A wasted trip

November 7, 2005, 11:23 PM

My dragon beard candy order cruised through customs and FDA clearance today, which is a relief after a series of messy problems on the Hong Kong side.

The freight vendor told me everything was ready to pick up at the airport, so I went down to the cargo facility to pick it up. I’ve been to this location before; the same airline as usual transported the shipment, but the logistics vendor was different.

Apparently, the warehouse hadn’t properly understood instructions to break down the consolidated shipment, so it wasn’t ready after all. They also said the shipment couldn’t be broken down until tomorrow because they were busy preparing a large outbound shipment. I wasn’t very happy.

Basically, this meant my entire trek to the airport, during peak traffic hours, was pointless.

Fortunately, the logistics provider’s sales representative had planned to meet me at this warehouse, and he tried to straighten things out there. He couldn’t, however, get them to budge. So he volunteered to have his company pay for trucking to my office in Fremont.

Oddly enough, in spite of the hiccups on this shipment, this freight vendor has provided some of the best service I’ve encountered so far. They’ve been fairly hands on helping my vendor prepare documents for the shipment, and they are the only freight company to actually come meet me in my office, and probably the only logistics company to offer anything as compensation for an error.

Of course, this final complication means my schedule will be messy tomorrow, so it may not help me all that much.