When things go wrong, they can quickly pile up. This was my week for bad delivery karma. I ordered several completely unrelated things, and for different reasons, getting them delivered to the house became an enormous challenge.
Pizza Gate
Almost every time I use DoorDash to deliver food to the house, I swear up and down I will never use them again. But then I do. They are an unreliable mess! Steve was out of town, and I was too lazy to go get my favorite pizza from midtown with the windy, rainy weather; so, I called them and placed the order.
They said it would be between 30 – 45 minutes. Fine. Things seemed to unfold as one would expect. Using my phone app, I watched the little delivery vehicle chart its rather odd course to the house. It got about 1.5 miles from the house and then stopped moving.
Suddenly I get a text message: “We’ve had difficulty finding your address. Your order has been cancelled.” We had several phone calls and text messages. When they told me they were canceling the order, they said they would give me a credit toward a future order. I responded, “The hell you will. If you don’t get me my pizza order tonight, there will never be another future order.”
Three hours later, DoorDash delivered my pizza. No explanation about what happened. The driver obviously had my address on his little GPS. Did the driver just get hungry from the smell of the pizza and decide: “What the hell. I’m stopping and eating it?!” Three hours! Three!
Amazon Delivery
I ordered 3 things from Amazon. One of the orders was guaranteed next day delivery. The remaining two items would not be delivered for 2 – 3 weeks. According to the email from Amazon, the next day order shipped.
By the end of the next day, after 5pm, the order had not arrived. I checked on Amazon’s site. They stated it had been delivered to the front door. No. It was not.
I called them. They told me 99% of the time, even though the carrier said they delivered it, they will deliver it the next day. Well, so much for guaranteed next day delivery. He told me to call him back after 5pm the next day. I did.
The next day the Amazon representative asked me what it was where I was. I told her it was 7:08pm. She then said, “You need to call me back after 7:08pm.” I responded, “Are you not listening to me? I just told you it IS 7:08pm! Yesterday I was told to call back after 5pm today. I am doing that now. Cancel the order and refund the purchase price! No other option is acceptable to me now.” Reluctantly, she did it.
Now, here’s the priceless part of this particular issue: the other 2 remaining purchases that were supposed to arrive in 2 – 3 weeks arrived on this same day! Amazon needs to get their logistics act together!
The FedEx Order
I ordered a 12TB RAID from the Apple Store with guaranteed next day delivery. Receiving it by Friday (The order was placed on Thursday.) was essential as I was going out of town and needed to set this up for Steve before I left.
Because the item was expensive, I had to sign for it. So, first thing after getting up on Friday, I placed a printout on the front door: “Delivery: I am home. Please give me time to get to the door.” FedEx is horrible about just leaving a sticker on the door: Sorry we missed you…
At 1:04pm I got a text message from Apple: “Your order was successfully delivered.” What?? Really??! I hadn’t signed for anything. Did the driver leave it at the door? I immediately went upstairs to the front door. No package. No “We missed you” slip.
I went online at FedEx and checked the tracking number. Supposedly I had signed for it: TTyson. No, I most certainly did not. I called FedEx. “But sir, you signed for it.” I was told. I started raising hell. “Ok. We will investigate and call you back.”
Long story short: three hours later the driver shows up with my package. He offered some bizarre rambling excuse about delivering the package to the wrong address. I told him the only thing that mattered to me was that I now had the package, which I absolutely needed today. I thanked him for getting the package to me.
Odd Observation
In the 8 years or so we lived in California, I never had a single delivery issue, and we routinely order things to be delivered to the house. Not one issue. In fact, the delivery people were exceptionally helpful.
I had one delivery man, this muscled stud, bring a Xerox laser printer to the front door. He offered to put it in what ever room in the house I wanted it to go. I told him that wasn’t necessary. He insisted. I declined. So, he left the package just inside the front door.
I thought he was astoundingly nice. Then I went to pick the box up to tote it upstairs. Good god! This thing was insanely heavy, I mean insanely heavy! I couldn’t pick it up at all, and he had it on his shoulder like it weighed nothing!
I had to wait until Steve got home, and we opened the box and took the heavy part up together. I’d swear it weighed well over 75 pounds.
But here in Georgia, delivery is a completely different beast. It’s routinely riddled with problems. Now granted, we have an insanely steep driveway and then you have to go up what feels like a quarter million steps to get to the front door.
As a result, most deliveries never make it to the front door. Over half of the deliveries are left down at the garage door, avoiding all of the steps. We even had one package that was simply thrown into the middle of the grass in the front yard. I kid you not. Did the driver just drive by, slow down a bit, and toss the package as hard as he could?
If your job is a delivery job, then you have chosen to do it. Do it right, for goodness sake! Oh, the southeast…