Category: life

where everything else happens

Doing Business With Friends.

I have a lot of clients that have become good friends. I like that. There are a few folks that I have been working with so long, and so much respect and trust has been built up that we can’t help but becoming friends. If they travel to Seattle to visit their servers at our facility I’m happy to take them to dinner. In some cases I even invite them out to my house. In exceptional cases, I even let them drive my old Jaguar!** While Jaguar drives are not listed in our services, friendship and trust certainly is. You can’t stay in business as long as we have without that kind of attachment to our clients.

I was reminded recently though that trust and friendship needs to work in both directions and when that bond breaks, it is very difficult to deal with, and painful to recover from.

I’ll refrain from naming any names, and relate this story as simply as possible. In this case, this client was a friend before they became a client. They became a client in 2002 when we acquired a competitor. Over the years I got to know them even better, and did my best to make their experience as a d.f customer a positive experience. The services they purchased from us were highly specialized and bandwidth-intensive, and I made it a point to dedicate technical staff to their account, and make myself available at a moment’s notice when they needed me. They had my cell phone #s, my iChat handle, etc. That level of access was available, and it was used. In 2003 they had some financial difficulty and in order to help them out I suggested an exchange of services – we’d barter the base hosting in exchange for some of their product. They would still need to pay for bandwidth (because that had a cost on our end too.) I know this would really help them out.

Unfortunately, due to some internal miscommunication among their staff at the time, we never did get their product, at least not at the equivalent level in trade as we expected. It was no big deal from our perspective because we really didn’t *need* it, so I just shrugged it off. Meanwhile, their bandwidth usage went through the roof, as they added a new component to their service that quadrupled their bandwidth usage.

About six months later, one of the billing staff came to me and let me know that this client had not paid a single invoice in many, many months. They also had not returned any emails or phone calls. I found that troubling. I asked her to keep me in the loop. Eventually they did answer a phone call and replied to inquiries about the billing with “We made a deal with Chuck.” I informed billing that yes, we had made a deal, but it did not release them from their bandwidth liabilities… I reviewed the statements, and they were correct. I informed billing that I’d talk to the client and get it sorted out. Together with our Sales dept. I contacted the client and reminded them that they were still liable for the bandwidth charges, and that our barter was never lived up to on their end as well. The client cried poverty and told us they could not afford the services, but that they had some new sources of income that they were expecting any moment. (I bowed out at that point – I work in the tech side of the business and leave the money handling to the professionals in sales and billing.) Eventually they worked out a payment plan that would cover their base monthly cost, and chip away at the back debt – which by now had grown to many thousand dollars.

What bothered me most was not the debt, or the obviously shaky financial position of the client, so much as the fact that their bandwidth needs and usage just kept growing and growing. It is an all-too-common Internet story… the web-based business that sinks itself in cost long before it can pay for those costs. I really didn’t want d.f to be left holding the bag. But last year they switched to an even MORE bandwidth-intensive technology and promoted it heavily. The server they were on crumbled under the load, and we spent weeks troubleshooting and attempting to resolve their issues. Eventually we threw the highest-spec hardware we could find at the problem and it solved it – technically at least. All we did however was enable them to use even more bandwidth, digging themselves deeper.

Meanwhile, the payment plan was not going well. They were consistently late, and frequently just plain absent with the payments… even though we had whittled them down to pennies on the dollar. Of course, with their bandwidth usage through the roof those pennies were doing nothing to backfill the gigantic financial hole being created weekly. Their monthly usage was measured in $thousand and their quarterly payments were measured in $hundred. Plus, they were never on-time with payment. This was not good. The debt grew to where it started being very visible on the balance sheet. The proverbial sore thumb. Our CEO, who is probably the most fiscally responsible human being on the planet (one of the reasons why digital.forest is a survivor in an industry strewn with dead) started riding the Sales & Billing departments very hard to get this client and their debt sorted out ASAP.

Nine months ago, we shut them off a week after their payment deadline passed. The response was shock & fury. They made life miserable for the sales and billing staff dealing with their account status, and I felt very much in the middle. They were 180+ days behind on one payment and 7 days behind on another, but somehow they were angry with us? Thrust into the middle, I spoke to my friend, the owner of this business, and he provided a credit card number, which I passed to billing. They charged both the previous and current payment on the card, and we turned their site back on. I thought all was well at that point. Apparently not. The owner went ballistic as he assumed only one payment would be charged. His response was to unilaterally revoke their side of the barter deal he and I had worked out, so that now we had no use of their product. Mind you, it was no big deal to us, as it had limited value to us, but it was symbolically a huge shift in the relationship between the two entities.

