from FedEx or stop off at FCC's terminal like ours do).

I think you can see where things can go off the rails, no? The stuff i do, my client line hauls it from the processing center to their terminal, and then independent contractors like me haul the bags into your DDU. Tracking it at the center, my client's terminal, and at the station (delivery data turned in at end of day). Obviously you can see how they can lose track of where your packages are for a bit.

Actually, that makes sense. Usually, the package does go from the Fedex hub to the USPS hub in Hot Springs, not my local office because it's very out of way.. or at least hits the one in Little Rock, depending on where Fedex's smartpost truck goes. Then it goes from there to my local USPS office. (Observed via previous trackings) What Fedex's call center rep explained to me was it just all depends on where their truck goes as to where the package winds up, so if the truck goes to China after going to Hot Springs, the package goes with it, rather than being held and passed off it's close to estimate arrival... but honestly, I'd take your word because you're ground zero so to speak.

It occasionally happened with the military warehouses from what Dad said... except the packages might wind up in Guam when it was meant for Iceland. Something just didn't get off the pallet when it was supposed to.

I guess my main issue in this is that it became a blame game for Fedex saying that USPS had the package but it was updating in THEIR system as being THEIRS still. Seriously, once River refunded her, she showed up as theirs right before hand off.. in MI. If they'd said, "Oops, our bad. Lets see if we can get her back in your area and quickly," I'd have been pretty cool. If it had just been Carmen, I'd have been eh, about the whole situation. But to see Waldo pulling the exact same stunt was... irking.

*giggles* I had to name them to keep sane. On my facebook, my family remarked that I had created a new form of reality TV, the "Travails and Travels of Packages!" Also, I went with the premium for the River and now, everything is sent UPS for my area. I like that because I know the drivers, they know where I live and they bring dog biscuits for my 'rent's dogs.