Fun with shipping
 

I ordered a Tibetan singing bowl on Ebay. The order was shipped promptly and arrived today...with one small hitch.

The person who shipped it to me shipped it in a box he must have gotten from work. The box was marked "SYRINGES". On the side of the box were standard CDC instructions about HIV and needle sticks. He shipped it through the US Postal Service.

The poor mailman who handed the box to my wife had it isolated in a postal bin covered with a protective lid, apparently in accordance with regulations on handling hazardous shipments. She didn't know what it was until she called me.

I sent a message to the guy telling him not to use those boxes again. I couldn't give him bad feedback since he did ship it on time. :confused:

You could have given neutral feedback...he really should have known better.

Your mailman is being paranoid, the USPS delivers syringes to diabetics everyday, in boxes that are clearly marked. Tell him you've got aids and you made cookies for him. :headshake

That all sounds real interesting but I have to ask: what is a Tibetan singing bowl. I'm certain that its one of those things that... "if you have to ask..." but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. I remember that you are into or at least like Bongos so I figure its some kind of percussion instrument. How about a link to the auction?

There are things from the region of Tibet that I wouldn't mind a box full of but, as of yet, singing bowls are not yet among them.

And I don't see the problem with a box of hypos. Diabetics and those with allergies and others, I bet, get boxes of syringes all the time. Tell the knucklehead postman that they aren't "used" syringes - they are new!

A Tibetan Singing Bowl is a bowl made of a mixture of metals. When struck or when a stick is rubbed around the outside edge, the bowl hums.

Rich, I think it is awesome you are getting into percussion and such. I do hope we get a chance to drum together sometime...

It actually takes a fair degree of control and wrist strength to keep moving the stick around the bowl without having it chatter. It's an awesome feeling when you get it right though. If at all possible, have someone "play" it with you lying down and moving it from your feet to your head.

Realigns your chakras and breaks up blocks too.

Looks like the same or a similar alloy to cymbals. :)

The one I got is more modern and is a silver color. It's more than 5 inches in diameter and about 3 inches deep. The walls are at least 1/8" thick. The bowl weighs over 2 pounds. When struck with the padded end of the mallet the tone is a deep gong. When rubbed with the wooden end of the stick I have gotten different tones, from deep to an almost shrill high pitch.

The only concern I have is for lead in the alloy. Although noone rubs these directly with their hands, I remember the rumors about Benjamin Franklin's glass armonica causing lead poisoning. This is ironic since Franklin was one of the first individuals to warn about lead poisoning.

I don't intend to use it every day and I will be using a stick, so if there is lead in the alloy, it shouldn't be a problem.

BTW, I also bought a Kalachakra Car Hanging

I've got one of those. What I've noticed is that if I give it to a friend and they get it to sing, then it doesn't sing for me again straight away, as though we have to get realigned to each other ... :confused:

The singing bowls are fun but I thought they were used primarily for meditation? Maybe just a false presumption, but in Tibet stores they are usually sitting close in proximity to incense.

Singing Bowls
 

I buy my bowls wholesale from www.silverskyimports.com. They also have sound files for each Tibetan Singing Bowl at http://www.silverskyimports.com/category/Singing_Bowls.html.

I use my bowls for meditation, yoga, and healing.]

Mary

Hello Mary, been digging in the archives, I see.:D
How many bowls do you have? Some of them get pretty pricey.
Different sizes/tones for different problems to cure?

I have a few, one that does the water column.

Well I wanted to get Mrs. Dallas the Andrews Sisters Christmas album on CD. She loves the tape, which is all but worn out. It doesn't seem to be available anywhere around here, so I ordered it from half.com on 12/5.

On 12/11 the seller wrote to tell me that it was backordered and they'd let me know when it shipped. Now, this is already aggravating, because people are not supposed to sell stuff on half.com unless they have it in their hands ready to ship (and for that matter they're supposed to send it within 3 business days).

So I sent the seller a message and said, forget it, just cancel my order. They then wrote back and said, oops, I tried to cancel it, but it was just shipped.

Is this striking anybody else as fishy???

Well, the email included a "tracking number" that was a bunch of digits a mile long. I've seen UPS tracking numbers and this is not one. I dutifully plugged it into the UPS web site and it said the number wasn't valid. Hmmph. I wrote back and asked them to check the tracking #. They never wrote me back. I did check the email though, and then clicked the link instead of putting the number directly into UPS.

