Tag fedex sucks

Since I am on vaca I will try to drop an entry in here every couple of days so I don’t need to tax my memory too much.  Friday I left work a little early to meet up with Daniel who was installing our new water heater.  My intent was for it to be a tandem effort but he got done with work early, by the time I got there he was almost done.  I am pretty sure I could have handled the swap out myself, the biggest issue would have been getting the correct plumbing fittings I would have needed.  Since Daniel does HVAC work he had all the parts on hand.  The new heater fired up without issue and within 30 minutes we once again had hot water flowing in the house.

Friday evening I also got out on the new Gotway Nikola Plus EUC for an initial test ride.  I REALLY liked the way the wheel felt.  I can’t wait to get more extensive testing in.

Saturday was the day I hoped to get the Prius back together.  Unfortunately I made a bad decision to use my power ratchet to reinstall the copper bus bars.  I managed to snap one of the battery cell terminals which meant I now have to wait another few days to get another replacement cell.  I was so annoyed with myself.  I released the adventure so far on video.

I decided to punish myself for my stupidity by doing a full weed whacking and mowing session during the hottest portion of the day.  It was around four hours of shitty, sweaty work.  I was beat to hell afterwards but glad I put in the effort as it dumped rain again Saturday night, making various areas lakes once again.

Saturday night I watched a Star is Born with Cindy.  Although the movie has been remade several times I never saw any of the older versions.  I thought it was really well done and I enjoyed it thoroughly to a B+ level.

Yesterday it felt like I was on the go constantly.  I have so many smaller things I want to get done over this week hiatus.  Cindy and I did get out on a ride in the morning which was fun.

The rest of the day was consumed by these little tasks which added up to five or six hours of time, a couple of the tasks resulted in ADDITIONAL videos.

I expect today to be busy as well.  My OneWheel Pint was supposed to show up today but AGAIN it looks like FedEx is shitting the bed, missing ANOTHER delivery time due to the box sitting in the black hole of Bell Isle Florida, again.  FedEx really sucks.

Oh I finally sold the Ultron scooter last night after it being for sale for a couple months.  The buyer was a nice guy from Bradenton. We had common interests, scooters, 3D printing, and fitness.  He was impressed by the neck snapping torque the machine has.  I was just relieved to at least recoup some money for the scooter and to have one less piece of equipment in the dining room.

So I talked to my EUC dealer yesterday about my problematic KingSong 18L.  We decided the best course of action would be to ship the new wheel back to their service center in Arizona.  While it’s there they will be able to swap and test parts in a more efficient way than I could and verify the wheel is working 100% before it is sent back to me.  Of course the downside is I will be without the wheel for at least a couple weeks if not longer.  The good news is I have tons of other PEV options to choose from.

Speaking of which, last night after dinner I took my Meepo electric skateboard over to the school to ride around solo.  Once again it had rained last night but stopped a couple hours prior to me heading out.  The rain had left various puddles scattered about which gave me some good steering practice while avoiding them.  I did a lap around the middle school before I rode the sidewalk up to the high school which has a much bigger parking lot.

I had a great time cruising around the flat open spaces.  I remained in Eco Mode which has a 15 mph top speed.  I’m not sure if it is the smaller wheels but 15mph feels really fast on an electric skateboard to me.  Maybe it’s just because I am still not all that confident on it yet.  The board has a posted top end speed in Expert mode of 26mph which sounds insane.

I’m getting better at controlling the long board.  The steering definitely is similar to the One Wheel but not nearly as responsive.  I envision a time when Cindy and I are out cruising on the Meepo and One Wheel at the same time, taking turns on each device.

Speaking of the One Wheel, my replacement front sensor pad was scheduled to be delivered yesterday and it did not show up.  Once again the delivery is via FedEx whom I am quickly becoming quite annoyed with.  This is the third time in a couple weeks where a FedEx ground package for me from the west coast hauls ass across the entire country only to hit hit the FedEx Bell Isle distribution center in central Florida and stops, for days.

This latest package had a promised delivery date of Monday but it arrived in Bell Isle on Saturday where it has been collecting dust, being scanned there on Sunday and Monday as well.   When I saw that they were going to miss their delivery date I called in, angry and frustrated with this FedEx policy.  Even though they would be perfectly capable of delivering these packages earlier than the promise date they instead hold them at the distro center until they absolutely have to move it or in my case, even after they have to move it.  I asked the phone rep why this was and said it makes no sense how a package can move 3000 miles in three days and takes 2-3 more days to move the last 200 miles.

I then specifically asked him how in the world they could miss on the delivery date when the package has been sitting in Bell Isle for three days.  He said that technically the official “commit” date was Tuesday.  I asked him to explain if that was the case, why would FedEx’s own tracking system say Monday?  He had no explanation and I got the feeling these sort of questions are something he has to deal with quite often.

Anyway I think this a moronic business practice to rush packages cross country only to have them sitting idle for days mere hours from their destination.  Over promise and under deliver is the most frustrating business practice a company can do.

So I have been patiently waiting for my KingSong 18L EUC to arrive for several months.  The wheel literally was on a slow boat from China until it landed in California late last week.  From there it was handed off to FedEx ground for delivery to Southwest Florida.  The wheel had a delivery date scheduled for yesterday, August 2nd.  As I was tracking it’s progress across the country I was getting excited as I saw it actually had already crossed into Florida on Sunday.  Wow, maybe I’ll actually get it a couple days early??  Well things have definitely not gone as I hoped.

After crossing the Florida border, for some reason it took a full day to get to central Florida where it arrived just after midnight, early Tuesday morning.  Normally once something hits central Florida we will get it the next day.  Well not in this case, the box instead sat in Central Florida until Wednesday evening where it finally got a departure scan at the Orlando distribution center.

When I woke up Thursday morning I expected to see an arrival and departure scan at the Fort Myers facility with a “on truck for delivery” status.  Nope, the status had not changed since the previous night, great….  So I went throughout the day checking the status and seeing the same aggravating lack of new information.  I held out hope that maybe they just missed a scan somehow and the box was actually on a truck and headed my way.  Well of course you can guess that did not happen.

So last night I called FedEx and asked what was going on.  Of course the phone rep is looking at the same information I was and had no explanation when I pointed out the incredibly slow movement of the box once it hit Florida.  The best they could do was open up a “tracing case”.  I had someone from that department call me up and ask for details about the contents of the box.  Again when I asked why this would happen the only guess she came up with was maybe the label came off the package.  Yea, thanks, I’m sure that’s it….

I am hoping that the box was not either damaged or stolen but that would be just my luck.  I will be rattling some chains at FedEx big time today, you can bet on that.

I expected to be spending last night unboxing and trying out the new wheel.  Instead I used a good portion of the evening plowing through my book.  When I turned off the light before bed I only had a chapter or two to go.  This weekend I hoped to get a ton of KingSong riding/testing in.  I may still get a lot of riding in but it may be on my OneWheel instead.  Of course there is stuff to do around the house, a variable constant.