At the weekend, I ordered a tray of semi-skimmed milk from Amazon. It’s a repeat order for my mum – ordering online means I don’t have to go into Asda or anywhere. I order stacks of stuff from Amazon and it always arrives on time. This order immediately went down as delivery for today (Wednesday), and I got a UPS message telling me the same yesterday.
As of 5pm, it hasn’t arrived – but UPS’s website says delivery is due before 8pm. I’m not optimistic about that, though. You see, I entered the tracking number into the UPS system, and the item is currently… well, not very close to me.
I typed the following into UPS’s online query system:
I am dying to know what my shipment [number], which was tagged in Tamworth about 30 miles away, and which is due for delivery today, is doing in Arlesheim, Switzerland?
The automated reply came back with:
Sometimes the route information can look very strange because of our systems.
There’s an understatement. I don’t think I’m going to get it today (Wednesday) unless the tracking information is just completely wrong.
Update: And it isn’t wrong. Amazon has now indicated delivery is unfortunately delayed. And my milk really has gone to Switzerland (via Herne-Börnig, Germany), and has now got to make its way back to the UK. A 30 mile road delivery has become a 1,500 mile international air-freight issue. What a complete f***ing carve up by UPS. I wonder what the carbon footprint for this looks like?
Update: My milk spent a nice day and a half in Switzerland soaking up the ambience, and has since moved on to Köln, in Germany, where it looks like it’ll be spending the night. I can’t be sure if it flew there, since how long it took could have been by road. I’m dying to see which UK airport it goes to – assuming that the UK is its next stop (and does involve some sort of air transport), of course. I’m not sure if UPS employs Carrier Pigeons, but you never know.
Update: It moved again during the night after a six-hour rest. It’s now back in Herne-Börnig (just Northeast of Köln) which suggests the previous hop to Köln was via air freight since it has gone from the airport to the UPS depot). It’s also worth noting that I don’t believe UPS delivers on weekends, and today is Friday.
Update: It looks like UPS don’t work at all on weekends. It’s 36 hours and counting and my milk is still in Herne-Börnig. Shipped last Monday, supposed to be delivered 30 miles by Wednesday, currently travelled 750 miles and remains 500 miles away as of 4.30pm Saturday.
Update: Sunday afternoon, and it has been sat at Herne-Börnig for 2½ days. It still hasn’t moved.
Update: It left Herne-Börnig at 3am Monday morning. As of 12.10pm Monday, it is in Stanford-le-Hope (on the north bank of The Thames, in case you didn’t know).
Update: The Amazon page updated to ‘your parcel may have been lost so you can claim a refund’. I did. Even if this arrives it is likely to be unusable because of the stresses it has endured. I have written to the UPS CEO and also the wholesaler who sold me the milk in the first place to make them aware of this fiasco. I had to order an emergency supply of milk from a different seller, and that arrived today after being ordered yesterday.
Here’s the really fun part. I re-ordered from the original wholesaler now that Amazon has refunded me. It’s gone to UPS again, and the tracking number has just been assigned in the last hour. Amazon said delivery on Thursday when I ordered, but it now says ‘tomorrow by 8pm’. UPS says delivery Tuesday (tomorrow) ‘by end of day’. And… drum roll, dramatic music, it is currently in… Tamworth.