And this conversation reminds me that I need to call UPS and tell them how much they suck. Sigh. Today they returned some stuff I ordered even though 1) according to their own schedule, I should have been able to pick it up today, and 2) I never got the card telling me I had to pick up anything, so it's lucky I happened to check the tracking #. And the usual 3) why the hell won't they just leave stuff at my door instead of making me sign for it?

Speaking of sucking, why is it that there seems to be such a long lagtime between order and delivery at Amazon these days? The last three orders have shipped two to three WEEKS after I made the order. They used to be so quick.

Isn't there a checkbox on the card (not that they left you one) that you can mark to get them to leave it without a sig. Also, why is the time on the card (not that they left you one) usually a time at which you or your neighbors were at home.

In sum, they suck.

Oh, I got to go by the DHL guy's house when I went back home. Seriously strange guy.

That reminds me. USPS has had Bob's gift located in Jersey City since Friday. I CAN SEE JERSEY CITY FROM HERE. Amazon refuses to understand that this is three days later that "3-5 business days" and wants me to wait a few days to see if it gets magically delivered, even though USPS somehow misrouted it but cannot seem to reroute it. Their tracking sucks. AUGH!

Their tracking sucks. AUGH!

Oh yeah. USPS tracking seems to be mostly, "Uhm, it left."

I had ordered some clothes last month that I ended up using the tracking number to see where the hell they were. USPS had delivered them from Virginia to Bolingbrook, IL, but then they sat in the Bolingbrook post office for six days before being sent to me. I have no idea what the hold-up was.

Oh yeah. USPS tracking seems to be mostly, "Uhm, it left."

Mine was tracked by:

Feb 12: we heard you had a package!
Feb. 16: the package is in New Jersey!
Feb. 20: this package didn't cross the fricking river in the last four days, we don't know why, but we're trying.
Feb 22: Oh, that's right. NOTHING!

Why even have tracking if you can't tell me shit.

Actually, this is a cut and paste from the tracking website:

Mis-Shipped, February 20, 2007, 10:19 am
Enroute, February 16, 2007, 7:03 pm, JERSEY CITY, NJ 07097
Electronic Shipping Info Received, February 12, 2007

Mis-fucking-shipped. OK, now I'm getting pissed off again. Time to write an angry email to Amazon. No matter what Joel said, their excuses were complete bullshit not at all addressed to the problem of this package being MISSING!

Every now and then, a package from our UK office will get missorted and sent through the import office in KY instead of NJ, which is at least a 1 day delay. Somehow, our clients always assume that saying "but I needed it TODAY!!!!" will magically allow us to retrieve packages from a UPS warehouse halfway across the country using only the power of our minds. Because, you know, we totally sent it there on purpose to fuck with them.

Man, now I'm feeling all guilty that the one time I've ever had a call from a collections person, she was nice and kind and fixed everything right away. It was a phone bill from Pac Bell, which kept sending late notices to me at a nonexistent address despite multiple attempts by me to correct them; finally they killed my phone, and I called and told them to keep it dead and just to send me a final bill. Which went to the nonexistent address, and thence to collections.

When the collections woman called (at work, WTF?) and I told her, again, that I'd never gotten a single bill in the year since this kerfuffle started, she said, "Well, let's just confirm your address. You live at 2042 Dwight Way in Oakland...Hey, there's no Dwight Way in Oakland! Dwight Way's in Berkeley! We can't handle this, it has to go back to Pac Bell. They screwed up, it's their problem. I'll make sure there are no late fees or penalties on this for you, okay?" I almost cried. And I can't believe I was such an ass as not to get her name so I could track down her supervisor and praise her to the skies. Unless that would have just drawn attention to her and gotten her fired.

All the customer service talk reminds me to ping Seagate about my returned drive. Last I heard they got the bad drive two weeks ago, after about a month long process of getting a RMA number. It has been a bit of a fiasco.