CONTEST Shipping Delay Contest

CONTEST
Wife and I bought a new freezer for our basement from Home Depot. The one that died came with the house and looked super old. A quick google search showed they stopped making this model in the early 70s!! It worked for about 6 weeks when we moved in. This was right when COVID hit. Anyways, we knew there would be an inventory shortage so we deliberately picked one marked “in stock” online. Turns out it wasn’t in stock after 4 phone calls to customer service. Of course I complained about the “in stock” piece. It showed up about 6 months later. The guys that moved the old one out were bitching how heavy it was. They said it must have weighed over 300 pounds! Now we’re waiting for supply chain issues so we can redo our master bath.
 
Home Depot's inventory control system is the worst. It thinks a toilet is a single line item, even though the bowl and tank are boxed separately. We order a toilet, a few days later we get an email that our item is at the store ready for pickup. We get there and they only have the bowl. As far as their inventory control system is concerned, the order was completed. I tell 'em we're not taking delivery of half a toilet. So they re-order it and we cross our fingers and hope that the next shipment includes a tank. The employees are helpful and mean well, but they're at the mercy of their fuck-up inventory system. I'm sure some VP got a kick-back or bonus (or both) for implementing that inventory control system.
 
Not my story/entry, but friend of a friend bought some genuine PAF pickups ($6K) from the US shipped to HK; the Fed-Ex box arrived but no pickups inside. Some crafty Fed-Ex employee slit the bottom and extracted the pups and friend of a friend is now US$6,000 poorer.

Stupid money for pups anyway.


My story is lame. Bought a pedal from Canada shipped to HK. After 3 months it’s a no show; the seller agrees to refund or send another pedal, but the one missing is a first edition and the new one would be a different circuit. Just when we settle on what to do, the pedal arrives and I contact the seller to not ship another pedal.

Bad things come in threes…right?
Another lame story: After moving, our stuff (ie my solder-iron PCBs parts etc) took three months to arrive. Just noticed this past Monday the power transformer on my 5E3 build got dented.

3rd Bad Lame Story… I’ve either got one and forgot it, or it hasn’t happened yet. I’m hoping it’s the former and not the latter.
 
ok, last year I sent a guitar to the united states to sell it, the italian customs stopped the package saying that in reality it was a stolen antique violin, contact the postal police to hear my statement, obviously I explained that in reality it was just a normal electric guitar, this story went on for 3 months, I had to have the lawyer write to get the case cleared, I honestly don't know what happened at customs, and if this elusive violin was real or not. I then discovered that there is a whole market of stolen antique violins that travel between Europe and America. crazy
 
I bought a cheap capo on AliExpress in early Jan 2020. In other words, right when Covid hit Wuhan. Can you guess where my capo was coming from?

Delivery estimate kept being extended. I have several better capos, was just buying a cheap backup and not in any hurry for it, and it was only a few bucks anyway.

Finally got it, in September 2020.

Left 5 star feedback for the seller anyway, because - well, you'd have to be a complete dick to do anything else.

EDIT: Flip side story. I bought a Squier Mustang from a Sydney seller (I'm in Melbourne, that's like 800km, say 500 miles) and got a shipping email with a tracking number.

And then a week passed and nothing happened. I can do patience, but I sent an email to the retailer saying I was very unimpressed with their service. They said that the shipping company had tried to deliver on (some date) and had left a card. This was complete rubbish because I had been home all day that day and there was no card left. Total lie from a lazy delivery guy that probably never had any intention of ever trying to deliver it.

I conveyed my opinion on the delivery company's story, and asked why the tracking number I was sent never updated. Seller claimed it was my fault and I'd made a mistake. Until I forwarded the email I'd been sent back to him and he figured out that I had, in fact, been sent the wrong number.

At this point I lost patience and told him that he had to get the guitar back from the delivery company because I would refuse any delivery that they tried to make, and that I wanted my money back. Somewhat surprisingly, he agreed. A couple of weeks later, I got my refund.

