OBSTACLE 2: THE COURIER
Since our bags were way too heavy to take on the plane, we decided to ship some of our belongings.
I had a fishing rod that I wanted to ship since it wouldn’t fit in my suitcase. It was an Abu Garcia rod that did not collapse. It was in two sections, but the longest section was 4′. I also had a box of mostly clothing and my Aria scale.
Greg put his belongings in the one cardboard box we had left at the apartment and in a plastic bin that he taped up really well.
We summoned an Uber and off we went to the nearest Staples, which had a courier counter. We could ship Fedex, Purolater, or DHL.
The first thing we found out was that Greg could not ship his belongings in a plastic bin. So, we had to purchase two boxes because there was not one big enough to fit the plastic bin itself. (We had thought we could just shove the bin in a box.) Then we had to untape the bin and transfer all of the content to the two boxes.
Next we were told that we could not ship our belongings to the Marina since it had a P.O. Box in the address. Since we had already shipped other belongings to the Marina, we knew that wasn’t true.
Then, we had to indicate the value of the items we were shipping. We were not asked to fill out an itemized list of what we were shipping. This will become relevant later.
The person helping us had given us an estimate of the cost before we transferred the contents out of the plastic bin. That estimate didn’t include my fishing rod since I hadn’t packaged it up yet.
I had to purchase some tubes. The fishing rod was too long for just one tube so I put a 1′ tube inside a 3′ tube. When I added this to the pile of things we were shipping, the cost was $170 more than the initial estimate.
“What!” I exclaimed. “How is it that different?”
Apparently you can’t exclaim in a Staples. The manager was there within seconds asking if there was a problem. He was there to make sure I wasn’t giving his staff grief. Kudos to him. Workers should not have to put up with crap from customers.
We took the fishing rod out of the pile and the price went back to the original estimate. I decided I would try and check the rod with my suitcase. I didn’t put any information on the tube although it did cross my mind that I should. This will become relevant later.
The reason the courier was an obstacle was because of what transpired later.
The delivery got held up at the sorting centre. The shippers needed to know exactly what was in the boxes and the value of each individual item. It took 4 phone calls, two forms, and a passport photo to get our goods released.
If the company needs this information, why on earth was it not asked for at the time of shipping?
