Rachael designed a very beautiful (in my unbiased opinion) cover for the book I'm having published. I needed the original Photoshop file, but it's rather large—more than sixty megabytes, and she's stuck out there in Lubbock, TX with just a dial-up connection (and what's worse, she's only got pokey NetZero, poor girl). Sometimes sneakernet does have higher throughput...
We decided it'd be quicker for her to burn me a CD and overnight it. She drove it out to the FedEx office at the Lubbock airport last night so that I could have it this morning and take it to the printer.
Sad thing is, although FedEx's website is still telling me the estimated delivery time is 10:30 AM on Thursday September 8, 2005, it isn't even in Utah yet.
It left Lubbock at 9:06pm and got to Memphis right at midnight. Then it apparently just hung out there for over thirteen hours. It got a departure scan from Memphis at 1:06pm this afternoon—several hours after I was to have received it.
It sure better get here tomorrow. And I think I'll be asking for my $19 back. The sad thing is I would have happily paid several times more than that to guarantee (truly) that it would arrive today, since I can't exactly have the printer print coverless books...
For anyone who wants to follow along, I'm sure I'll be tracking the package every few minutes tomorrow morning till it arrives.
—Michael A. Cleverly
Thursday, September 08, 2005 at 20:26
I wonder if she missed the outgoing FedEx plane in Lubbock last night.
I've had my share of problems with 'priority' and 'overnight' shipping. Once I even got an error in my favor. The UPS tracking site showed that my package hadn't even gotten to Salt Lake yet, but it was sitting in my living room. That's usually the exception, though.
I wonder what their time cutoff is for guaranteed overnight delivery. You may be able to get your money back.
The cut-off, they told her, for packages shipped from the FedEx location at the Lubbock airport was 8:30. She got the package there at 7:29. Their website claims it arrived in Memphis at 00:00, but didn't leave til 13:19.
Probably, considering how badly I wanted to receive the disk, I should have had her burn two copies and send one via FedEx and the other via UPS (both at the airport locations)...
Aaarrgghh!!! I've been tracking the package, too, and ranting to anyone who will listen (uh, mostly just Anna and Claudy). I got it to FedEx in PLENTY of time and was assured by the guy at the counter that it would get to you the next morning.
I wonder if they have any kind of official guarantee? You should definitely get your money back.