UPS basically screwed me - actually, it was the weather

[Rakehellion]

I didn't pay the $15 Saturday delivery fee.

Then it sounds like you screwed yourself.

I always tack on an extra 5 days to a delivery estimate to account for delays and possible re-shipments.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Then it sounds like you screwed yourself.

I always tack on an extra 5 days to a delivery estimate to account for delays and possible re-shipments.

The court jester has arrived! Go troll another thread. You obviously have no idea how business works based on this response and all of your other responses in every other thread you've posted in. /ignore Edit: I'm sure you pay extra fees all the time just in case, right?

My client is bringing the parts to me. He should be landing in the next two hours. It seems as though this will work out in the end, but what a hassle it's been. I went back through my schedule to see what I could have done, but it turns out I could have only bought myself one additional day if everything had gone perfectly. I was probably going to end up in this situation regardless of what I did, so the only way to have avoided it would have been redundant orders from multiple distributors using multiple couriers. I guess I'll have to eat the cost in the future when the schedule is this tight. This is only the second time I've had this much pressure to get something done with so little time (normally custom engineering projects are measured in months, not weeks).

 

[Rakehellion]

I made a few calls this morning to let everyone know what's happening. Needless to say, my client is extremely pissed off. He screamed at me for a solid twenty minutes and I totally understood why, so I didn't say a word until he was done.

I think the lesson I learned from this situation is if something is really this critical, it's worth it to order the part from multiple distributors and have them send it using different couriers. Maybe I'll start adding Saturday delivery just for shits and giggles since, apparently, that could be the single most important $15 fee that my business will ever have to eat. I know I'm being overly dramatic, but still.

Why did you wait till the last minute to order the part?

 

[Rakehellion]

I'm sure you pay extra fees all the time just in case, right?

Yes, because I care about my reputation.

And weren't you the one who suggested ordering multiple parts from different distributors anyway? Would that not be an extra fee?

 

[MrDudeMan]

Why did you wait till the last minute to order the part?

Read the thread if you really want to know. In short, I ordered it as soon as I knew I needed it. The schedule has been this tight from the very beginning, so I couldn't have predicted that I'd need it ahead of time. There was one mistake made along the way that cost me a day, but I may have ended up needing the new part anyway. It's hard to tell at this point, but I'm not going to worry about analyzing it since it's in the past and resolution is on the horizon. This is too much of a corner case to revamp my entire business model, at least right now. If I get in this position again, I'll rethink my strategy.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Yes, because I care about my reputation.

And weren't you the one who suggested ordering multiple parts from different distributors anyway? Would that not be an extra fee?

It would be an extra fee, but not one I've needed to pay in the past. I came up with a potential solution looking backward at the events that led to the problem. It's a ridiculous way to go about it, which I also pointed out, but it's the only way to be sure on such a tight schedule. Also, I don't believe that you pay extra fees all the time, so save that for someone else. You're either lying about it or stupid for always needing to do it. This is definitely not a typical scenario for me, so it's hardly necessary for day to day business.

My reputation in the custom design community wouldn't have suffered for this, but losing business was always a possibility. People understand schedule issues, but that doesn't mean they won't move on to another vendor for a specific project. I'm sure we would have kept them as customers for other products, but they need a demo for a show on Tuesday, so this would have been a dealbreaker for this particular product.

 

[Rakehellion]

I did a lot of shipping and receiving in my teens, so I never expect anything on time. A "guarantee" without a written contract is bunk.

UPS was delayed, thus you were delayed, thus your client was delayed. It's a nice domino effect. Shit happens, so I like to pad my schedule to accommodate.

 

[Rakehellion]

Also, I don't believe that you pay extra fees all the time, so save that for someone else.

If something is important enough for overnight delivery, yes, I want to make sure I get it in a reasonable time frame.

Sometimes I pay no fees. It's called prioritizing.

 

[MrDudeMan]

I did a lot of shipping and receiving in my teens, so I never expect anything on time. A "guarantee" without a written contract is bunk.

UPS was delayed, thus you were delayed, thus your client was delayed. It's a nice domino effect. Shit happens, so I like to pad my schedule to accommodate.

Padding wasn't possible in this situation. I also understand the word guarantee is hollow of any real guarantees when UPS uses it, but this is the first time it's been late for me out of probably 10,000 overnight shipments. It's easy to take it for granted.

If something is important enough for overnight delivery, yes, I want to make sure I get it in a reasonable time frame.

