Fraudulent promises

Warning: This is a rant-type post. Skip if you're too full of good holiday cheer.

During the Christmas holidays is when delivery companies get slammed. People tend to shop online a lot these days and mid-December is when the insanity begins. I am an online shopper, not for the convenience but because I do my research as a consumer. Sometimes, the best, full-featured, durable items are simply not available anywhere but online. So I shop online more often than not.

Shopping online means that I don't get what I buy immediately. There's usually a lag of anywhere between a week to two weeks. I've had items delayed for up to a month before. It's all part and parcel of online shopping - we just don't quite have the infrastructure to send packages efficiently and on-time over long distances without paying through the nose for it.

Over the Christmas hols, I expect some parcels to be late. It's just not reasonable to expect some poor, underpaid person to work late on Christmas Eve just so I can get my parcel - there is an element of social responsibility here. The unspoken contract is that I'll be reasonably patient waiting for the parcel and they'll be reasonably competent delivering it on-time.

Unfortunately, this doesn't work. There are a few delivery companies I will do business with, including Canada Post, USPS (excellent!), DHL and FedEx. Regrettably, other companies are not so good and for two of them, I've decided to boycott them due to their abysmal customer service. Let's take a very recent example, shall we? The trend tends to go something like this:

1. I buy something online and pick a delivery method with company X. It doesn't matter what I pick, it won't show up on time so I just choose the cheapest one now.
2. About a couple of days after it's shipped, I can check my tracking number online and it'll say when it's supposed to be delivered.
3. I'll check my tracking number on the delivery day when no parcel has shown up at all and it's well past the time for last delivery. Lo and behold, mysteriously my delivery date information has disappeared and my package is "in transit" somewhere between here and Hades.
4. I call the courier company. I'll get a clueless customer service rep. I'll call again a couple of hours later, and usually get someone a little better. S/he will tell me they're starting a trace.
5. I sit and wait. A few days goes by, still no package. I call again. The package is still "in transit" and apparently no one has started a trace yet but they will this time, apparently.
6. I sit and wait. According to my online tracking information, it hasn't even reached my city yet. I call again, apparently they're "working hard to find where it is".
7. Suddenly my package appears. This would usually be around Delivery Day + 1 or 2 weeks.

I had a recent episode with a worldwide courier service. My online order came with free "guaranteed N day" delivery. When it failed to appear, I called and got told, "Oh, yeah - that's just what we call that level of service. We don't actually guarantee anything". I'm speechless. I consider that fraud. So, I'm boycotting that courier service. It means that I can't shop with quite a few popular online stores now but I refuse to give my money towards a business that out and out rips off their customers through blatant misrepresentation.

Is this what we have been reduced to? No wonder our businesses in Canada and the US are getting eaten alive by foreign competitors. We have no pride in what we do. More than that, we have no sense of shame anymore.