The subsequent quarter went by quietly, and they continued to accrue significant bandwidth debt, while making no effort to pay it down. It appeared to all concerned that this company had finally received the major source of financing that they mentioned earlier so we at d.f assumed that they’d make some moves to start dealing with that debt – which by now measured over $10,000. They had money, they were certainly and conspicuously spending money, just none of it was flowing our way. We wished to avoid the drama of the last payment deadline, so I gently made reminders for over a week beforehand to ensure they didn’t miss it. Payment arrived at the last possible moment, and it was the minimum amount. No extra towards the debt. Our CEO had enough, no more reminders, no more payment plan, no more mister nice guy. I was told to stay out.

So eventually, the next payment deadline came, and went. Not a dime. The account was suspended and the client had lots of excuses, but no willingness to make anything more than a token effort towards retiring their debt. One of our patient-beyond-words billing people attempted to negotiate a new payment plan, that would theoretically provide about a full year to pay off the full debt, with no luck. The client pulled up stakes and moved their Internet presence to a competitor.

The painful part is that I doubt my friend will ever be very friendly with me ever again. He’s the sole proprietor of this business (at least from what I can see… it does not appear to be a corporation) which means this debt is his debt. If we have to turn this over to collections, it is HIM. I didn’t want this to be personal, but I expect it will be perceived as so.

I have no intention of changing the way I place trust and friendship high in the list of priorities in dealing with our clients, but this episode taught me some hard lessons. One of them is that balancing of client relations with financial reality can be a very difficult thing. We would have never allowed a ‘non-friend” to dig themselves THAT deep financially. In hindsight it was stupid for us to do so really. If we had been realistic, or detached in our viewpoint, we would have realized the whole “Bad Lieutenant betting on the Mets” financial scenario unfolding before us. In the future I’ll never let the “friend” status of a client drive financial decisions in matters beyond about 90 days. The nature of our business growth at the moment makes a repeat of this scenario unlikely, but the experience has left some scars, and wisdom, behind.

I have no idea if this client can pay the debt and make the whole problem vanish, or if we’ll be faced with taking the hit ourselves and writing it off our books (a tough situation in this close margin biz), or some solution in between. Only time will tell.

** That linked photo is Titus Bicknell of the Discovery Channel. Titus has been a digital.forest client for years and years.. a great guy, snappy dresser, and provides me with a semi-regular supply of Laphroig 10 year old cask strength malt whisky when he ventures over from the UK. That photo was taken on a snowy November morning as we took a spin around my “block”… which is about a 4 mile drive. Even though the steering wheel was on the wrong side for him, Titus was a very happy boy after the drive. Besides, how could I deny a Scotch-bearing Englishman a spin in an E-type? The above story is NOT about Titus, or his employer. If anything they serve as the flip side to this scenario.

Miami, Day two.

My second day in Florida was full of one main activity, delivering this server to its new home. I awoke and ate my complimentary breakfast by the pool… which was worth every penny. ugh. Thankfully it was MUCH cooler than the day before. It seemed to be in the 60s, with overcast conditions. It appeared to have rained the night before. Remember how in Miami Vice the streets were always wet… that wasn’t a special effect. Every time I’ve been to Miami, there were puddles everywhere, and nothing has changed. I finally mastered lowering the Beetle’s roof (there is a switch between the seats, which I missed due to the armrest the day before.)

Let me diverge into a mini car review: I have plenty of experience with the VW New Beetle, having owned one for almost 200,000 miles and recently sold it. I always loved the way the Beetle drove, and this one was in some ways even better. My ONLY complaints about it were a bit of wind noise up by my left ear with the top up, and the fact that it had an automatic transmission. Mind you, as autos go, this one was pretty nice… a six speed DSG, but in the end, it was still a slush box. I MUCH prefer to shift myself. Anyway, the driving position was great, the ergonomics awesome. The boot was miniscule, and the back seat sort of a joke. If I had one I’d rip out the back seat and just make it a larger cargo area. It seemed MUCH peppier than my 2.0 liter Beetle ever was, and I discovered the reason why when I popped the hood open: It has an inline 5-cylinder 2.5 liter engine. It has much more torque than my 4-banger could dream of. Nice off-the-line acceleration, and excellent 60-90 jumps… once the damn transmission woke from its slumber a few seconds of agonizing lag after I push the throttle. With a manual tranny, this would be a killer car. It had several nice Teutonic touches, such as:
* a “drop/raise-all windows” with one button control.
* all the windows drop ever so slightly when you grab the door handle. This clears the glass of the weather-stripping as the doors open and close.
* an LCD at the top of the windshield that tells you when the top is fully retracted, or not.

