Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Delivery Problems

So I'm not really sure who to be annoyed with here...

This weekend I ordered a computer from Apple. It's a tiny little Mac Mini, and I got it mainly because it'll make a nice quiet desktop that won't keep me awake due to irritating fan noise. As an added bonus I won't have to screw with X-Windows on it, which is always nice. It was supposed to show up today, and when I got home sure enough there's a note from FedEx, but it's not the usual "Hey, your stuff is in the concierge office" note, it's the "You need to sign for this, we'll be back sometime tomorrow" note.

Naturally, the note has a spot you can sign to tell them "Just leave it here", but it also has the little box checked that says "You have to sign for this, we can't just leave it". I call FedEx and fight my way through their totally useless automated customer service thingy until I finally get to a human. The human proceeds to tell me that he can put in a request for the delivery guy to leave it at the concierge office, but since the office is in a different building from mine, and thus has a different address, they might not do it.

Apparently Apple pays extra so that you can't actually redirect the package, it has to be signed for at the location it's being shipped to, even if that's terminally stupid, like in this case.

So tomorrow my Mini might be here, or it might not. I've left a nice note on the door for the delivery guy, telling him that no really, it's ok, he can leave the fucking package with the office, like every fucking other delivery service is willing to do, but who knows if he's going to listen or not. If he doesn't, apparently I can either call Apple and have them redirect the package to my work address (since they paid extra to make sure I can't do it myself, idiots), or call FedEx and make them hold it at their warehouse somewhere so I can come pick it up myself.

The really amusing thing is that I ordered the Mini online so that I would avoid having to jump through hoops to get it, since the various places I had tried to purchase one in person hadn't had the exact one I'd wanted. The mind reels.

So I can't decide, do I get pissed at Apple for going out of their way to make sure I can't fix this problem myself, or do I get pissed at the FedEx guy for having an overly literal interpretation of the rules. I know, I'll get pissed at both, that'll be fun.