My ordered two spareparts recently for my car. One worth 2 dollars, one worth 50.
They didn’t have the one worth fifty but they still sent the one worth 2, for a postal cost of 8.
Not really FedEx that is to blame (wasn’t FedEx but an other big company) but one wonders: Do I have the right to refuse to sign this crap when they come by my door?
You can absolutely refuse shipment. The package is then sent back to the shipper and they are billed shipping both ways (of course for a $2 part they would probably tell the courier to junk it).
I think your biggest problem is with your supplier for not informing you of the shipping charge when you ordered.
fwiw, English is a common and important language in India. In my experience, Indians who speak English (even phone support call-in guys) speak it quite well. They just sometimes have a heavy accent that’s hard to “translate” into American English. But the ubiquity of English in India is why we get Indian tech support, and not Chinese or Vietnamese tech support.
(bolding mine) What?! He refused to join in? :eek:
Saying shit like “Do the needful” is NOT good English. It’s something, but good English, it isn’t.
They understand the words, and the basic sentences, but conveying concepts is a lot harder than I’d think it should be. A lot harder than it is to native speakers anyway.
It’s perfectly acceptable English. It’s just not an idiom you’re familiar with.
It’s disappointing that English is touted as an international language, yet several native speakers such as yourself disapprove of inevitable local variations (which only add to the richness of language). Which committee is to monitor the language used by hundreds of millions of Indians to make sure that it adheres to the standards of the native speakers?
And if you’re going to rant about a phrase, please at least get the etymology correct. As Really Not All That Bright points out, “do the needful” is a (was?) perfectly good phrase, used by both British (who brought the phrase to India) and Americans till the early 20th century. Eventually it became obsolete among the basics speakers but Indians missed the memo, which is why the phrase survives here. Sue us.
If I refuse it am I billed for the two way shipping then? Since I already payed for the one way using my debit card.
And aye, that’s the problem and I could whine about it to him and shit but for 8 bucks and when I’m dealing with far worse problems in life I just can’t bother.
Heck, I even enjoy whining, but it just seems like a pain in the ass considering they don’t even have a toll free telephone number.
I don’t recall ever hearing that phrase, but seeing it here, its meaning is completely obvious.
I guess I have a lot of experience with not-quite-the-language I know, both because I travel a fair amount and because I used to work with a lot of non-native English speakers in NYC. But I will say, as an American, here’s my ranking of "how easy is to talk to someone who speaks English who grew up in…
USA (excluding the south)
> Scandinavia = Netherlands
> Australia = South Africa = US South
> UK = Ireland
>> India = Germany = France = most of western Europe
> Russia and related language regions
>>> Japan
>>>>>>>> Korea > China
It obvious varies from speaker to speaker, this is just my average experience. And I don’t really run into any trouble worse than “could you please repeat that” until I get down to Japan and the rest of East Asia.
… you find it easier to understand Dutch people than English people? Am I reading that right?
That is up to the shipper. You most likely didn’t pay the courier company directly. You pay the shipper. If they charge you for shipping both ways that has nothing to do with the courier company. They are charging the company you purchased the product from.
Aye that’s what I thought, so not much point in refusing to sign it, right? Any mediation will just be exasperated by this fact.
Yes, Dutch English is very vanilla, and often uses American versions of words. The Brits and the Americans have subtly different vocabulary in enough places that I sometimes have to mentally translate something. That almost never happens talking to Dutch people.
It’s not as if I’ve ever had any trouble communicating with either.
(Well, I once meet an old Dutch guy who didn’t really speak English, but that’s quite unusual.)
Almost certainly not.
“My point is, cut some slack to people who need to make a living using a second language. Most Americans certainly couldn’t do it.”
That’s right, I’m American and I can’t do it. That’s why I DON’T do it. Would you “cut some slack” for a Hindi doctor getting ready to slice into your hemorrhoids if he walks in, while you’re strapped to a table, with a smile on his face, a scalpel in his hand and says something and you have no idea what he said and then leans down for the first cut?
Yes. The anesthesiologist on the other hand…
CMC
As long as this got revived, What can Brown do for you? I’m assuming it’s still impossible to search for three letter things like UPS.
My local Brown people have suddenly gone stupid. Some furniture was shipped to me. Three identical things in three identical boxes (I’m assuming) as two of the things were delivered on different days despite leaving the vendor on the same day. The third thing went out for delivery one one day, and never showed up. UPS sent me an email that it was delayed and they’d deliver it tomorrow. Same thing - nothing shows up, they send an email… Now it’s lost, so I’m cast into the mess of contacting the vendor so they can verify the disappearance of the box and eventually send a replacement.
Brown boo-boo #2: I ordered frozen pizzas from Chicago. They ship out by Next Day Air service. Pretty much the same situation as above. Almost a week and a half later, and UPS still hasn’t coughed up the box. I don’t want it - by now the contents are spoiled. At least the vendor sent out another case of pizzas. I had them go to the local UPS store, and that worked out OK.
It’s not. I just did a search for UPS and got fifty plus results.
I just love paying for shipping and they take it to my post office to finish delivering.
In my case it might go in my box I rent at the p.o.(where crack heads work) or brought to my rural route box.
Either way I have to get in the car and drive to get it.
OTOH, Brown truck just throws it toward the house and zooms off throwing gravel. I piss them off, it seems, by living in the boonies.
FedX has never ventured out here. I get a card saying I have something at the ‘local’ office which is 45min. from here.
Ideally, I’d have met the doctor before I got to the “strapped to a table” phase.