Missing was the playful instrument colors and icons of the ’99 New Beetle I had, replaced with a far more serious-looking instrument cluster. It seemed a bit out of character for this playful sort of car.

Overall, I was VERY happy to have this car for the two days. So much better than a Sebring or a PT Cruiser!

Driving in Miami and environs hasn’t changed since last time I was here… basically Third World driving conditions and drivers, all contained within a distinctly US package. In other words, drivers swerving over lines and zero lane discipline combined with gigantic SUVs and people yakking on cell phones. Thankfully it got better the farther away from Miami I drove. First stop was Vero Beach, which was about three hours of driving north. As I arrived I called Steven Willis to get directions, and instead left him a message. So I wardrove until I found an open wireless network and looked up his address, plotted it on Google maps, and started navigating my way there. He called as I was within few miles and gave me a few hints. I found his place soon after.

I’ve known Steven for probably a decade, but we’ve only met once before, well over 5 years ago. Funny how the Internet has altered personal relationships like that… I think I have far more “virtual friends” than real these days. in 2004 Steven’s company was knocked off the ‘net by two successive hurricanes. Even though in many ways, we are competitors, I offered to help out any way I could. We set up a server in our facility for Steven to use as a DNS server, so that he could at least have some visibilty to the world. That, along with his evacuation of other critical systems to another location allowed him to weather the storms as best he could. In exchange, he offered us some rackspace to do the same thing. So here I was, finally collecting on that three year old favor, with a tertiary DNS server in the back seat of the Beetle.

Anyway, after a brief chat, we hopped into the Beetle and drove north to Melbourne and the datacenter that Deep Sky built, along with two other regional ISPs after the hurricanes of 2004. It is a nice, shiny new facility, with a modest three rows of cabinets and a lot of purpose-built considerations specific to the region.

Above is the row where our server will live. Below is Steven standing in front of their UPS. I liked the 8′ high conduit penetrations… something which makes no sense in Seattle, and a LOT of sense in Florida!

I unpacked the server and racked it up… only to find it not booting. Ugh. I unracked it, and found a desk to work on while I troubleshot the machine. It was working FINE when we left Seattle, and was carefully packed in the original box… but obviously either it was affected by the water, or rough handling (or both) along the way. I reseated all the connections, RAM, etc and got no joy, so I called the office. Thankfully this one was still under warranty, so I spent the requisite number of hours and troubleshooting steps on the phone with tech support in order to justify an on-site repair tech. That hurdle cleared, I left it behind and took Steven out for a late lunch. He picked an Irish pub, so I had a nice steak and a Guinness. hmmmm. I lost the wrestling match over the check (Steven is much bigger than I) and drove back to Vero Beach. About halfway back we had to put the top up due to rain. I left Steven, thanking him for all his help, and he promised to update me on the on site repair, expected the next day. I drove the rest of the way back to Miami, thankfully being late enough to miss the rush hour traffic. Halfway back I was able to drop the top again!

I arrived back at the hotel to see a crowd of exchange students waiting for the airport shuttle. No Chris though. While I was doing work up north, he was attending orientation. It was about 9 pm and I knew that his flight left around midnight, so he should be leaving soon. I dropped off my stuff in the room, and went back to the lobby for some Internet access (this hotel did not have in-room access!) Sure enough I leaned out to look at the front door and there was Chris, waiting for the bus. He looked around at one point and caught my eye… giving me the “stay where you are” look, so I just waved, and he waved back, giving me so subtle a smile that I doubt anyone else would have noticed it. I watched him from afar for a few minutes, until the shuttle came and took him away. I went back up to my room, slept for a few hours, then got up to head to my flight. The Beetle ragtop was growing on me, and if I could have, I’d have just driven it home. Oh well, I dropped it off, and made my way to the Alaska Air counter for my flight back to Seattle. The inbound flight was late, so my return was delayed. I was able to snag an exit-aisle seat though, and finished my copy of Peter Egan’s “Side Glances” best-of book somewhere over Wyoming.