Sometimes I pay no fees. It's called prioritizing.

I certainly will in the future if the schedule is ever this tight, which I also said already, but typically I've got a lot more time (weeks) to get everything together.

 

[KLin]

You should have ordered the part sooner.

/rocksalt

 

[LikeLinus]

In short, I ordered it as soon as I knew I needed it.

I'll leave this right here....

"Normally I am more on the ball, but my schedule slipped and I took this type of thing for granted. "

 

[notposting]

Glad it sounds like it's working out.

As you noted this is such an edge case, it really shouldn't affect normal operation, just something you will likely remember the next time you end up rushed on a deadline like this.

 

[Micrornd]

I considered that, but Fedex delivered a box this morning that was in the exact same situation: overnight delivery on Thursday, delayed on Friday, arrived this morning. The interstate is open between here and Commerce City, so they should be able to move it. It all comes down to $15.

Actually I understand your frustration, BUT FedEx has regularly scheduled, no extra charge Saturday deliveries, so they were coming that way anyway.

UPS Saturday deliveries are extra cost, so they don't have anything delivering regularly on Saturday, that is why I use FedEx instead.

Wait until you experience the meaning of "overnight delivery" with UPS, the delivery time varies with the distance from the airport.
So here in FL in a 20 mile radius, the "overnight" delivery time varies from "before 9am" to "before 5pm" depending on the city I'm working in, and at my home the closest depot is 16m from me, but all my packages come from a depot 36m away.

Just another reason I use FedEx and their guaranteed overnight service plus FedEx owns all their stores (unlike UPS franchise system) so I can have any FedEx package dropped at any FedEx store and most are open 8am-7pm M-F, 9am-5pm Sat, AND 12pm-5pm SUN (pickups 4pm M-F, 12pm Sat, no pickup Sun) here in FL

You might want to consider changing to FedEx

Hope it all works out.

 

[Jeff7]

The court jester has arrived! Go troll another thread. You obviously have no idea how business works based on this response and all of your other responses in every other thread you've posted in. /ignore Edit: I'm sure you pay extra fees all the time just in case, right?

My client is bringing the parts to me. He should be landing in the next two hours. It seems as though this will work out in the end, but what a hassle it's been. I went back through my schedule to see what I could have done, but it turns out I could have only bought myself one additional day if everything had gone perfectly. I was probably going to end up in this situation regardless of what I did, so the only way to have avoided it would have been redundant orders from multiple distributors using multiple couriers. I guess I'll have to eat the cost in the future when the schedule is this tight. This is only the second time I've had this much pressure to get something done with so little time (normally custom engineering projects are measured in months, not weeks).

Nice, that's good.

I was going to suggest ordering all the parts, and some equipment, and having it all next-day-shipped to your destination, and do the soldering there. (Assuming it's through-hole, or simple surface mount parts.)


Those projects are always fun.
At work, in the past, we've encountered this a little too often:
Someone from Sales walks into the Engineering office. It's one of those "Guess what I just sold!" kinds of walks. The crazy project is explained. The way the salesman "designed" it while talking to the customer made it sound so easy. If you can bend physics to suit your whims, and sometimes basic causality, some of these designs would indeed be very simple to build.
"Oh, and they're facing a $5000/day penalty clause if they're not off the job site in time, so this has to ship out of here in exactly three weeks. If they can get it sooner than that, they would really appreciate it."

So then we've suddenly got that much time to do the design, build a prototype, produce the unit, crate it, and ship it. Nooooo problem.

In cases like this, every last damn hour you can squeeze into the schedule matters. Next-day something in for $$$, and you have to hope that it gets there, because you need that day, simply because those were the time constraints you were handed.

...
Edit: I should point out that the mistake wasn't mine. This is a multiply-designed prototype from another engineer that I give work to as a sub-contractor. I don't blame him - it was complicated with very little 'soak' time. These things happen and normally we make it work.

I also like to have some time to re-re-re-review board layouts. The built-in error check can find some things, but not all. If you screwed up something on the schematic, it probably won't know, beyond perhaps connecting VDD to GND, or connecting together two pins tagged as inputs, with nothing else feeding them. But if I/O pin #2 is connected to the wrong thing, well....that sucks. And the program remains blissfully ignorant of your desired design, and dutifully helps you route the board accordingly.
If I have some time to take a break, then go back and look at it again, it really helps me find missing things, stupid mistakes, or just ways of optimizing things.
But, everyone wants everything NOW, with no additional cost, and no mistakes. Getting something to 98% completion is often the easy part. Too often, it's that last 2% that's hiding the important pieces that let it work properly, and finishing that 2% can take 4x longer than the rest of it did. Progress in design projects definitely doesn't follow a linear path, which not everyone understands.

