UPS basically screwed me - actually, it was the weather

[MrDudeMan]

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.

I know this isn't a life or death situation. You don't need to try to humanize me. I feel bad for people here who are having real issues with the weather. I also know some of them personally, so the difference isn't lost on me.

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.

Not much of this is relevant in context, so I'm not going to bother with specifics. I admitted I took their courier service for granted. People make mistakes, so I'm not really sure what else you wanted. I posted to vent and also to get suggestions. I'm glad I did, actually, because I got one that I hadn't considered which solved my problem. I will say one thing, though: I didn't skip the $15 fee because I was too cheap to do it. It just didn't occur to me that this would become an issue since I've never run into it in the past. Also:

This is a bit of an unfortunate situation that isn't really UPS's fault

Since that may not have been clear enough for you, try this one:

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

 

[linthat22]

Did you look at the flux capacitor?

 

[Dari]

Glad to hear everything worked out. But, if you ordered it from multiple sellers, can't you just return it to them if you don't need it?

 

[MrDudeMan]

Glad to hear everything worked out. But, if you ordered it from multiple sellers, can't you just return it to them if you don't need it?

Sometimes, but not always. If it's a single, somewhat inexpensive part like what I was having a problem with this time, then I'd have no problem eating the cost if they wouldn't accept a return. It would have worked well for this situation. I threw money at the problem to try to get it here ASAP because that was basically my only option given the time constraints.

I was speaking more generally when I suggested the multiple distributor/courier solution. It won't work if I need multiple components that cost $10k or more simply because it will destroy my margins. Even if those parts can be returned, which isn't always a guarantee, there can be a 15% restocking fee because they have to be baked and sealed with new desiccant before resale. Plus, I have to eat the shipping both ways. In a time critical situation, this is an option I may use in the future, but the better option is to try to get more time. What it boils down to is this was a compressed development cycle with an unfortunate weather interruption that exposed a weakness in my process.

My client is very happy with the fact that we're going to make the schedule and he was eager to help. I offered to get the part myself, but he insisted that I continue working. He's a good guy, so I'm glad things are going to work out for him and I apologized for giving him unexpected stress. He also apologized to me for unloading on me earlier. After hearing the hour by hour description of my week, he realized it was a very simple mistake that normally wouldn't have been an issue at all. Considering the complexity of the design, we were both surprised that it was the only issue at this stage of the process.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Should have had me drive over to Thief River Falls and fly it down to ya

 

[Dari]

Sometimes, but not always. If it's a single, somewhat inexpensive part like what I was having a problem with this time, then I'd have no problem eating the cost if they wouldn't accept a return. It would have worked well for this situation. I threw money at the problem to try to get it here ASAP because that was basically my only option given the time constraints.

I was speaking more generally when I suggested the multiple distributor/courier solution. It won't work if I need multiple components that cost $10k or more simply because it will destroy my margins. Even if those parts can be returned, which isn't always a guarantee, there can be a 15% restocking fee because they have to be baked and sealed with new desiccant before resale. Plus, I have to eat the shipping both ways. In a time critical situation, this is an option I may use in the future, but the better option is to try to get more time. What it boils down to is this was a compressed development cycle with an unfortunate weather interruption that exposed a weakness in my process.

My client is very happy with the fact that we're going to make the schedule and he was eager to help. I offered to get the part myself, but he insisted that I continue working. He's a good guy, so I'm glad things are going to work out for him and I apologized for giving him unexpected stress. He also apologized to me for unloading on me earlier. After hearing the hour by hour description of my week, he realized it was a very simple mistake that normally wouldn't have been an issue at all. Considering the complexity of the design, we were both surprised that it was the only issue at this stage of the process.

Good to hear. As for UPS, I would've just shown up. It's one thing to say "no" to someone over the phone, it's quite another to say it to their face after they've driven 70+ miles for a product. They most likely would've given you the product. All this flying sounds very expensive.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Good to hear. As for UPS, I would've just shown up. It's one thing to say "no" to someone over the phone, it's quite another to say it to their face after they've driven 70+ miles for a product. They most likely would've given you the product. All this flying sounds very expensive.