I landed in Seattle about the same time Chris’ flight landed in Santiago. I came in over the snowy North Cascades, with Rainier’s top half completely shrouded in cloud; I hope that he was able to see the Andes, and Aconcagua in their full summertime glory.

I arrived home late, having suffered through typical Friday night Seattle/Everett traffic, and we went out to dinner at La Hacienda, just three of us.

Miami, day one.

Chris & I left Las Vegas’ airport on our connecting flight for Miami at some ungodly hour… did I mention it was raining in Las Vegas? Pouring actually. Our luggage was obviously out in the rain for a portion of that time as well, as we later discovered. =\

The flight was long… I slept though most of it. I think Chris didn’t sleep much. I woke up somewhere over the Everglades, and turned to my right to snap the picture above. Christopher looking grumpy and tired. They call it a “red-eye” flight but Chris had a workaround for that. 8)

The plane took a long lazy circle around Miami, and approached from the east, which gave me a chance to gaze out at lonely sailboats, and shipping traffic heading towards the Caribbean. My grandfather was a sailor, and I’ve always had a yearning to hop on a freighter and vanish out to sea… an impulse I will likely never act on. But my memories of his stories are brought to the forefront of my mind whenever I see any sort of craft alone in a vast body of water.

Eventually the marine traffic under the plane became quite dense, and sure enough, we made landfall:

Over Miami beach, then downtown Miami, then landing at the airport. We had a lot to do after that. First of all, navigate to the baggage claim. Miami airport, like so many US airports is undergoing significant construction in an effort to reconfigure itself completely to accommodate the massive growth of “airport security” after 2001. Mind you, there will never, ever be another successful hijacking of any commercial airliner, ever again. Anyone who stands up and announces that they are doing so will be instantly ripped to shreds by the bare hands of every other passenger on the plane. History has shown me to be correct… every attempt since the second aircraft hit the World Trade Center has had that result. But, like all military forces end up preparing to fight the last war, we’re spending vast sums of money preventing something that will never happen again. Ever. The near-term result is a confusing maze of temporary walls and inadequate signage. Thankfully I have an inate sense of direction, and despite the fact that we were one of the last to leave the aircraft (Row 27 of a 757), we were the first to arrive at baggage claim… by a fair margin. Let me tell you though… it was a bit of navigation that would befit a vintage rallymaster. In another twist of bad airport design there were maybe 6 chairs in the entire baggage claim area. Being the first there we staked ours out for a long wait.

I was about to leave Chris and go find a place to get him some Chilean currency and a phone card that would work for calling home from South America, when by some bizarre stroke of luck, his bag appeared on the conveyor… the first one off the plane! As I said earlier though, it was wet. I had given him my amazing Speaker Swag Bag from Macworld Expo, which hopefully was water resistant enough to keep his stuff inside dry. I left him to find my box, and went off to find currency. It was early in the morning, so the airport was sort of dead… and ALL the currency exchange locations in the terminal we were in were closed. Grr. One did have a sign that said, “go to terminal E” or something like that. So I wandered my way over there, to find one currency exchange place “open” but with nobody staffing it! I checked the directory and it listed two such places in this terminal, so I found the other, which was closed but with a sign directing me back to the one I just left. Sigh. Upon close observation the only open currency exchange location did have a doorbell under one of the windows, so I pressed it and … eventually … a woman came out from behind a James Bond like secret door at the back of the glass cage. When I said I needed Chilean currency she just sighed, and went back behind the door! Eventually (I figure the heat makes everyone move so slow down there) a man came out and changed my Benjamin Franklin into a pile of colorful Chilean Pesos:

Wow, that’s forty-two-thousand!

Yes, I’m sure I got ripped off somehow, as all airport based exchanges are a losing proposition, but expediency was more important here. Something they count on. My OS X Calculator.app says I should have gotten 52,724 pesos for my $100. Oh well. The other downside was I could find no phone cards that would work in Chile.