 

[RockinZ28]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_9WN_9D2nY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

[Red Squirrel]

First world problem.

Been waiting for over 2 weeks for some stuff I ordered from ebay and I need that stuff to continue work on my server room (DC power related stuff). Complain when it makes more than a month.

 

[MrDudeMan]

I'll leave this right here....

"Normally I am more on the ball, but my schedule slipped and I took this type of thing for granted. "

That doesn't change what I said at all. I still ordered it as soon as I knew I needed it. A mistake was made, the schedule slipped by a single day, and then I had to deal with it.

Glad it sounds like it's working out.

As you noted this is such an edge case, it really shouldn't affect normal operation, just something you will likely remember the next time you end up rushed on a deadline like this.

Thanks. Yeah, I think that's how I'm going to treat this. I'll be much more aware of this type of issue in the future when I'm pushed into a corner.

Actually I understand your frustration, BUT FedEx has regularly scheduled, no extra charge Saturday deliveries, so they were coming that way anyway.

UPS Saturday deliveries are extra cost, so they don't have anything delivering regularly on Saturday, that is why I use FedEx instead.

Wait until you experience the meaning of "overnight delivery" with UPS, the delivery time varies with the distance from the airport.
So here in FL in a 20 mile radius, the "overnight" delivery time varies from "before 9am" to "before 5pm" depending on the city I'm working in, and at my home the closest depot is 16m from me, but all my packages come from a depot 36m away.

Just another reason I use FedEx and their guaranteed overnight service plus FedEx owns all their stores (unlike UPS franchise system) so I can have any FedEx package dropped at any FedEx store and most are open 8am-7pm M-F, 9am-5pm Sat, AND 12pm-5pm SUN (pickups 4pm M-F, 12pm Sat, no pickup Sun) here in FL

You might want to consider changing to FedEx

Hope it all works out.

I'm considering using Fedex after this. I don't blame UPS for anything that happened at this point (I still wish they would have been able to do more like I said in my OP, but I also still recognize this wasn't their fault). I've never had an issue with them in the past and I don't necessarily count this incident as a strike against them, but I'm not getting a good vibe about their overnight service. I'm surprised it took this long to encounter a problem, but I'm going to be more hesitant to use them in the future when there's a critical delivery to be made.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Nice, that's good.

I was going to suggest ordering all the parts, and some equipment, and having it all next-day-shipped to your destination, and do the soldering there. (Assuming it's through-hole, or simple surface mount parts.)

Unfortunately, this is a BGA part that needs to be xrayed. I have the equipment at my home office, but, as you may have guessed, it isn't portable.

Those projects are always fun.
At work, in the past, we've encountered this a little too often:
Someone from Sales walks into the Engineering office. It's one of those "Guess what I just sold!" kinds of walks. The crazy project is explained. The way the salesman "designed" it while talking to the customer made it sound so easy. If you can bend physics to suit your whims, and sometimes basic causality, some of these designs would indeed be very simple to build.
"Oh, and they're facing a $5000/day penalty clause if they're not off the job site in time, so this has to ship out of here in exactly three weeks. If they can get it sooner than that, they would really appreciate it."

So then we've suddenly got that much time to do the design, build a prototype, produce the unit, crate it, and ship it. Nooooo problem.

In cases like this, every last damn hour you can squeeze into the schedule matters. Next-day something in for $$$, and you have to hope that it gets there, because you need that day, simply because those were the time constraints you were handed.

You basically described this situation to several significant figures. It's almost amusing how demanding people are about things when they clearly don't realize how much effort is involved... almost.

I also like to have some time to re-re-re-review board layouts. The built-in error check can find some things, but not all. If you screwed up something on the schematic, it probably won't know, beyond perhaps connecting VDD to GND, or connecting together two pins tagged as inputs, with nothing else feeding them. But if I/O pin #2 is connected to the wrong thing, well....that sucks. And the program remains blissfully ignorant of your desired design, and dutifully helps you route the board accordingly.
If I have some time to take a break, then go back and look at it again, it really helps me find missing things, stupid mistakes, or just ways of optimizing things.

