"Delivery Intercept" (customer experience)
No big deal, though, as they were able to send a "delivery intercept" to UPS immediately to change the shipping address. UPS listed this as such before the item had even left the origin.
Fast forward to the following Monday, when I was really hoping to get my new phone since I've been without phone service since Friday, and I'm greeted with the following message from UPS:
THE DELIVERY INTERCEPT REQUEST FOR THIS PACKAGE WAS SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED / THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULEDWhat does this mean? Are they going to delay the package for a day because it has been "corrected" even though the new address is only a few miles from the original address, and even though they already had the new address at the beginning? Hopefully it means they've "rescheduled" it to a different truck in San Francisco on the same day, and the fact I don't currently have a delivery date isn't a problem, seeing as how both home and work are serviced from the same UPS sorting facility.
I really hope I get my new phone today, because there is a lot going on for me right now and I'm expecting some pretty important phone calls. I really hope this is just a stupid boilerplate thing of theirs and a bad process. Of course, if someone had to get their package shipped to an entirely different city, does this mean that the package, even if it could have been rerouted before it left the building, would end up going to the original city and then get reshipped to the new city only after it arrives?
I realize that package logistics are a pretty complex thing, especially when dealing with 15 million packages every day, but it seems like there's still a lot of opportunity to fix things before it becomes a problem later.
Of course, T-Mobile could have just canceled the first shipment and replaced it with an entirely new one. Better yet, I could have just not been an idiot to begin with.
Comments
I'm expecting some important calls, too. This is aggravating.
I live in a doorman building now, and that's really the ideal solution, since I can just ship stuff to my home address and the doorman takes care of it. Everywhere else, I've had a hell of a time with packages.
So I called T-Mobile and they were very helpful and pleasant and said that they had most definitely given UPS the floor number (which should have been enough), but just in case they added the company name as well (in case UPS was all "oh 4th floor there are TWO DOORS there and one doesn't have a company behind it WHAT DO I DO") and the like. Unfortunately, UPS won't attempt to redeliver until tomorrow, and T-Mobile has no way of setting up voicemail except from the phone itself (so I can't even check my messages, which I'm expecting a few important ones of). To make up for that last bit (and the porting timing issue) they sent me a free 4GB memory card for the phone, at least.
Hopefully UPS will be able to deliver my dang phone tomorrow, and hopefully I won't miss out on any very important time-sensitive voicemails in the meantime. Meh.
Anyway, T-Mobile is very helpful and courteous and friendly and understanding about all this, which is definitely not anything I ever got from AT&T. So even with this momentary aggravation, it was definitely well worth switching.
The only real ding against T-Mobile is that they didn't warn me about the porting timing issue on the web order. When I ordered I assumed the account wouldn't be activated until I first used the phone, rather than it happening immediately, and the CSR said that this was a definite problem with the web-based ordering process (since human sales people are required to point that out).
But anyway, for T-Mobile's part they're making good on it with the 4GB memory card (the CSR mentioned a whole bunch of different accessories I might be interested in but really the memory card is the only thing I was meaning to get anyway) and so I'm satisfied, even though I'm still phoneless for at least another day.
yeah, i've always had that sort of problem when dealing with ups. surly bastards, indeed.
-bill