I have grown to love and, as I type this, occasionally hate couriers.
This time of year tends to be pretty busy for me and for the couriers. I do a fair bit of online shopping for Christmas. Recently I have been doing a lot of ordering of both computer parts and supplies for my photography business. You can't make prints if you don't have ink, so the couriers have become a lifeline.
One person living in Ottawa asked me if I order a lot online. The answer is, when you live in Estevan, yes. I buy locally when I can, but a lot of these items are specialized. By the time I drive into Regina, have lunch, supper, take my wife and kids, it's at least $200 on gas, meals and munchies (we drive gas guzzlers). It is easier, and cheaper, to just have it shipped. And that is assuming you can even get certain items in Regina. A lot of these products I have been ordering recently, I'm lucky if I can get them in Western Canada.
To that end, I use various suppliers so that I don't end up locking myself into one. It's not so much that I am concerned about one or the other, it's just that I like to keep my options open should my chosen supplier be out of stock.
That's exactly what happened the other day. I ordered a wall plug-in power supply from The Camera Store in Calgary as well as a small fortune in printer ink (that stuff is more expensive than French perfume). Unfortunately they sold out the last power supply in-store just as I ordered online. Since this appeared to be the last power supply of its type readily available in Western Canada, I ended up ordering from New York-based B&H Photo, one of the largest camera stores in the world. My power supply arrived on Monday, and the ink came last Thursday.
At the same time, I'm building a new computer from scratch, ordering components and assembling it myself. Yes, I am that much of a geek. Last Thursday my Intel processor arrived, but nothing else.
This is where the frustrating part comes in. The order was done through the Canadian version of an American website. There were multiple items and the order ended up being split, with the items coming from different warehouses. The processor and Windows 8 disk arrived, but nothing else did.
Entering the tracking numbers into the courier's system has been frustrating. The order was placed on Nov. 8. There was some confusion with payment, so that got sorted out a few days later. The order was shipped on Nov. 15, and there are three entries from that date. Then it just disappeared. There have been no entries since then. Today is Nov. 19, and I am getting worried.
Tomorrow it will probably show up, but Nervous Nellie here is a bit wound up.
Last year I watched with awe as some Apple iPods made their way from China to Estevan in time for Christmas. Each tracking update was a little thrill. Imagine what merchants from 200 years ago would think of this. They would send a ship off to the horizon and hopefully it would come back some day with a belly full of items for them to sell. But frequently, due to storms, piracy, or hitting the rocks, ships never came home.
Now I am freaking out because my order is a couple of days late. Perhaps this is the definition of a "First World problem."
- Brian Zinchuk is editor of Pipeline News. He can be reached at [email protected]
