Shipping Fiasco! (Not Glowforge Related) ;-)

[chadmart1076]

So, for our 10-year anniversary my lovely wife Jan got me a Gladiator tool chest (and a bunch of other stuff from them to hit the discount and free shipping benchmark!).

The order confirmation said “Preferred Shipping Date: September 26”

So, that was last Tuesday. I expected to receive a shipping notification on that date. Instead I got an email from JB Hunt stating that my “Whirlpool” order was out for delivery.

Flashback to the day before, I had received a voicemail stating that my Whirlpool order was scheduled for delivery the next day. I called Jan and asked if she had ordered anything from Whirlpool, and she hadn’t so we thought it must have been a wrong number.

So I click the link in the email and sure-enough it is my Gladiator. Later in the day, maybe around 11:30 or so, I get a call, my order will be delivered between 1:45 and 3:45. Great!

3:45 comes and the phone rings. It’s JB Hunt. The order will be delayed because the driver “ran out of hours” because of local traffic. Sigh. Fine. We can deliver Saturday they said. No, I’m not going to be home. “How about Friday?” Sure. Friday I can do.

Friday arrives. The phone rings. “We want to schedule your delivery, will Monday work?”. Sigh. I don’t know why I didn’t raise a stink then, but I went with it. Monday was better for me anyway.

Monday arrives. The phone rings. “We want to schedule your delivery. Will the 12th of October work?”

NO IT WON’T WORK!

Now I’ve gotten @martinell.jan involved in this, and JB Hunt won’t know what hit them! She’s already gotten Gladiator into the chain, and she won’t relent.

At first I thought they had their stuff together with all the notifications and tracking going on… but why the hell is a delivery company having this much trouble?! This is their only job!!!

I know when I was on the phone with her I said the words “some someone wasn’t doing their job?” and she never had an answer for me.

Sigh. I’m hoping they can bump me up to this Friday, which will work out perfectly so I can empty out my shed and then get in there and load it up correctly on Saturday. (As opposed to what I was expecting to do yesterday, get home after work, unload the shed, load in the new stuff and then toss all the stuff that was in there right back in there with no rhyme or reason.

This is the tool chest.

I also ordered several pieces of their rail system and a 6’ shelf.

[palmercr]

Had a fiasco getting a freezer delivered last year. The delivery company phoned late in the day of delivery and said they had run out of hours and it would be the next day. Then a pair of clowns arrived at nine o’clock at night and said they would delivery it after all but after one tripped over the kerb in the dark and fell over they decided it wasn’t actually on the van. Next day they phoned to say it was damaged, so they needed to get another one. Ended up nearly a week late.

[smcgathyfay]

Wow…thats insane. Go get 'em @martinell.jan
I’m a pretty nice, patient and understanding person, having my own company and dealing with customers… But when someone crosses me or totally messes up…
Even my kids know not to really piss of the Momma…lmao.

[Jules]

Chuckle! You totally don’t want to piss off the mama bear.
(Hope it gets there soon.)

[gwygonik]

Ugh! I feel your pain!

My 8’ Gladiator workbench got “lost” in shipping (after being “out for delivery”) and it took me many angry phone calls and several weeks to get a new one delivered. How you lose a 200 pound, 8’ workbench is beyond me.

Good luck!

[Mike13]

The bright side is that Gladiator is really nice stuff.

Give ‘em hell, @martinell.jan! I

[chris1]

I predict the next episode will be when you post a picture of the jacuzzi tub that has just been delivered.

Lifetimes ago, I dated someone who worked in the logistics department of a large chain store specializing in products for the bathroom, bedroom, and further. Specifically, chasing down where the hell all their deliveries went and yelling at freight companies all day. They may have one job, but they’re not very good at it.

[tom]

I hear ya! I used a broker to ship a pallet to maker fair(a seven hour drive from here) In the 3 day transit time I checked in with my broker 3 times and each time he said everything was fine. on the delivery day he says its still in buffalo but can get it there the next day… No good. OK he can get it there late that night for triple the price. Arhhg OK. 7pm that night I get a call its still in buffalo!!! So no show OK, please refund me my money and get it back to my shop.
Monday I get an angry call from the shipping company that they are at the fair to pick up my pallet and its not there. Duh.
Track it on wednesdy assuming it should be arriving back at my shop, nope. its in Queens! Just got it back (well most of it) today!
One job…

[PrintToLaser]

Reminds me of the game of telephone where at the end the message doesn’t even resemble the initial input.