Loaded with almost fifty grand in cash, I wandered back to Christopher, who was guarding my very soggy server box, and his luggage and both our carry-ons. Next up was picking up our rental car. Outside to the shuttle bus, as the rental counter was closed. Stepping outside, both of us wilted instantly in the heat. Here it was February, and it was hotter than our hottest summer day in the Pacific Northwest. Worse yet, the humidity was crushing. Even in the “wet” Pacific Northwest, the humidity ranges stay pretty moderate. But here it was, before 8am and already the temp and humidity were unbearable. We waited for an Alamo rent-a-car shuttle to come… seemingly for 45 minutes… while several busses for every OTHER rental car company went by multiple times. True to form, when an Alamo bus DID come, two of them arrived simultaneously. Go figure. I had reserved a car online prior to our departure, and requested a convertible. I figured since I was going to be doing a lot of driving in two days, I should at least get something fun. My paperwork said “Ford Mustang or equivalent.” The way Alamo works, at least at this location, is that you confirm your paperwork on a self-service kiosk, and then just walk out and pick a car. Cool. We wander out to the convertibles to find this array:

Chrysler Sebring, PT Cruiser, PT Cruiser, PT Cruiser, PT Cruiser, VW New Beetle, PT Cruiser, PT Cruiser, PT Cruiser.

Chris & I looked at each other, and both said “The Bug!”

Simple choice really. The only doubt was the ability to carry our luggage. So we shoved Chris’ big bag into the boot, my big server box into the backseat (it BARELY fit!), and our carry-ons on the floor, and presto! It all fit. The Bug was ours! I fiddled with the roof, but could not get it to retract, but Chris said it was too hot anyway, so we just blasted the AC and found our hotel.

I had told them to expect us early and to PLEASE have our room ready, as we’d likely go straight to sleep. Thankfully they did as I asked and we fell straight to bed. I don’t even recall lying down… and likely was asleep before I was fully horizontal. I think Chris was the same. Still on Pacific time, we were both still in the wee hours of the morning.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Around noon, I woke up, called Sue, let her know we made it. Showered, etc. Woke Chris up and we went to find some food. We wandered south from our location, into a swanky area called Coral Gables, looking for a place where we could sit down and be served. We saw plenty of places, but just nowhere to PARK! We eventually gave up and wandered back north towards the hotel and found an IHOP. Not exactly my first choice, but it worked. The service was actually good, and Chris & I sat and had a nice long chat. I managed to get all the info I wanted transmitted into his teenage brain in preparation for his first long stay away from home over the past 24 hours, so I was pretty happy. After lunch we wandered back to the hotel and just vegged out for a while… watching movies on my laptop. We made our way through DVD1 of South Park’s 2nd season when the phone rang. It was the AFS people, calling Chris for the start of his orientation. He wandered off to check in, and came back abruptly to say that they wanted him to move to a different room and see me off. He was obviously upset, as he wasn’t mentally prepared to say good-bye to me at that very moment. I told him it was OK, and gave him a hug. I suspected this would happen, and told him to focus on the orientation, and have a great six months. He would be with his host family within a few days and all would be well. At that, we parted.

I don’t recall much from the rest of that evening… a few phone calls, some work emails… but in reality I was in a sort of haze. Chris was off on his own for the first time ever. I know that Sue & I have prepared him well for this, but the separation event itself is always something of a shock. I went to sleep early. Sleep for me is a coping mechanism for all sorts of ills.

On our way!

By the skin of our teeth, we got all the red tape sorted and Chris & I are on our way to Miami… him to attend an AFS orientation – then fly off to Santiago, and me to see him off – and install a new DNS server in an east coast datacenter. At the moment we are at a layover in Las Vegas, before catching an overnight flight to Miami.

We arrived at Sea-Tac with time to spare, and killed 90 minutes sitting in the newly finished big area between concourse B & C, with the impressively engineered compound-curved glass wall constructed of tensile steel cables. It afforded a nice view of the winter sunset to the southwest. It is a shame I can rarely get Christopher to smile when I point a camera at him, because he seemed genuinely happy to be on his way. We watched a movie together on my laptop between Seattle and Las Vegas. Unfortunately we don’t have seats together for the next segment, so we’re waiting for a gate agent to show up so we can (hopefully) change our seats.

Meanwhile, Chris carbo-loaded with a Cin-a-bon:

I’m just happy to have electricity (for my laptop) and free wireless access. To each his own I guess. 😉

The flight is delayed by 30 minutes…. ugh. The upside is that means our baggage transfer from Alaska to American Airlines is more likely to succeed.

One odd note: we taxied for what seemed like 20 minutes after landing here.

Another odd note: I keep hearing this irregularly timed, but barely audible chiming noise. It drives me nuts… I think it is some alarm noise from my cell phone, or maybe my laptop… perhaps the lady sitting over there futzing with her cell phone? Eventually I figure out it is coming from the damn slot machines about 100 meters away from me in the terminal! Grrr.

