New guitar day

[Larry Mal]

Wait. Where's the guitar?

[frelonvert]

Already stolen?

[Larry Mal]

Could be! That pumpkin you see on my kid's playset has been stolen, it's obscured by the sunlight but the squirrels have been eating it.

Which is fine, I don't need it... let them have at it, that's why we put them back there.

But no, I already revealed what the guitar will be on another thread, so I won't do my usual guessing game. It'll be here today.

[seenoevil II]

Ooooo. What a day this must be for you! Are you gonna let it sit in the box for a day or what?

[Larry Mal]

No... it's a high of 75 degrees here. I'm sitting out in my front yard with leaves falling down on me. I'll open it right up and put it on that stand and get some pictures up.

[mediocreplayer]

We can guess the color at least. Although with you it’s easy — sunburst?

[Flurko]

I think there's something about a three digit guitar model, something between 334 and 336.

[mbene085]

do my usual guessing game. It'll be here today.

If you insist.

Something about that stand just gives me a strong feeling that it's a year-old ES-335 that you got for around $1000 less than a new one.

[Larry Mal]

We can guess the color at least. Although with you it’s easy — sunburst?

Nah, it's red. Of course, you can't just call things red anymore, so it's "Antique Cherry" or "Vintage Cherry" or "Busted Cherry" or some shit like that.

But it's red.

[Larry Mal]

do my usual guessing game. It'll be here today.

If you insist.

Something about that stand just gives me a strong feeling that it's a year-old ES-335 that you got for around $1000 less than a new one.

Yeah... it didn't come today. I forgot it was coming UPS so who knows what will happen. Also it was going to my old address, but I spent the day there anyway, so I could have gotten it. But it's not really out for delivery, they just said it was.

[mbene085]

I look forward to the day where UPS is the more annoying and less reliable shipping option (which will be soon). USPS has been my favourite guitar-delivery service for many years. UPS has jerked me around. A lot.

[Larry Mal]

USPS is great.

UPS is absurd and awful. Sometimes I take time out of my day and let them know how terrible they are. I can't believe I forgot to tell the seller not to use them. But I seem to recall he said he would send it USPS First Class, which I don't think is possible with a guitar, I think you have to use Priority, which is a great service. So I assumed he would do that. I was surprised to see that he went with UPS.

So, here's how dumb UPS is: I had the guitar going to my old apartment. That's annoying, but whatever, I asked my ex-landlady to sign for it and she'll do that. Also, I have business there, so I can go there.

Still, I think, I'll just log in and tell them to send it to a pick up location, rather than waste time having them deliver something and save myself a trip.

But I can't do that, because I need a line of information from a piece of paper that will be stuck to the door when the delivery fails. I have to miss the delivery, and then go there, and then enter a line of information from that piece of paper into a computer in order to tell their computer to make a simple change.

This is a large, worldwide organization. But until someone writes with a ballpoint pen on a piece of paper and sticks it to a window, their computer systems have no capacity to make even the simplest of changes. There is no one to talk to, no appeal. Until a guy gets a guitar off his truck, and hauls it pointlessly to a place that it won't be going to, then writes out a bit of information onto a piece of paper, then hauls the guitar back, only at that point can anything be done- if, of course, I actually get that piece of paper. God help me if it blows away.

If I had moved out of state, I would be powerless to do anything and it would be sent back to the sender. UPS is powerless unless I retrieve that piece of paper from the window.

What a shitty company. They are by far the worst of all of them. I probably won't get it until Wednesday or Thursday because even the simplest of things costs days and days with them because they are awful.

[mbene085]

I can top that. I don't know if you ever saw my UPS rant, but basically, I ordered an item from the US via UPS (it was the only option for shipping for the only vendor of the item, which is the manufacturer). UPS made a delivery attempt while I was at work, saying they'd be back the next day. Great, I thought - I'm home tomorrow. No doorbell, no knock at the door all day. I check the tracking online the next day and it says "package abandoned."

I call them to ask what the fuck that means, and they tell me that "the sender has instructed them to abandon the package" and only the sender can "un-abandon" it. I contact the manufacturer, who tells me that UPS e-mailed them the day prior to tell them that "the receiver has refused the package due to customs charges." This is literally a lie. I never refused to pay customs charges, they never even knocked on the fucking door to give me the opportunity to refuse to pay them. But, the sender didn't know that, and they sure weren't going to pay the customs charges to have it returned to them. They had my money anyway.

So, the sender tells them to un-abandon it. UPS demands that I prepay the customs charges, and I do (which includes their exhorbitant brokerage fee because they enjoy holding items hostage and extorting Canadians). They tell me it will be delivered. I notice the location of the package on the tracker is moving away from me - from my city to an adjacent one 200km away. It then sits there for a few business days.

I call UPS and they tell me, "the package was abandoned and has now been destroyed."

I ask them, "What the fuck? You abandoned it because someone lied about me refusing to pay customs charges, I went through all the hoops you asked of me, I paid the customs charges, and you then drove the package AWAY from me, and fucking DESTROYED IT?"

UPS took no responsibility. The sender took no responsibility and gave me some bullshit response about "making sure my address is clearly visible to the delivery driver" as though I live in a cave and have never received a fucking package before. They offered me a refund of the shipping they charged me - about $15, when the items that were destroyed cost $300 and the customs and brokerage charges were another $100. They also offered me 10% off my next order so I could save on replacing the items that I never received.

It took me a couple of months, but eventually, I got PayPal to refund my full cost after I was able to prove that the sender never attempted to contact me before instructing UPS to abandon (and subsequently destroy) the package. UPS, of course, suffered no penalty, because why would the villain in the story have to face any consequences? The vendor was pretty shitty about it too - I've never heard of someone instructing a carrier to abandon/destroy a $300 item the same day as an alleged final delivery attempt.

What a shitty company.

Yup.

[Larry Mal]

Yeah, they are the worst. I have no idea what they are doing now.

I live in a house now, maybe things will be different. When I lived in an apartment, I discovered that they would basically just put a sticker on my door and tell me where I could pick it up in town.

Like, what if I don't have a car? What if I'm elderly, or sick?

More to the point, what am I paying them for? Why don't I just drive and buy the thing if I have to go get it anyway? What use is a shipping company if I have to get in my car and drive around town?

So I asked them on Facebook chat if that was really their policy, and they said, yeah, for apartments we just put the sticker up. We don't knock or anything.

For some reason, though, the guitar is actually on the truck.

And then the pickup locations are fucking awful. They change all the time, also. There was one in a pretty sketchy convenience store, the kind where the clerk sits two feet above you behind bulletproof glass. Great.

One is at a local pharmacy where they close at six. Cool. One is at a big row of lockers at a grocery store where you can't gain entrance to until you've scanned your face and allowed a picture of yourself to be taken. That's not the lockers- that's the grocery store that does that. The lockers are just out in the parking lot.

It seems to me that they don't really find it worth their time to deliver packages all that much, and they have these UPS locations around town but I guess those people cost more than just dumping the packages off in a sketchy convenience store where the clerk will kind of get your ES-335 after the guy in front of you has bought grape flavored cigarillos.

[PorkyPrimeCut]

USPS is great...

I'm pretty sure all 3 of the vintage guitars I bought from the US were sent via USPS and I never had a single problem.
I'm also pretty sure it was UPS who lost the first Guild D50 I bought. Fortunately I had better luck second time around.