[tom]

Hey look, they have customized stickers for this type of thing!

[chadmart1076]

Well, just today I’ve had a call to schedule for tomorrow, then “oops, I meant Thursday” then a different person calls and says tomorrow. But Jan can’t be there for part of tomorrow so I call back and tell them. Then I call Jan and she calls JB and leaves a message - they answered the phone for me… then they call me back and switched it from tomorrow PM to tomorrow AM. So at least it will arrive, tomorrow… supposedly.

[paulw]

I wonder how many people in the delivery chain happen to have very nice work tables that fell off a truck somewhere. (And also how many packages like that get shoved to the back of some facility when there isn’t a second person to load. The worst I’ve done were a jointer and a bandsaw. Oh, yeah, and some ikea stuff that go delivered to the front door of a 5-story walkup.)

[chadmart1076]

So. As of last night we were scheduled for delivery today between 7am and 9am.

9am came and went.

The driver calls me at 9:30. “I was supposed to be there at 7, but I’ll be there in an hour”.

Jan has left a VM with JBH asking them to call her, not me, since I’m at work.

Gladiator then calls Jan.

“The driver has called us and won’t be able to make the delivery today. The supervisor will meet the truck and transfer your items into a pickup to complete the delivery.”

Furthermore, JBH apparently doesn’t understand why we are so upset as they “only missed one delivery on Monday 10/2 and we’ve rescheduled our deliveries to accommodate you”…

Seriously?! As of Monday they didn’t even have 10/2 in your system! The only truly scheduled delivery that they missed was the original one on 9/26! But that doesn’t account for the fact that they called me and scheduled two other deliveries (9/29 and 10/2) that never made it into their system!

Why are we upset?! Maybe because the time we’ve taken off work to wait for these jerks is costing us more than the equipment that we purchased!

Then I get a call. It’s a courtesy call from JBH reminding me of my scheduled delivery tomorrow between 12:15 and 4:15. A date and time that I never agreed to or scheduled.

Jan is on hold with them once again.

Gladiator has already refunded us $100. I have no doubt that any money paid to JBH from Gladiator is going to be refunded to them. (On our end shipping was free). How the hell does JBH stay in business?

[Hirudin]

I had a Gladiator tool cart arrive severely dented, I’d recommend opening the box before the truck leaves.

I’m a fan of all the Gladiator stuff that I have, but I have had to spend more time dealing with post-delivery issues than I would have liked.

[chadmart1076]

I just let Jan know to inspect it and reject the delivery if there’s any damage. I really hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t want to wait even longer! I emptied my shed out last night in anticipation of this arriving today.

And, I’ll just take a moment to clarify that all of the anger and frustration here is with the delivery company alone. Gladiator has gone above and beyond in my opinion. This is all on JB Hunt.

[chadmart1076]

Delivery truck just arrived… original driver, not the supervisor like they said.

[cmreeder]

See, folks, THIS is why we are stuck with UPS.

My husband was talking about how 2U servers come in on pallets, and for only $100 or so. (no, there’s a lot of shipping baked into the unit cost.) Even if Glowforge paid for pallet delivery, we’d still be having this kind of thing.

Husband maybe forgot the semi driver with a dedicated load of ____Bank backup servers that blew off its police escort, ignored his radio, and drove to the wrong state. (this is not public, but really happened and was husband’s 54-aspirin headache… can you say Equifax with account access?)

[chadmart1076]

The tool chest was delivered in excellent condition, and I spent some time last night building the shelf and installing some of the rail system… never realized how much space a vertically hanging bike would take up!

I’ve got to finish loading up the shed or else all my stuff that is currently hanging out outside will get hit by the rain we’re supposed to get on Saturday!

I just hope I can keep the place organized. I may have to pick up another of the shelves which I like MUCH more than the Gorilla shelves we got from Costco years ago! I’ll post some more pics when it’s all done!

[chadmart1076]

Well, I didn’t quite get everything loaded in how I want, but it’ll get there. At least it’s more organized than it used to be.

In this photo there’s a box on the ground. It was heavy and really difficult to carry, and when I got to that spot I kind of just dropped it… only remembering what was in it when I heard glass breaking! I was making syrup for my Soda Stream a while back and got several sizes of glass bottles to put it in. They were all in that box. I haven’t dove into it to see how many are left yet.

[smcgathyfay]

Oh no about the glass bottles…but the space is looking great!!