Last time I was in Las Vegas’s airport was in the fall of 1999… the height of the economic boom days. I was on my way from Seattle to NYC for the start of the Cannonball Classic and also changing planes in the middle of the night, hopping on a red-eye to the east coast. What a stark difference almost a decade makes. Back then the airport was literally jam-packed with people, feeding the slots and bustling about. It was deafening, and the airport and every flight was packed to the rafters. Not so at the moment… this place is like a tomb. I could probably count the people in the terminal with just my fingers and toes.

My next update should be from Miami.

Update: We have a row to ourselves for the next segment. We’ll finish our movie, and try and get some sleep.

What Brown can’t do for you.. an update.

Apparently, they can’t deliver on a Saturday…

Take a good look at the two images above. At the top you see an envelope that plainly says “Saturday Delivery.” Below that you see a tracking history that shows it being delivered on a MONDAY, which by my calculations, is two days later.

Also note the tracking history. This package on Saturday was within FOUR MILES of my house… but instead of getting delivered, it went to Everett on Saturday. Everett is THIRTY MILES SOUTH of here. Then, on Saturday night, when I called UPS’ Customer Service, they assured me that nobody was working and my envelope was sitting in a locked truck in Arlington, it in fact took a trip BACK TO SEATTLE a further SIXTY MILES AWAY.

On Sunday, when I called UPS again, pleading for some resolution, the useless “customer service” people lied to me again, saying that nothing could be done, nobody was working, etc… but look, it was scanned twice on Sunday. Go figure.

So UPS drove this damn envelope a full 120+ mile round trip over the weekend, to From Seattle, to Arlington, back to Seattle, then Seattle up to Arlington AGAIN, and finally delivered it to me. They claim it was at 9:41, but my clock said 10:15… I guess UPS lives in some sort of alternate reality.

Their utter incompetence has cost me not only stress, but two days that I could have used to perform some further daunting tasks.

Anyway, I’ve missed work this morning, primarily to deal with this…

A pile of paperwork… all in Spanish, a language I don’t speak… and my Spanish-speaking son is at school. So I’m sitting here with an English/Spanish Dictionary and Google’s language tools, filling out forms, making copies and scans with Sue’s office equipment and faxing bits here and there around the globe.

We have a bunch of errands to run today… a Dr. appointment for Chris, we need to buy him new shoes, he needs to finish packing, then dinner… then tomorrow, he leaves. Provided of course the world’s bureaucracies all provide their stamps of approval. Ugh.

Thankfully the MOST important stamp of approval is here:

As soon as I can get some time, I’m going to write a letter to a few executives at UPS, namely my peer VP in Operations, Jim Winestock, their COO David Abney, and their CEO Mike Eskew. Perhaps I can get a raft of people fired. I’ll make sure to share with all of you.

“What can brown do for you?” Apparently little.

As many of you know, my son Christopher is leaving for a semester abroad in Chile, literally within hours. As you can imagine, things around here are a bit… stressed. His mother was just in here literally crying on my shoulder… at the thought of her son being gone for the next six months.

My emotions, well let’s just say I’m too distracted to really be emotional about Christopher. Why? Because I am really angry at the shipper UPS right now to be worried about my son. In fact, until UPS finds their ass with either hand Christopher won’t be going anywhere.

Let me start at the beginning. For some reason we did not receive notification of WHERE Chris was going until very late. Right before Christmas in fact. Usually exchange students are notified several months in advance… maybe Chris was slow to get picked because he’s a boy (I noted in the orientation that the female/male ratio of exchange students was literally 20/1!) Who knows.

The process for getting a Student Visa usually takes a few months. In our case we had weeks, and those weeks started with the Holidays, so we were already behind. The hoops we had to jump through were numerous; A new US passport, criminal background checks from the State Police and FBI, immunizations, blood tests for various diseases such as HIV, letters from Chile, letters from AFS in NYC, fingerprints, etc. All these bureaucracies had to get their paperwork in order (and take their fee) BEFORE we could submit his passport to the Chilean Consulate for a visa.

I tried, when I was down in San Francisco in early January to sweet-talk the Chilean Consulate out of a visa, with incomplete paperwork, with zero luck. My previous experience with obtaining visas (when we moved to the UK) was much simpler, though almost as stressful, and BEING THERE counted for more than paperwork back then. I left SF empty-handed, but with a clearer picture of what we had to get done.