It was shipped through something called UPS Mail Intelligence. From what I can gather from their web site this involves the package being taken by UPS to a convenient US Post Office near the receiver, and the Post Office actually delivers the item to the recipient's door. (For non-US readers, UPS--United Parcel Service--is a private package delivery company that's completely separate from the postal service.) What they don't explain (at least not in a way that I can understand) is why this is a good arrangement for either the seller or the buyer. At any rate, the package has made its way from Orlando, FL to Paulsboro, NJ, so we'll see when it actually gets here. But the whole business seems very screwy.

That's a strange arrangement, hard to believe it's faster or cheaper.

I've sung the praises of UPS, many times. Well they finally bit me.

Ordered a PC (Christmas gift)from Dell.
Friday night, email from Dell says it's shipped. Of course that just means they notified UPS it's ready, not really shipped.
Saturday, a phone call from UPS (actually a computer)saying it will be delivered on Wednesday the 13th.

Sunday I check the UPS website and it tells me Saturday they picked it up in Lebanon, TN, and it was in Harrisburg, PA on Sunday. By the way, it will be delivered on Monday the 11th.

Monday, I leave a note on the door telling UPS I'll be home at three and if they need a signature on their electronic dohickey, trace my signature off the bottom of the note. My regular guy would have done it. :o So, anyway, they leave an attempted delivery, blah, blah, blah.

I call UPS and tell them I'll pick it up at the airport the next day. Actually told one of those voice recognition computers but it knew what I was about, gave the correct address and hours for the location.....and I didn't have to push 1 for English.

It's a slight pain to get there but it's close to work. The problem is, I get out at 2:30 and they open at 5pm, but if I went home first, I'd have to leave almost immediately to get there at 5.....so I wait. But when they open, they don't have the package, it's on the truck trying to be delivered and isn't due in until 7:30pm. :mad: You know due in at 7:30 isn't a guarantee it'll be on time and then they have to find it and get it over to the pickup point.

They tell me yes, they got the message, but after they went home at 9, so nobody was there to tell the shipper not to send it out on the truck. WTF! The message goes to the pickup office and not to the people that have the damn thing and control where it goes???

Now in all fairness, this particular UPS terminal is the East Coast hub, It's the departure hub for all overseas packages going east. It's a huge operation, but they really ought to rethink this notification thing.



aside; I noticed a sign saying they would be open, Saturday the 23rd for pickup only. Nothing accepted for shipment on the 23rd, 24th & 25th. Must be their "winter" break. :rolleyes:

I'm surprised they aren't running, and charging out the wazoo for holiday weekend deliveries.

My ex-wife works at the Post Office. Last night, at 11:30, she called me to say that she had just processed a package coming to me from Hong Kong.

Talk about personal service.

Did you get the package yet? What is it!!!

It is a Yule gift for Selene (who, in keeping with our "tradition" this year, already knows what it is), an earring stand/display/device/thingamajig from Ebay.

No, the USPS isn't quite *that* efficient, I'm afraid. In fact, Ex told me that it was Registered, which means that I'm going to have to go pick it up at the local PO since I won't be home whenever they try to deliver it. Unless it is tomorrow morning.

I can't stand UPS, my local hub must suck. I used to use DHL, they I found out that they refused to ship tobacco items, so I boycott their ignorant ass.

I have had screwups from UPS and Fedex, but they generally involved pickup issues rather than in-transit mishaps. (I believe I've written about the one where the Fedex driver took the airbill off a box of laptops and put on a shipping tag to a completely different city.)

Over in the MP3 player thread I wrote about the Sandisk MP3 players I got the kids. Long story short: my son's stopped working right after about a day (there's no audio in the left channel) so I ordered a new one from Best Buy's web site.

They also used the UPS Mail Innovations thing! (Which I misnamed in my earlier post.)

That singing bowl thing sounds (no pun intended) a bit like the old wet-finger-round-the-top-of-the-wine-glass (on second thoughts, maybe it was...) - remember seeing on a TV talent show some old guy who fingered 'the bells of St Mary's' on a collection of wine glasses each containing water at a different level - by the time he'd finished he was dripping with perspiration having run back-and-forth God knows how many times along the line of wine glasses - I think he came 10th out of 12 acts... guess he should have chosen a less-demanding tune.

