Scott and I mailed a package to our selves on January 5th. We received it today, FEBRUARY 11th. Why it took 37 days to travel just over 1,000 miles? Howard and Debbie send packages 8,000 miles away in 14 days.
First, they delayed it in customs and called to tell us there was a problem with the customs slip. We needed to write a new one. We asked what was wrong with the slip. "I don't know. Just write a new one." Scott tried to reason that it was pointless to write a new one, we couldn't correct the problem if we didn't know what the problem was. So she hung up and found out what the problem was: we undervalued the box at $30 worth of goods. They opened the box and looked and estimated it was worth $100. Fine, we wrote a new slip and faxed it to them. (Why they couldn't themselves scratch out $30 and write $100, I don't know)
Two days later, she called to ask what was in the 10 kilo package. They just opened the box to price each item. Whatever. OR, they could have easily read the outside note that said "Spices and other food items." So we told them that. They called the next day and told us that they needed an itemized list of EVERY thing in the box, along with each item's weight in ounces. So we tried our best to remember the 30 or so items in the box and then looked up online how much it weighed. Whatever.
They called two days later and told us that they needed it all in Chinese. Sure. We're fluent. We've learned all 50,000 Chinese characters AND know how to phonetically translate Campbell's Soup. Sure.
So we got a friend to do that for us. They called back and said it was still delayed because they needed us to confirm that this box was only for our personal use.
Hmm. No, we're going to open a chain of Western restaurants with 3 bottles of barbecue sauce and a box of Splenda. Come on! What else would we use it for??
Then, the fire-cracker crazed holiday of the Chinese New year came about before they could "send it from the customs office", so we waited another two weeks for the Fed-Ex offices to open back up.
They just opened two days ago. The woman called to say she was bringing it, but that we needed to go deposit money in the Fed-Ex bank account before she could deliver it to our city.
I'm sorry, the $150 we had already paid at the Fed-Ex office in Bangkok isn't enough?? So we told her
So, we payed another $30. We really want the barbecue sauce.
She called and confirmed that she had received the money, but didn't know where our street was. So we gave her directions. By the way, none of these phone calls took place in ENGLISH. Well, the first guy tried to explain something in English, but he obviously was playing on his BlackBerry during his classes, because we eventually had to tell him to just speak Chinese because we couldn't understand anything he was saying.
So, she finally realized she was not in the right city, she was just in another town 30 minutes away. So, of course she couldn't bring it that day. ? We tried to play hard-ball and tell her that was unacceptable, but to no avail. She whined about some reason why she couldn't bring it, we couldn't understand everything she said.
It came today. We were so excited! We could have Macaroni and Cheese and Pop Tarts for lunch!!!!!!!
No, wait. The Fed-Ex demons weren't through torturing us. This is the condition that the box came in.
It had been opened, searched through, and then repackaged. Which is fine, except when THIS is how they "searched through" it and "repackaged."
Why the need to open the macaroni box? Is the picture of noodles on the front not clear enough?
Why the need to open the pop tart box? And the vanilla wafer box?
Noodles from the macaroni box were emptied everywhere, the box had been handled so roughly that every box was smashed.
Fed-Ex, I'm warning you now. You are about to get an email.
Not a nice one.
No comments:
Post a Comment