My wife drove to Commerce City to try to pick up the package. The building was closed, but she found someone outside who was willing to talk to her. Because the Saturday delivery service wasn't used, the box was sitting in a shipping container with 4,000 other packages instead of being in a smaller, more manageable container that would have been easy to dissect. Had the weather not gotten so bad, the container would have been hauled to Loveland around 5:30AM on Friday to be opened and distributed to delivery trucks. I had no idea that's how the overnight service works until today. It's definitely good information to have for future reference.

The roundtrip ticket was less than $400 on Southwest. Obviously I offered to pay for it, but he declined as he was so excited at the prospect of getting done on time. Sadly, that's cheaper than the shipping charge for my box of parts!

 

[Jeff7]

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.

Ew.

And I'm sure you can get or make a portable X-ray machine.
For a price.

Or keep the board on your person as you're going through the airport, and kindly request some take-home snapshots.

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.

This scenario was described to me:
A programmer at work is writing a custom program for us. (Imagine that.)
Someone suggested a "quick" thing to add: "Make it able to Undo things. You just have to make it able to read the Ctrl and Z keys, right?"
<ominous glare from programmer>
"...Nnnnnoooooooo."

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.

...

Preach it brother.

Then you find out that "debug" is actually a 3 month period - specifically, it's a bug that only shows up about once every 3 months, and leaves behind no trail.This of course is conveniently found after the product has shipped.

So, you try to fix it.

"99 wee little bugs in the code
99 wee little bugs
Take one down, patch it around
201 little bugs in the code"



(edited slightly for syllable count)



Burdens of command, meet the burdens of design.




.

 

[Rakehellion]

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.

I order a lot of cheap electronics from China, so month-long waits are commonplace.

 

[MrDudeMan]

Ew.

And I'm sure you can get or make a portable X-ray machine.
For a price.

Or keep the board on your person as you're going through the airport, and kindly request some take-home snapshots.

Ha! I always feel like I'm going to get rubber-gloved when I walk through airport security with an oscilloscope and several PCBs that probably look like bombs to TSA agents.

This scenario was described to me:
A programmer at work is writing a custom program for us. (Imagine that.)
Someone suggested a "quick" thing to add: "Make it able to Undo things. You just have to make it able to read the Ctrl and Z keys, right?"
<ominous glare from programmer>
"...Nnnnnoooooooo."

Ouch indeed. Implementing an undo stack is far more complicated than it seems like it should be.

Then you find out that "debug" is actually a 3 month period - specifically, it's a bug that only shows up about once every 3 months, and leaves behind no trail.This of course is conveniently found after the product has shipped.

My favorite rendition of this was a seemingly random train of runt pulses due to a 3-phase ballast in the ceiling. The catch is that it only happened when the A/C unit at the building across the street turned on. The runts were differing in magnitude, but the same duty cycle and frequency. It never showed up when I tested the unit because I had it inside the case, which was designed for EMI shielding. They were intermittently running the board outside of the case for who knows what reason, so the failure was few and far between. That was a serious bitch of a bug.

So, you try to fix it.

"99 wee little bugs in the code
99 wee little bugs
Take one down, patch it around
201 little bugs in the code"

LOL. I love this.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I order a lot of cheap electronics from China, so month-long waits are commonplace.

Oddly I find the stuff from China is often faster and cheaper than from the US. It's always 20-40 bucks + customs to ship from the US yet I often see listings with free shipping when it's from China and there's usually no customs. Thought my particular last orders arn't the quickest and are mostly from China.

Incredible all the oddball stuff you can find on ebay that you can't find in a real store. Got this awesome little shunt amp meter display thingy for my battery bank and some 2 awg lugs for the wiring.

 

[UglyCasanova]

Wow, glad that worked out for you. Talk about a rough couple of days on the nerves!