November 14, 2003
Flying Apples
According to Apple's website which we've been checking daily, our new Powerbooks, the ones we ordered on 9th October, finally shipped on Wednesday. Hurrah!
Now the bad news. According to Apple's support telephone line, they are either in Taiwan or Luxembourg, and they will either ship today and take at least 5 business days to reach us, or they shipped on Wednesday and will be with us Monday or Tuesday next week. It depends which operator you talk to.
It's a farce.
TNT's online tracking service hasn't got any record of them yet (or the tracking number Apple supplied is wrong).
Another highly entertaining detail of this debacle is that Apple apparently emailed me on Wednesday to say they shipped. No sign of an email this end. The operator on the support line told me "Apple are a computer company so it must be a problem your end". I see. Just in case my filtering software got a bit too enthusiastic, I checked the mailserver's logs. This month I received 4851 emails so far, of which two were from Apple .... one to tell me they were going to bill me, and one offering £15 off my next order.
If I received 4851 emails without problems, and Apple can't tell me whether the Powerbooks shipped on Wednesday or today, what are the odds that the missing email from Apple went astray due to a technical fault at my end?
All will be forgiven if there's a Powerbook here on Monday ;-)
Update: I received the email this evening. It says the items were shipped today. I have no idea where they shipped from or when they'll arrive, and neither does the TNT site - it doesn't recognise the tracking number. What an insanely great experience.
Update 2: Spoke to Apple again today, the 17th November. Our powerbooks are probably still in Luxembourg with Kuehne & Nagel - or they may have been given to TNT today. They might have arrived in Luxembourg on 13th November, or today. They may arrive tomorrow, or the end of the week, or possibly on Wednesday. Gosh, I'm glad Apple are a computer company, otherwise they'd be getting all this wrong.
Posted by savs at November 14, 2003 2:41 PM