The moral of the story? Don't use the cheap delivery companies. My guess is that the seller had had similar problems before.

And me? I was happy enough to get the refund that I have in fact since bought a couple of small items (guitar straps, etc) from that seller. No hard feelings from me.
 
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Back in the day when CDs and cassettes were a thing, our band ordered a bunch of self-produced CDs and tapes from a place that would do small runs. One day I got a UPS sticker on my door that they had attempted delivery, but since nobody was home they left the package of CDs and tapes inside a random vehicle parked in our driveway (!!:mad:!!). Problem was that our driveway was shared with the small machine shop next door and they left our stuff inside somebody else's truck. I didn't want to be caught pulling stuff out of someone else's vehicle so I had to go next door and try to figure out who the truck belonged to. But it got worse, when we finally got the box from the machinist's truck it looked like the original package had been damaged during shipping and UPS had just dumped all the CDs and tapes loose into a much larger box where they had obviously been tumbling around for most of the trip, plus they must have lost some when they damaged the original box because part of the order was missing. To this day I still don't trust UPS :mad::ROFLMAO:
 
In the early days of the pandemic in 2020 I won a round of guitar pedal trivia that a friend of mine did over zoom. My prize was a box full of sweets and candies and such from the UK but the problem was that Canada was heavily delaying shipments of things from Europe at the time since there wasn't as good of an understanding of how long covid could survive on surfaces and whatnot (at least I think that was the reason for the delay). Anyways, he shipped me the package of candy sometime around mid-May 2020 and it didn't get delivered to me in central Canada until mid-September 2020. It spent 4 months sitting in a hot warehouse somewhere in Ontario so all the meltable things had been liquified/solidified a hundred times over. Still ate everything though haha.

More recently I had ordered one of those Ly Rock Julianna clones from China in early December using that save50dec code from Reverb.com. There was crazy flooding in BC in november that cut the entire west coast off from the rest of Canada by land, so because of that and the increase in shipping volumes for the Christmas season it didn't get delivered until late January.
 
I'm surprised we don't have a lot of USPS horror stories around the time of the 2020 US election. A Tayda order of mine took an extra week to get here cuz of that. Luckily I got nearly all my online holiday shopping done pre-Thanksgiving so everything showed up in time for Christmas.
 
Well not exactly sure how my story will stack up, But this is my harrowing tale of one of the first pedals I ever sold. Made me realize the importance of where and when something is shipped,

I will keep this sort and sweet with corroborating evidence.”

On August 27 I sold a sweet unicab pedal to a nice fella in New Orleans and everything was moving super fast, (can you see where this is going?) … then boom Hurricane IDA… it bounced back a forth between Louisiana and Texas then went MIA….

www.news4jax.com

Hurricane Ida makes landfall in Louisiana on same date Katrina did 16 years earlier

Category 4 Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday -- the same calendar date, Aug. 29, as Category 3 Katrina did 16 years ago.
www.news4jax.com www.news4jax.com

Here’s the tracking #

9410836206542304042735

The lesson here, always insure your package during hurricane season
 
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Paradox916 said:
Well not exactly sure how my story will stack up, But this is my harrowing tale of one of the first pedals I ever sold. Made me realize the importance of where and when something is shipped,

I will keep this sort and sweet with corroborating evidence.”

On August 27 I sold a sweet unicab pedal to a nice fella in New Orleans and everything was moving super fast, (can you see where this is going?) … then boom Hurricane IDA… it bounced back a forth between Louisiana and Texas then went MIA….

www.news4jax.com

Hurricane Ida makes landfall in Louisiana on same date Katrina did 16 years earlier

Category 4 Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday -- the same calendar date, Aug. 29, as Category 3 Katrina did 16 years ago.
www.news4jax.com www.news4jax.com

Here’s the tracking #

9410836206542304042735

The lesson here, always insure your package during hurricane season
Click to expand...

