FedEx nightmares. My brother sent me my inheritance a week ago Friday, FedEx overnight. By Wednesday the tracking showed "incorrect address". Never mind that I've gotten at least two FedEx shipments to this address before, no problem.
So... I went online and logged into my account. I noticed it still had my La Mesa address, so I tried to correct it; it didn't work. But, true to form, FedEx attempted to charge my credit card $10 for the privilege of using their website. It didn't work because I didn't have that much in my Paypal account.
Then I called, and my account was reinstated. It had been placed on hold because I hadn't used it in a year or more... of course they never bothered to email me about this. I was told to call back in another 24 hours or more to update my address information. I was also connected to customer service to give them directions to 8260 Lighthouse Lane.
Next day still no delivery attempt, so I called up after hours, spoke to some Indian guy (very likely in India) who assured me they would try again the next day.
Friday, still no attempted delivery, so I called yet again and this time got them to connect me to someone in Las Cruces. I waited on hold for minutes, then a guy named Philip told me they don't know how to get to my address, it's not in their system. I asked him why they didn't route it through El Paso or Sunland Park, whose drivers know this area and deliver here every day? Because, he explained, this package was sent "Express" and only "Ground" shipments go through those cities. I replied, with some profanity, that a week with no delivery can hardly be called "Express". So he said, after the obligatory chastisement for my foul language, they would reroute it as a ground shipment.
Saturday morning I got an email that my package had been returned to the sender.
Somewhere in there I was told I'd be billed an additional $10 for not having a valid account number at the time of shipment. Also, the charges that had been attempted to my Paypal account and failed caused them to place my account on hold yet again. So I gave them my other account number and they charged it. It remains to be seen if they'll reimburse it after 11 days, as they usually do. They think that borrowing my money for 11 days without my consent is perfectly fair and reasonable. And in one of those calls I tried to update my address in their system, but of course they still couldn't verify its validity and I'm in limbo until some higher-up approves or denies it.
Is this any way to run a delivery company? I've been screwed over by them all, so switching to another isn't the answer. I'd just like to find someone at DeFex (misspelling intentional) who gives a shit.
An expat named Scott Bidstrup has a cool webpage on Terra Preta and carbon sequestration, in which he claims that if the 1.6 percent of earth's surface that is under cultivation in tropical and subtropical areas has 11.8 pounds of charcoal added per square foot, we will completely undo the effects of carbon dioxide added to the earth's atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. That's about a quadrillion pounds of charcoal according to my calculations.
A way to look at it that has a higher feel-good quotient is to take Scott's figure of 3 ounces of carbon that we have to get rid of for every square foot of the earth's surface. Using that figure, with a 3 kg bag of charcoal, you can undo the Industrial Revolution's effects for about 35 square feet of your backyard. Not to mention making the soil much better quality as you add more and more carbon to it.
I'm still experimenting with the d-Limonene and styrofoam. The viscous stuff seems to work pretty well as a glue also. And I've found some links that indicate the limonene will work well as a termite killer, even soaks into the wood by itself. See my Del.Icio.US page.
last updated 2013-01-10 20:49:07. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com