As of two weeks ago, we still had not received ALL our paperwork, but all we were missing (I think) was the FBI CHC. Sue went to the UPS store in Colorado where we were visiting my parents and overnight-shipped everything that we had to the Chilean Consulate in San Francisco, with a pre-paid envelope addressed to our house for return. I spent all last week calling and emailing the consulate to help push the process through. FINALLY on Thursday I was able to speak to the lady there (who sent me away in January) and convinced her that time was running out and we needed to get things wrapped up ASAP. She agreed and with some calling and faxing back and forth we got the visa arranged, approved, and returned in record time. There was still some paperwork we had to fill out when it arrived and get back to her prior to his departure so it was up to UPS to deliver. I specifically asked her, and confirmed that we had checked off the package for Saturday delivery. I knew we were cutting it close, but with the wonders of overnight shipping, I was confident it was well in hand.

I watched in satisfaction as the package tracking website followed it towards us…. but then…

¡Whisky Tango Foxtrot?!

What do they mean “remote area”?? I see the UPS trucks here in Arlington Heights all the time. Other than the fact that they deliver packages to our house destined for a family one block to the east all the time, they’ve never had any trouble finding OUR HOUSE. Even on Saturdays!

At 9:00 AM PST I made my first call to 1-800-PICK-UPS to try and resolve the situation.

Try calling that number (1-800-742-5877) and see what happens. They have one of those ULTRA annoying automated attendants that tries to do everything in its power to stop you from talking to an actual human being. Go ahead and call and say my tracking number: J192 1504 928 It will tell you there isn’t a damn thing new about it and they can’t deliver it. Sorry.

I keep hitting “0” until the automated attendant gives up and transfers me to a human. At first it seems like we’re going to make some progress. I explain to the human that this package contains a passport, for a family member who will be travelling internationally very soon and that we specifically requested, and paid for ($23.32) Saturday delivery. They tell me that they will call the package center and that they will message the driver, and finally, that a Supervisor will call me back within an hour. They get all my contact details, and I hang up, happy.

One hour and fifteen minutes go by.

I call again. This time, the automated annoyer won’t let me get past “her” and basically says “There is no new information about your shipment, please call back later” and hangs up on me!! Grrr.

I call back, press “0” enough times to get to a human. The human apologizes that I haven’t received my promised call, and informs me that he will follow through and see that I get a call, within an hour. Like an idiot, I take his word and hang up.

Another hour+ goes by.

I call again. Once again, I enter the fray with the Automated Annoyer. She speaks to me in a condescending tone, but I finally manage to get past her and to an actual human. Well, I suspect they are actual humans, I really can’t know. The hum of the call center is in the background and this human tells me that at the moment, there is nothing that she can do to help… I’ll just have to wait for the Package Center Supervisor to call me back, as promised. I explain to her the critical nature of this delivery, and she assures me that somebody WILL call me back. I just need to be patient.

Well, I’m nothing, if not patient, so I hang up the phone and stare at it for the next 120+ minutes while it sits there … and does nothing. No ring. No call. More promises broken. It is now afternoon, and my patience is wearing thin. I call once again. My entanglement with the super-sticky automated attendant finally passed, I end up with a human being. I relate the whole story once again. I offer to drive anywhere they need me to go, Arlington, Everett, even Seattle, so I can get this package into my hands. Nada, nothing. All I get is an excuse that this truck was not reachable and that the delivery would be rescheduled for Monday. I explained to them the nature of the situation, and how that would be unacceptable. I paid for Saturday Delivery, the lady at the Consulate specified Saturday Delivery, and here it was Saturday, and where was my delivery? Then the human being, whose title I can only assume has the words ‘Customer Service’ somewhere in it said something that finally made me, the one of the world’s most calm and patient people, go completely bonkers:

“Can you call the Consulate?”

I paused for a second to consider the completely illogical statement that I just heard.

(pardon the all caps, but in this case it is really required…)

“WHY SHOULD I NEED TO CALL THE CONSULATE? THEY DON’T HAVE THIS PACKAGE. I DON’T HAVE THE PACKAGE. YOU HAVE THIS PACKAGE!! I AM TALKING TO YOU BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE PACKAGE THAT I PAID TO HAVE DELIVERED TODAY! YOU NEED TO FIND THE PACKAGE AND DELIVER IT TO ME. OR TELL ME WHAT I NEED TO DO TO COME GET THE PACKAGE. THIS IS NOT THAT DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND.”

The moron kept blubbering excuses and apologies while I frankly… lost it.