There is still hope....
1645203025663.png
 
Some bone-chilling stories for certain so far!

Calling all vendors! Lets hear your tome of terror regarding shipping.
If a vendor wins, instead of a PedalPCB gift code, I'll spend $100 at your shoppe (unless you prefer the gift code that is). Likely, I already have a cart waiting so maybe not a windfall, but fun is priceless.

@PedalPCB , @StompBoxParts , @Cabintech , and any others with an extra bolt o' yarn about?
 
Yeah, that flooding in BC mentioned by pantslessDan was part of the delay in getting our stuff moved.

Other people’s stories have triggered the ol’ grey matter to muster a trio more of tales… bad things come in threes, right?

#3
Dyson make/sell housewares such as fans vacuums etc. We had a Dyson vacuum (220V) in HK we liked, so for the new home we ordered a vacuum (110V) direct from Dyson dot C Eh, eh?
Well, Diesun say orders ship within a few days from ordering, so given distance/logistics we should’ve got the order within a week or two. It doesn’t show and my wife enquires about it. After chasing both Dyson and Pure-later shipping it’s determined the vacuum is MIT. Purplater was helpful, admitted (in effect) losing the package and says contact Dyson.
Dyson won’t take responsibility,
Dyson “policy” wants us to file a police report before they’ll reimburse us, which we refuse to do — How can we file for allegedly-stolen goods when we NEVER RECEIVED the goods? How many others has Dyson tried to hoodwink into filing a police-report for non-received goods? How many people unwittingly filed a police report not knowing their legal rights?

After 2 months of back and forth with Dyson we’re fed up and just want our money back, full stop. We write the local officials and provincial ombudspersons etc to make our complaints known…

Dyson refuse to reimburse and instead ship a new vacuum we no longer want.

The kicker… Dyson automatically started our unwanted-appliance’s warranty 10 days after our initial order.

#2
Brother forgets to bring enough meds on vacation to GF’s. I send meds express post (5 business days), so he should get them about when his supply in hand runs out.
They get held up by border customs for nearly two weeks then USPS takes its sweet time…
Brother is back from vacation for two weeks before his GF finally receives life-saving package.
NB! Proof such as doctor’s signed affidavit and other paperwork may be required to send drugs internationally; local doctor’s can’t accept a fax from foreign doctors etc… in other words BRING ENOUGH MEDS!

#1
This is number one based on time alone. Saw a go-fund-me thing for a chia-pet like terracotta planter — TerraPlanter. Great idea, I’ll order 2 — one for wife one for mom. Five to six months to Christmas time — ‘twill be a great gift.
Scaling up for mass production has unexpected difficulties, mold quality-control issues and other problems, Covid, etc. Three X-masses later and still no now-called “Tevaplanter” — they are expected to ship soon…

images




PS: You coulda-shoulda built a pedal in the time it took to read my above diatribe; I coulda-shoulda built 2-3 pedals in the time it took to type it in on my phone.
 
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I'm going to torture the definition of shipping a bit for this but here it goes:

I got into collecting mechanical watches before the pandemic hit and had a fairly decent collection. We ended up moving last year and I packed all my watches into plastic tote boxes to give some extra protection. I put two of my most prized watches in a zippered watch case and stuck that down in a tote. The movers show up on moving day at our storage unit and start loading the truck. I asked if they had eaten breakfast yet, and they hadn't so I went out and bought breakfast sandwiches and drinks/Gatorade for everyone. By the time I got back, the truck was loaded up and I didn't think anything of it. When we got to our new house and began unloading, I went out and bought lunch for everyone and more Gatorade to keep everyone hydrated. I even pitched in and helped unload and move some of the heaviest items. I came to find out later that evening that the tote with my watches got smashed and the case with two of my nicest pieces is gone. I called the company that evening and asked if they would double check the truck incase it somehow ended up left in the truck but I never heard anything back. I filed a police report and provide photos and serial numbers and everything, but no luck. The mover's insurance would only pay for a very small fraction of the value and my I hadn't added any separate jewelry protection to my homeowners so I'm just SOL and out about 7K.