As to shipping, amazingly, my e-bay purchases this Christmas all arrived without any hitches - a bit different from last year when five items either never arrived or did so damaged. If you're in the UK then you'll most likely use an outfit called ParcelForce for shifting goods around - quite an interesting operation. I'm sure they check everything first to see if it's made of rubber (the bounce test) and clearly use a bespoke algorithm for calculating the date that should apply to the term 'next day delivery'

Having said that, Pixmania remains my 2006 award winner for totally cocking-up in every conceivable way. Bought a camera from them, they shipped it, shipper lost it, shipper confirmed that they had lost it, but Pixipants insisted on waiting 14 days to see if it turned up, then when it didn't and I was permitted to cancel my order (by then I'd bought another camera from someone else), they managed to ship me out another camera again instead, so the whole fiasco started again, Eventually got my money back with a little bit of compensation (not enough but by then I'd had enough of something else - them - not to argue further!) - I was suitably amazed to find that it actually reached my bank account!

I lurrrrve DHL!!! My personal shopper/on shipper uses them and I cant fault them.

Packages usually arrive from Florida to Australia in 5 days and I can always track exactly where it is.

The last thing I got from DHL, the tracking showed it was delivered to our mailroom at about 3PM. I was busy so I didn't go get it. Good thing, too... about 10AM the next morning the DHL driver showed up looking for me in my building (NOT the one where the mailroom is!) with the package. I still don't have an explanation as to how it was marked as delivered when it wasn't.

There is a lot more to them, modern scientists, currently, cannot reproduce them.

I've only used DHL once, when Dell sent a replacement monitor, with a DHL label to return the bad one. I was impressed that they came to pick it up exactly when they said they would. :thumbsup:
That said, they all have their bad days.

When Airborne Express (formerly Flying Tigers) was bought out last year or the year before by DHL it was very amusing to watch the drivers try to come up with ways to avoid wearing the horrendously bright yellow shirts that matched their newly painted trucks. Most of them continued to wear the navy blue Airborne shirts, because the new yellow DHL shirts were made in China by non-union labor. It finally got straightened out, but the shirts still look awful.

One of the drivers was telling me that DHL's owners are now in Germany, and that they are making their service more efficient. That's apparently where the color scheme comes from, too. The red and gold are from the German Flag.

Jeez, I even met them half way.
I ordered an item from Sears dot com to be picked up at the store. They sent me the prerequisite email that has the bar code to feed the kiosk before any humans appear. Went off like clockwork, the guy ahead of me gets his stuff, then the..uh... person comes out asks me to sign the electronic clipboard. I do, and he hands me a piece of paper and disappears through the ominous "EMPLOYEES ONLY" swinging doors. Good, he went to get my package, which was pretty big and 250 lbs, so I wouldn't expect him to do anything until he was sure every thing was cool. Then I read the paper he handed me.

MERCHANDISE PICKUP

We apologize!

We did not attain our service pledge goal.

Please accept this $5.00 Coupon.

Thank you for waiting

We appreciate your business.

Uh, wonderful..... but what now? Wait how long? What we have in failure to communicate. So somebody else rings in at the kiosk, and another, and another, rush hour at pickup. This forces the help to appear at which time I want some answers. It seems my shit was put on the top shelf and they were having trouble getting it down.... but they're working on it.

Ok, so while I'm waiting I'll read the coupon's fine print. Offer Expires 5/4/2007. may not be used with any other coupon. OK, that's reasonable, I guess.

Not valid on Exceptional Values, Special purchases, Great Price items, Land's End Merchandise, Sears dot com, sears Auctions on ebay, outlet store purchases, catalog orders, fragrances, J. A. Henckels, Introductory offers, Bose, Nakamichi, automotive services, Maytag Wide-by-side, Gemini and Neptune, Sears Licensed businesses, installed home improvements, gift cards, and protection agreements.

WTF? If I have them put in $10,000 worth of windows I can't use my $5 coupon? That's a deal breaker. If I have them put on $400 worth of tires and align the front end, I can't use my $5 coupon? Forget the tires/alignment.

Finally they show up with the box and we get it in the truck. Where's the second item that weighs about 2 ounces?
"Uh, Joe gave it to you."
That was it... the proverbial straw, I'd been patient, I'd been quiet, I'd been polite.....THE FUCK HE DID!!! GO GET MY FUCKING SHEAR PINS NOW AND DON"T ANY OF YOU FUCKERS COME OUT THAT FUCKING DOOR WITH ANYTHING FOR ANYBODY UNTIL I GET MY FUCKING SHIT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

It took three minutes. Wonder if this coupon is still good? :confused:

Sure it is, but it'll need psychological counselling to overcome the anger it witnessed in it's formative moments.....