This is so true. I've written a bunch of custom scripts to do a little bit more advanced checking, but, at the end of the day, the longer you look the more errors you find. It's always a little worrisome that you can continually find errors as long as you're willing to put the time into reviewing the design. At some point, you draw a line and say you'll find the rest during debug, but situations like this don't lend themselves well to either scenario.

But, everyone wants everything NOW, with no additional cost, and no mistakes. Getting something to 98% completion is often the easy part. Too often, it's that last 2% that's hiding the important pieces that let it work properly, and finishing that 2% can take 4x longer than the rest of it did. Progress in design projects definitely doesn't follow a linear path, which not everyone understands.

Preach it brother.

 

[MrDudeMan]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_9WN_9D2nY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

lol

First world problem.

Been waiting for over 2 weeks for some stuff I ordered from ebay and I need that stuff to continue work on my server room (DC power related stuff). Complain when it makes more than a month.

This is my business that puts food in my kids' mouths, not a pet project in my mom's basement. It's not the same.

 

[richardycc]

seriously, who mail orders an important part the Thursday before the important demo on Monday? oh yeah, the people in the unemployment line...

 

[MrDudeMan]

seriously, who mail orders an important part the Thursday before the important demo on Monday? oh yeah, the people in the unemployment line...

Please read at least some of the thread before posting pointless insults. I realize I didn't explain everything in the OP, but I made it clear that I wasn't able to order it any sooner in subsequent posts.

 

[LikeLinus]

Please read at least some of the thread before posting pointless insults. I realize I didn't explain everything in the OP, but I made it clear that I wasn't able to order it any sooner in subsequent posts.

How exactly did your schedule slip? What was the cause?

 

[dud]

Please read at least some of the thread before posting pointless insults. I realize I didn't explain everything in the OP, but I made it clear that I wasn't able to order it any sooner in subsequent posts.

OP, do you know how inane you come across in this thread?

YOU gambled $450 that a part that you desperately needed would arrive the next day.

YOU failed to pay a measly $15 for Saturday delivery.

YOU blame UPS for an issue beyond their control and YOU blame them for not delivering on a day that YOU did not pay for.

... and to top it all YOU posted this thread in ATOT ... where you come across as being a childish, whining buffoon.


... and your client had to save YOU from your own mistake.



This thread should be saved as a Legendary Thread to posterity. I know I'm not going to forget it for a long time.

 

[herm0016]

you messed it up. and there are blackhawks flying over my house every hour getting people out of the moutian towns. you sir, did not have a bad day. call them and tell them you may be a day late because thousands of people are without homes and 200 are missing, making your parts late to your door. I bet they have seen the news in the last 3 days.

 

[MrDudeMan]

How exactly did your schedule slip? What was the cause?

I sub-contract part of the work to another engineer because I can't do everything by myself. He's really good at what he does, but everyone makes mistakes. My mistake was not spending a little more time reviewing his layout, so his mistake plus my failure to catch it ended up costing us a day. I admit that I was relying too heavily on automation and the fact that he rarely messes up in a way that can't be easily corrected in the lab. I was busy writing firmware to accommodate changes to the prototype and I wanted to get it done in time to run a regression overnight.

I did inspect his work, but the difference was so subtle that I probably wouldn't have caught it even with a closer look. Basically, BGA packages are extremely specific and can't be intermixed. The amplifier I had in stock was 0.7mm pitch and the footprint he used was 0.65mm pitch. The previous prototype used a 0.7mm pitch part, but he had to change it because we were having crosstalk issues and the 0.65mm part has the output signals further apart. Simulations showed a 2.5dB reduction in crosstalk simply by using a different package. Given the sensitivity to crosstalk in the end application, 2.5dB was enough to make this change as well as a few others to potentially help. The other issue was a pin assignment error. Ball G54 is output A0 and G55 is output A1 (differential outputs). G54 was assigned to A1 and G55 was assigned to A0. Sometimes that doesn't matter and sometimes it does. In this case, it mattered, so we had to redesign the board on Thursday night. Unfortunately, there's not a good way to implement this type of thing because there's no standardization among component manufacturers in terms of CAD netlists. The part has to be drawn in CAD and then each pin has to be assigned manually. I've written as much automation as I can to help with this, but it's still possible to switch assignments.

Normally missing a single thing isn't a big deal because the schedule isn't so tight that a single day matters.