Where are you, Sonnet No. 99?

I shipped Sonnet № 99 off to Oxford last Tuesday by UPS, with a promise that it would arrive there today.

It did not.

Here’s the latest UPS tracking information for the parcel:

UPS Tracking Information

The UPS call centre tells me that my parcel was “subject to a security scan which was beyond our control” by way of explaining the delay. It all goes well this won’t prevent the package from being at Oxford by the September 30 deadline – thank goodness I shipped it as early as I did – but I’ve little faith in UPS as I see the back and forth the parcel went through.

Charlottetown to Dieppe to Lachine to start things off make sense to me. But why did the parcel go across the border to Plattsburgh, 100 km away, only to come back to Lachine two days later, and then on to Mirabel, and then back to the USA to Louisville (UPS’s main hub) and then back up to Philadelphia (from where, I presume, it’s headed overseas).

Perhaps I’m too stuck on an old world “the fastest route from point A to point B” way of thinking about global logistics, but this makes no sense to me, and I can’t imagine why it’s efficient to send a parcel back and forth across the U.S. border twice when sending it from PEI to the United Kingdom.

Comments

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on September 28, 2016 - 15:26 Permalink

Update: the package made it over the ocean to Castle Donnington, but was not delivered today as promised:

UPS Tracking

I called UPS and they’ve created a trouble ticket and I’m told to expect a call back within the hour.

Oliver Rukavina's picture
Oliver Rukavina on September 28, 2016 - 17:51 Permalink

Only
Hard Day's

Night
Only

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on September 28, 2016 - 18:03 Permalink

I didn’t get the call back within the hour.

So I called UPS back.

And was told that the call was scheduled to happen before September 30 — two days from now, and when the package would be 3 days late. They apologized and told me I’d be getting a call back before 10:00 a.m. tomorrow.

Apparently the package is “held up in the warehouse” in the U.K.

Sigh.

Peter Rukavina's picture
Peter Rukavina on September 29, 2016 - 19:03 Permalink

The package was finally delivered on the morning of September 29, 2016, two days after it was scheduled.

UPS blamed the delay on “customs,” but was unwilling to provide more detail about which country’s border caused the issue (Canada? USA? United Kingdom?).

The sonnet arrived before the September 30, 2016, which is the important thing.

But the UPS customer experience was dispiriting, and I’m unlikely to ship with them again.