OK, this is SO not a good way of doing business and whoever decided it was needs to be shot out of cannon!!!
It all started out simply enough. I decided to do a bit of online shopping, as I am very prone to do, at one of my favorite places, Kohls.com. Yes, I could just as easily driven less than two miles down the road and actually shopped at a Kohl's store but this just seemed easier. Or so I thought. I clicked onto the Clearance link (I LOVE that link) and quickly found a pot holder and towel set in a garishly attractive banana leaf motive that I just had to have for the grill accessories. In fact, they were so hideous that I ordered two sets just to be safe. What can I say, they were on sale. Originally $14.99 a set, clearance priced down to $4.79 a set. Then I threw a 20% discount coupon at them and gladly accepted the FREE shipping. Happy dance!!! Moments later I received a confirmation email letting me know that my order had been received, would be shipped FedEx standard ground and that they would email me again when my order was ready to be shipped. All seemed right with the world.
Then the second email arrived informing me that my order was ready to be shipped and would be using FedEx SmartPost standard ground. Wha??? A couple of Google's later and I knew more about SmartPost than I ever wanted to know. Twenty-seven pages worth to be exact and not a single good review anywhere amongst them. It seems that SmartPost is an evil entity in it's own right with the reliability factor of a fish with one leg. They are a small, independent parcel service that specializes in light weight shipments from online retailers that has been subcontracted by FedEx to do the little shit that they don't really want to be bothered with. Fuck, I've been outsourced. Anyway, they work by carting parcels to any one of more than a dozen scattered locations they have around the country that they call "Sortation Centers". Is that even a real word??? The object of all of this is to eventually get your parcel to a center that is closest to your delivery zip-code. Where they hand it over to the Postal Service to do the actual delivery. Wha??? In short, FedEx actually has nothing to do with the shipment whatsoever. Wha???
OK, so I've been able to track the package online and monitor it's "progress" (I use that term lightly) and I have to say, it's a total cluster fuck. On August 30th it left the Kohl's shipping center in Hazelton, OH and went to the Sortation Center in Grove City, OH. Twentyfour hours later it started its journey to the next Sortation Center in New Berlin, WI which is not only SmartPost's national headquarters, it is only 70 miles east of here. It was scanned in there at 11:19 pm on September 1st (that would be 48 hours ago) and until about 20 minutes ago had just been sitting there in limbo. A recent check of the tracking shows that it is on its way again to the next Sortation Center... In Harrisburg, PA!!! WTF?!?
With any luck I may still manage to receive my pot holders while it is still warm enough to grill out. But probably not. Who the hell does SmartPost have working at HQ, Jethro Bodine??? Some of Elly May's critters??? Granny after a couple of shots of "recipe"??? Duke???
Yes, I know, I shouldn't bitch, after all shipping was free. But I don't think that it qualifies my pot holders to get a Grand Tour of Europe in the process either. And the final insult? I don't get to wage a complaint until after my delivery is 22 days late past the "estimated" delivery date. And that would be September 29th. Hell, by then we could have snow on the ground and I could be in muck-lucks!!! I just want my jungle print pot holders and I want the motherfuckers god damned NOW!!!
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