Since Mother’s Day is coming up, I carefully put together a photo album for Mrs. Piper, with lots of pix of us and the PiperCub. Then I uploaded it to a service in New York that guaranteed delivery by Friday.
E-mail yesterday - it’s been printed and bound and handed over to the good folks at Fed Ex. All’s good.
Check the Fed Ex tracker last night - package was at Newark in transit.
Checked first thing this morning - package was in Calgary! Woo-hoo! should be here on time.
Oh wait - there’s a note - “Package to be cleared by FedEx broker” - well, that shouldn’t take much time.
Just checked - package is now in transit to Newark, New Jersey! Did the publisher forget to include customs info? did Fed Ex screw up? will my prezzie get here in time for Mother’s Day??? This is important!!!
Think, Piper - contingency planning - must go to stores this afternoon and get back-ups!
So I logged on this morning, and overnight it went from Newark to Memphis, Tennessee. What the hell?? It’s already made it to Canada once, so we’ll send it on a lovely tour of the South?
However, it’s still showing an estimated delivery by tomorrow, so that’s good.
Honestly, these on-line trackers are more nerve-wracking than if the shipper just says, “yeah, it’ll be there by Friday.”
As long as you are ready to spring for a quick surprise vacation for you, Mrs. Piper, and the PiperCub, you can have a terrific Mother’s Day, give her the present regardless of where it eventually ends up, and no one will be the wiser. Come Sunday morning, simply surprise here with “Honey, I’d like to take you and the sprog for brunch at The Edgewater!”
Yes, but Mrs Piper is a stickler for the gift being given the day of the event, not at some weasling time in the future. This tendency presents some problems in planning a trip for this Sunday to the Edgewater, which I agree is a fine restaurant, but a bit out of the way.
Logistics, logistics, logistics - maybe being a procrastinator isn’t such a good thing after all…
On a positive note, the parcel appears to have been released from international shipment facility in Calgary, and is now at the local FedEx. Fingers crossed - I have until close of business tomorrow for it to arrive…
If it’s any consolation to you, one of those stops may or may not have actually existed. A UPS drone told me once that sometimes they will do “notational” or “virtual” scans if a package is tied up somewhere to give the customer the impression that things are moving along–the first Calgary scan might be that.
True story: I once went to the UPS depot to pick up a package that needed a signature since no one was home all day and the tracker said it was in the depot. The drone there told me the above and I mildly griped about that being a stupid as hell policy because it led to me sitting there having driven 15min to get a package I really wanted that was supposedly there according to their tracking software.
Two hours later, around 9:30-10PM, I hear a bump on my porch and then faint footsteps. I got to the door in time to see my package on the porch (intact and undamaged) and the tail end of a UPS truck with half the lights out speeding down my lane. It was like a weird-ass commando delivery mission.
In the continuing saga - checked this morning - package was still listed in Calgary.
Went out on an errand.
And of course, package info was updated 15 minutes after I went out, to show that it’s in Regina, followed shortly by “Delivery attempted - customer not available” !!
More ARRRGHH!
may be able to pick it up in person later today, according to the labyrinthine FedEx website…
I don’t know where my mother’s day gift is I placed the order with 72-hour shipping on Tuesday, and got an e-mail from the nursery that they’d recieved my order, but they didn’t give me a tracking number, or respond to the e-mail I sent yesterday. The rest is silence.
So if anyone sees 3 apple trees and an Azalea bush wandering around looking lost, can you send them my way?
I placed the order with 72-hour shipping on Tuesday, and got an e-mail from the nursery that they’d recieved my order, but they didn’t give me a tracking number, or respond to the e-mail I sent yesterday. The rest is silence.