“I RUN A 24/7 OPERATION, I KNOW WHAT IT TAKES TO GET STUFF DONE, EVEN ON A WEEKEND. IF I RECEIVED A CALL FROM A CUSTOMER, COMPLAINING OF A FAILURE OF MY STAFF, I WOULD BE DOING WHAT I COULD TO FIX THE PROBLEM… NOT TELL THEM EXCUSES… SO WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO TO FIX THIS??

My family, who has never seen me act like this, all ran to the basement and cowered in fear.

“WHY WOULD I EVER TRUST UPS WITH MY BUSINESS, EVER AGAIN?? WHY CAN’T YOU CALL SOME MANAGER AND GET THIS PROBLEM SOLVED RIGHT NOW? WHY HASN’T ANYONE THERE CALLED ME BACK, DESPITE REPEATED PROMISES TO DO SO? WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT??”

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Finally, I asked to speak with a supervisor. She asked me if I would hold on, I said “gladly.”

….Several minutes of hold music later…

The same human being comes back on the line and says “There isn’t a supervisor available right now, but let me get your details and I’ll have one call you right back.”

I reminded her that I’ve heard that same promise many times so far this day and nobody has yet to call me back.

She PROMISES. So I give both my home number, AND my cell phone, saying that if I’m not at one, I’ll be at the other.

Boy, was that stupid. I can picture it now, all the UPS “customer torture service” people all snickering behind the castle wall, as they prepared to launch a cow off their catapult at me.

Meanwhile, the entire Goolsbee family climbed into Sue’s car and went to Everett on an errand. Silly me expected to hear from a UPS representative and maybe we’d be able to swing by Arlington, or maybe Everett and pick up our package. I figured that these people would actually live up to their promises. Do what they said they would do. Perform the task I had paid them to do. Make good their errors, fix their mistakes, heal the wound they had inflicted. Obviously, I was delusional.

No call ever came. We returned home, and no call had come there either. I made one last try while the calendar still said “Saturday.”

This last call was pretty much a repeat of the previous one, except that I didn’t yell (as much) until the stupid thing that this ‘Customer Service’ person said: “It is too late now. If you had called earlier…”

“I DID CALL EARLIER… I’VE BEEN CALLING SINCE 9 AM! I’VE BEEN PROMISED CALL BACKS SINCE…. Etc, etc, etc.”

I did manage to get this guy’s name though: Nathan Magilow. I asked Nathan to transfer me to a supervisor, and he basically refused. He said there was nothing anyone could do. All the facilities were closed. The package was still inside a truck at the Arlington UPS facility, but that nobody was there and it would just have to wait until Monday morning. I explained to him the issues that caused me, with the possibility of having to re-book international flights, etc, and it was obvious that it just. didn’t. matter. At least not to him.

It was obvious to me that nobody at UPS really gave a damn. They honestly could care less about doing their job. Serving their customers. No matter how critical the contents of their shipment may be. It seems to me that some driver didn’t want to drive the 4 miles it would have been to deliver that package to our house. Instead he chose to quit work early that day or something similar, and just put it off until Monday. Here you can see, via the wonders of modern technology, the route that this package flew, from San Francisco, to Ontario, CA, to Seattle, WA, to literally within 5 miles of my house… only to fail:

It travelled over 1385 miles in less than 15 hours… OVERNIGHT, but will take SEVERAL DAYS to make it those last few miles. I could walk that distance many times over in those days. Sad really.

Update:
I called UPS this morning, in the vain hope that somebody with a clue would be able to make something happen, or at least would direct me to some executive I could write to and get a whole pack of people fired. As you can imagine, based on my prior experience… I got nowhere.

sigh.

Update:
The envelope arrived Monday morning, and I missed work to spend the day filling out forms and sending faxes to various places around the globe… something I had planned to have done a day and half ago… hopefully the red tape will untangle before he leaves tomorrow! Click the link above to read more info.

Head out on the highway, Looking for adventure…

While it is still winter, the hint of Spring is in the air, and I find myself drawn to the Road Atlas… with dreams of long sweepers, tight curves, long high-speed runs. My eldest son is heading off on his big adventure, spending a semester in Chile as an Exchange student. He’s leaving Tuesday(!)… Which leaves me with just one son for the next half year. Nicholas is a wonderful travelling companion. So I’m dreaming up an early-summer drive that he and I could do… maybe down to California.

I’m thinking the southbound journey down the east side of the Cascades/Sierra, and then up the coast for the return.

As the scheme develops, I’ll let you know, but if you have any “must drive” roads suggest them in the comments!