The silver lining is that experience soured me on that hobby and in my search for something else, I picked back up guitar again for the first time in years.
 
fig said:
Calling all vendors! Lets hear your tome of terror regarding shipping.
If a vendor wins, instead of a PedalPCB gift code, I'll spend $100 at your shoppe (unless you prefer the gift code that is). Likely, I already have a cart waiting so maybe not a windfall, but fun is priceless.

@PedalPCB , @StompBoxParts , @Cabintech , and any others with an extra bolt o' yarn about?
Click to expand...

Carrier mistakes happen on a "regular" basis but it is still quite rare, far less than 1%. Most of them just delayed for a few days or a week or so, and almost always got resolved with some patience for the postal carrier.

-We had one incoming shipment of potentiometers that got flagged and searched by customs and delayed for quite a while. Guess CBP didn't find it too funny that we were trying to import a few hundred kilo's of "pot" :ROFLMAO:

-Beginning of the pandemic saw a lot of shipping unknowns and was very difficult to navigate, especially orders shipped outside of the United States. We received a lot demands and refund requests on a situation completely out of our control, and almost always got resolved with some patience for the carrier. All carriers were doing the best they could despite the challenges, all while internet orders for most businesses skyrocketed while retail was shutting down to further the burden, so almost every package got delayed at least a few days and up to a few months. Here's an example right on the forum. We ended up reshipping that order via Fedex and was delivered in less than a week. Then the original package via USPS was delivered a week later :ROFLMAO:, it took over 12 weeks for delivery. There were several shipments going to Europe that took about 12 weeks. Truly a bummer for anyone waiting for an order from anywhere, but that's the effect of a pandemic.

-Another odd scenario was a package that was supposed to go to California but ended up in Ontario, Canada for a few MONTHS to hang out before getting returned back to us. Couldn't figure that one out, reshipped with the same address and everything and it got delivered like normal.

-All order shipped via FedEx 2day on Feb 3 to the west coast went missing on Feb 4 after leaving Grand Rapids. After a week long delay, they were all found and delivered promptly. Guessing FedEx misplaced a bin or put it on the wrong plane and took a scenic route.

-Personal story: I love old Roland gear, and once I bought two TR707's from two different Reverb sellers a few days apart. Two weeks later, I still don't have any TR707s. 1) One Reverber made excuse after excuse as to why they couldn't ship it yet. After a few weeks of that monkey business I had to get Reverb involved to get a refund. 2) The other Reverber shipped promptly and the package went missing in route. Back and forth with the seller for a few weeks, getting ready to split the loss, the TR707 finally got delivered. When I open it up to service it a few weeks later, I find a bunch of sticky cola residue on the inside. Too late to do anything about it with Reverb, so I dismantled it and cleaned it up, no big deal.
 
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I have a few nightmare shipping stories-- (sorry no pics, as I'm out of town to see Ween this weekend, so I can't grab pics off my hard drive)

