strangely entangled

When I ordered my ScotteVest jacket, it wasn’t without some degree of hesitation. I had noticed that they shipped to Canada via UPS, which I consider to be one of the worst courier companies of all time. But the idea of a geek jacket with pockets inside pockets (and did I mention the magnetic closures?) got the better of me and I placed my order.

The jacket was originally scheduled to arrive yesterday. As I work from home, waiting around for it to show wasn’t a problem. And that’s what I did for the entire day. At 3 pm I noticed my package’s tracking status had been updated; apparently a delivery “attempt” was made, but they couldn’t find the main entrance to the building.

I called UPS and offered to pick it up at their depot instead. The woman I spoke to said that I’d get it the next day for sure, and that all I needed to do was give them updated delivery instructions. Our building has a 24 hour concierge, and he will accept packages on our behalf. She confirmed that the driver would leave the package with the concierge today.

Flash forward to 3:30 pm today. Nat comes in the door with a UPS delivery attempt notification. Apparently I owe brokerage fees on the package, something both UPS reps I spoke to last night mentioned nothing about, assuring me that the package would be left with the concierge.

If that wasn’t annoying enough, UPS wants to charge me $79 for “importing” the package. That’s 61.5% the cost of the WHOLE JACKET, and is completely, utterly and totally insane. I ordered a $2400 laptop from the US once and didn’t pay that much to import it.

In any case, I still want the jacket so I guess I’ll pay the damn fee. I did manage to get $30 off the jacket when I ordered it, so that offsets the brokerage fee somewhat. I called UPS and got a little angry (I apologized immediately as it isn’t the fault of the person at the other end), and arranged to pick it up at their depot (on Monday, as apparently they’re closed on weekends).

I’ve also emailed ScotteVest to inform them as to just what a ripoff it is to import one of their jackets into Canada. It’s not their fault that UPS charges what it does, but maybe they can look around for alternative shipping companies – I’ve had good experiences with Purolator in the past.

Sigh.

In a moment of fashion/geek weakness, I ordered an Evolution jacket from ScotteVest a couple weeks ago. According to UPS, it should arrive sometime today. I’ve never had the best of luck with UPS. How is it that they can ship a package across the country without difficulty, but are stymied by an apartment “buzzer” security system? I called them to point out that we have a 24 hr concierge in our building, so hopefully the driver will leave the package with him.

I’ll make sure to post a review and take some photos of the new jacket when it arrives. I don’t think I’m going to get much of a chance to wear it though, the temperature is supposed to hit 10 C in Vancouver today.

Oh my. I came across this by way of the fine folks at the io9 sci-fi blog. Originally posted at Number Six’s er, Tricia Helfer’s blog.