It’s here! It’s here! (A fail of a tale)
Idiots. Idiots everywhere.
Our iPhone 3GSes arrived, but it was hardly thanks to anyone involved in sending them to me. Let’s recap their long journey.
On the 19th of June, in the evening, I ordered two iPhone 32GB 3GSes. One black, one white. One for me, one for my wife. Believing I’d see it the following week, for that’s Rogers’ usual turnround, I got excited for my new toy. But after contacting Rogers twice that following week and being told by the CSR drone that everything is A-OK, I finally had to head to the tracking department to find out they were back-ordered. Furthermore they told me they’d be sending me two black models. I didn’t much care about that; I’d be fine with two black models. The backorder frustrated me, but they said it would probably be the following week, and they told me — repeatedly, even — that I’d get an E-Mail when it shipped. They even confirmed my E-Mail address. Twice.
Well, the following week came and went with nary an iPhone in sight. I exchanged messages with other fellow Canadian iPhone users in the same predicament as me. Nobody was happy. Last weekend read on yet another message forum of a nifty back-door tracking method to see if your package has been shipped with UPS by using their Track By Reference tracking method and using your cell number as a reference number. I tried it that night (this would be last Sunday) and glory be, it worked! My packages were in the hands of UPS! Hallelujah! I’d get them Monday! No E-Mail from Rogers, but who cares? I tracked ‘em anyway. So I kept and eye on the tracking so I’d know when they arrived.
Monday came. By 1pm, tracking showed “EXCEPTION” with the reason that they couldn’t contact me as I wasn’t on the building directory and there was no buzz code on the package. So I called with a hearty WTF. “Oh, they don’t have your buzzer number,” the UPS drone said. Ya think? So I gave it to them. Now, this was only for one of the tracking numbers — remember, I’m expecting two. This will become important shortly. But I figured, they’re both going to the same place, right? One’s as good as the other, and any smart delivery driver would check both packages, right? I mean, wouldn’t you? Pretty obvious, I would think. So delivery was rescheduled for Tuesday.
Tuesday came. Stop me if you’ve heard this: By 1pm, tracking showed “EXCEPTION” again with the reason that they couldn’t contact me as I wasn’t on the building directory and there was no buzz code on the package. Again. Well, I thought caustically. That’s just bullshit. Another call. Got a girl this time. “Oh, see, when you want to add a buzzer code, you have to request an address change. Here, the change was put in the notes, but the drivers don’t see that information.” This was said in an educative tone, as if she was telling me this so that next time I’d know what to do. “Um,” I said, “shouldn’t the other guy have done that then? I mean, he’d know better than I would, wouldn’t he? It’s not like I’m trained in UPS procedure.” She agreed, and furthermore stated that she made the proper change and it would be rescheduled — yet again — for the next day. I tried to convince her that this just was not cool, but she couldn’t reschedule a redelivery for that evening.
Fine. She might not be able to do anything, but I wasn’t having any of it. Called back to a generic CSR and, in a pissed off but level-headed tone, complained that this was now twice this was screwed up and this was not acceptable. “Once is a mistake,” I said. “Twice is incompetence.” He said he’d get a supervisor to call me and try to reschedule an evening delivery. Splendid. And just to be sure that feet weren’t shuffling on this, I had my wife call and do the same thing. The supervisor called me — twice, thanks to both calls — and told me she’d try and reschedule an evening delivery if the driver was still in the area.
Obviously, he wasn’t. That would have been too simple an end to this sage, wouldn’t it? So, Wednesday — today — it was. But that question in the back of my mind, the one about adding the buzz code to only one of the packages, nagged at the back of my mind, so I called back to the tracking department and had them add the buzz code to the other package, too. One can never be too careful. To today dawned, more waiting and such. Package was finally delivered around 1:30pm. Turns out it was a damn good thing I added the buzz code, because it turns out that there were two different goddamn addresses on each shipping label. One was my building. The other was the next building over. This brought a number of questions to mind:
1. How the hell did Rogers screw that one up?
2. Why didn’t they ship them as one linked package? Why two separate packages?
3. Why didn’t the driver notice there were two packages with the same name with the same buzz code going to the same apartment yet with a slightly different street address and try the other damned building? You know, just on the off chance that I might be on that building’s directory? (And I am — twice, in fact, by accident.)
4. UPS had my phone number as of Monday, after I called about the first exception. Why didn’t they call and get the correct information?
Rogers’ shipping department is fail.
UPS is fail.
But the 3GS is win. So. much. win. I’m still playing with it, but so far it’s simply awesome. I did end up getting one white and one black, despite what the tracking department moron said. But the new features, the new camera, the voice control, and the speed — great Og, the speed — just kick nine kinds of old-school 3G ass. In fact, some games are so much faster that they’re almost hard to play. Phaze, for example, just hauls freakin’ ass around the track. It’s almost uncontrollable when you apply turbo boost. But I love it. Now I can ditch my iPod Touch and just use my iPhone. Now I gotta go around to all the devs I’m beta testing for and give them the new UDID, so par’n me whilst I do that.