  1. This one isn't a shipping delay, just a sad time all around. It was April of 2019, and Tony Levin had opened a Reverb shop. I ordered a few inexpensive items (Stickers, etc) as well as Tony's personal copy of King Crimson's Sleepless single, which he kindly signed for me upon request in the order notes. I was hyped as heck since I'm a huge king crimson fan, and Tony Levin is rad. weeks go by, and the tracking is bouncing around a bit, as things often do. It's finally a month later, and the tracking says it's going to show up today-- My 20th birthday --pretty nice birthday surprise, no? well, the tracking shows delivered and it says... "Delivered in mailbox"??? That can't be right! I check the mailbox, and lo and behold, the mailer, covered in 'DO NOT BEND' warnings is forcefully folded in half and jam packed in the mailbox. The package was insured, but USPS refused to take accountability, saying it must have been broken before it was packed. BRUH! YOU FOLDED A CARDBOARD MAILER IN HALF! I'M PRETTY SURE THAT'S WHAT BROKE IT! It all worked out in the end though, as I was able to get a few of my King Crimson albums from my own collection signed by Tony a few months later at a Stick Men concert.
  2. Around a month before the time of incident #1 (so March) I ordered a record on Discogs as a gift for my sister's birthday in April. I live on Long Island, NY, and the record was shipping from Brooklyn, NY. Literally less than 50 miles. That didn't stop the USPS from screwing it all up though! over the course of a few weeks, it went from Brooklyn to Seattle, Seattle to Portland, Portland to South Carolina, SC back to Seattle, Seattle back to SC again, SC, back to Portland, and Portland back to Seattle one more time. March passed, and April came; My sister's birthday passed; April passed and May came; and finally, after all this shipment limbo, the Record arrived, the day before my birthday; the day before the broken Tony Levin record, a full two months after it had shipped out.
  3. This past summer, in mid-June I ordered a few things around the same time on Ebay: A vintage Guitar Player Magazine with Frank Zappa on the cover, and four separate orders of enclosures from SunETec. The Zappa Magazine was shipping from Florida, and the rest from China. The Zappa magazine was expected to take 5-7 days, and the enclosures were expected to take 2 weeks. The Zappa magazine was tracked from the local USPS branch in I think Tampa Fl, to the sorting facility in Jacksonville. It stayed there for a week, and when I contacted USPS they told me I just had to wait because 'Media Mail is meant to take up to 2 weeks'. In that time the first enclosure from SunETec arrives, way ahead of schedule. the following week, the Zappa mag is still in the Jacksonville facility, and USPS is still refusing to help or look into it. The other SunETec packages each show that they've arrived in the US at this point, but haven't been processed. A few more weeks pass, and I open a lost package claim for the Zappa magazine, and once again USPS is no help-- they call me to explain that media mail can take a while, and then mark the case as resolved (which apparently makes it so I can't open another claim on the item). Weeks go by and the other packages are still in limbo elsewhere in the cycle. I don't want this to get too wordy, so I'll skip the minutia. Pretty much here's the rest of the timeline: It's just under two months since the Zappa Magazine shipped, so I start calling the USPS daily telling them I want them to look into it, because there was. never a departure scan from the Jacksonville facility, so it must still be there. They tell me it must be lost, and there's nothing they can do. a week and a half later, it's been days since I last called them, and over two months since the magazine shipped. I get a package in the mail, and it's the magazine- with a note saying that they found it under a sorting machine after an employee dropped something else under there, and that they overnighted it to me. I guess they could have looked into it but just didn't at all lmao. back to the enclosures-- I eventually had to file lost package claims for the remaining three. The first eventually turned up and was delivered in mid-August, the second arrived in early September, and the final one was determined to be lost. The company sent a replacement which arrived 9 days later, but..... The original shipment of that one, which USPS determined to be lost, showed up at my door one day in NOVEMBER, 5 and a half months after it shipped out, with the box completely water damaged, smashed, and covered in what appeared to be tire marks. the enclosure was of course trashed... They literally ran over my package, let it get rained on or something, lost it, and then found the mangled mess half a year later, and delivered it to me with the rest of my packages that day. USPS has no shame hahahahahaha
  4. bonus round: I ordered a fuzz pedal from Russia back in 2019, and it arrived in the US a week later, but customs held onto it for over a month and a half for investigation, and the county/city postmaster called me twice- first to ask me what it was supposed to be, and the second time to personally apologize for holding onto it for so long after they figured out that it wasn't anything dangerous lmao.
Edit: and yes, I did post this to procrastinate from writing as essay that's due on Monday for one of my classes. I promise I'm going to work on it now though hahaha
 
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