My youngest daughter is waiting for a new iPod Nano, ordered on-line. This is the tracking page for the item from TNT International:
SZ1 is somewhere in China. It took one day to get from there to Hong Kong. Three more days to get from Hong Kong to Sydney. Then four days to make the last 300km from Sydney to Canberra (okay, one was Sunday and one was a public holiday).
But, I assured my daughter, it was on the truck this morning for delivery, so it’d most likely turn up in the AM. All day I assured here that there would be no problems. Come 4:45pm I rang TNT, and they assured me that it would get here. After all, the guy wouldn’t be finishing his run until 5pm. At 5:15pm I updated the tracking screen, which then displayed as above: ‘Time Constraint Prevented Delivery. Delivery At First Opportunity’.
I’ve just driven over to the depot, with 30 seconds to spare before they locked up, and managed to retrieve it.
There were supposed to be two deliveries today and one pickup. Only one of the three happened the way it was supposed to.
Update: This morning I see that they’ve added a new line to the status list: ’07 Oct 2010, 17:36:00, Canberra, Shipment Delivered In Good Condition.’ No. Shipment picked up by dissatisfied customer.