Ya
know, I'm generally a nice guy. I try to be patient with online orders. I
realize sometimes stuff gets screwed up, and frankly, sometimes it's my
fault for going with a retailer I don't have experience with trying to
get a bargain. I really wanted to build a set of 29" Velocity Dually
wheels around some Carver hubs I bought.These new wheels, to also be set up
tubeless would hopefully save me a couple pounds over the
horrendously heavy set of wheels I'm currently using.
Enter, name redacted. I've chosen not to "name and shame" this particular retailer. Ultimately, I had to throw down a proverbial glove to "get satisfaction" as it were. They ended up making things right, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Online retailer name redacted had Dually rims cheaper than anyone else. A
whopping $83/rim and free shipping. The next closest competitor was a retailer I frequently use who had the rims available for $107 each. I was saving myself nearly $50 by going with name redacted. My regular retailer does price matching but in this case would not match the price from name redacted. I bit the bullet and purchased the
rims. The initial order was delayed, and delayed some more. It was only
calling in that alerted name redacted to the problem that my rims
had gone to back order and they'd neglected to tell me. Fast forward
something like another week and a half and eventually they show up.
Wrong size. I checked everything and found out it was somehow my fault.
In spite of specifically looking for 29er rims I had ordered and paid
for 26ers.
(Note - not the actual box, but a box that rims came in nonetheless. Still, two very similar boxes sat here as a reminder of my bike part purchasing hubris for something like a week. Yeah, sat there and taunted me day after day.)
I now think sizing mistake must have had something to do with
the piss-poor "web 1.0" design of their website and shopping cart.
Still, it's ultimately my fault for not catching it in the subsequent
receipt email. So, I paid out of my own pocket to send those back. But
wait, it gets better! A day or so later, a SECOND SET of 26er rims
arrive! WTF?! So, I call in and get things sorted out. Some b.s. on
their end resulted in a double shipment. At least I wasn't double-charged. Still, it necessitated me
making a trip to opposite ends of my neighborhood because I always ship
FedEx, and of course the free return label from them was for UPS. Forty minutes of walking around the neighborhood later, and I finally dropped off the last set of rims at the UPS store and rewarded myself for an afternoon of frustration with a six pack of brewskis from the liquor store next to the UPS store.
(Not actually what I bought, but those bottles have long-since been recycled. Also, I don't leave empties laying around on the counter like this. It's supposed to be humorous, okay?!)
On
top of mixed up sizes, double shipments and the like name redacted wasn't able to speedily do a return for
exchange, and suggested I buy the correct set outright in order to speed up me getting the right rims. I went ahead and paid out of pocket again for the correct size rims thinking I'd have my new rims inside of a week. However, it could never be that easy. At 17 DAYSAFTER I placed the order for the 29er rims there was absolutely NO
INDICATION of whether I would receive them SOMETIME THIS YEAR!
So, I called in yesterday figuring since it was already past noon and I was
told last Monday 4th that the rims would be in and shipped out, "that week," that it was time to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Mind you, the last time I spoke with them was over a week ago when I was told my rims were, "...supposed to be
here and will ship out this week." So, frustration level at an all-time high at this point, I called in and demanded a refund. I was
immediately asked, "Was it taking too long?"
"Yes. WAY too long," was my reply.
He
then tells me they may have come in that day. I told him absolutely the
ONLY way I was NOT going to persist with my request for a refund was going to be if
they had indeed actually arrived, and they would agree ship them to me to
arrive by next day air. He asked if he could investigate it and
shoot me an email later that day. I agreed and resolved not to hold my breath. The tab with the rims from my regular bike part supplier sat open in my browser window, since I figured I'd be placing that order for the more expensive rims by the end of the day.
Coming in scant minutes under the draconian "one to two hour" time limit I gave them for contacting me, I had an email stating that the rims had in fact arrived and would ship that day via USPS Priority Express for arrival the following day. I still wasn't holding my breath. Seeing the rims arrive today would be the resolution I was looking for. Ninja postal workers inevitably snuck in and deposited the box o' rims and departed without so much as a peep from the buzzer. Only checking the tracking a second time since getting up alerted me to their presence. This nearly month and a half saga would not come to an end though until I opened the box, and checked the rims, examining them for signs of damage or them not being the correct item. Would they be 26ers again? Perhaps 28 hole, even though I'd specified 32 hole?
It's about damn time!
The box was there, the rims undamaged, and yes, even the correct size and hole count. A sigh of relief escaped my lips and a grudging email was sent acknowledging, "The rims arrived in good condition. Thanks for sorting this out. By the way, tracking shows you received the other rims. Just need to make sure you're processing that refund for the original purchase. Thanks." Thus ends our cautionary tale. Would $50 extra have been worth it to get the rims within the same week they were purchased, thus avoiding a lot of aggravation and phone calls to a less-than-responsive retailer? Maybe. However the siren call of the bargain is often hard to resist. Next time I hope I can convince my crew wife to tie me to the mast and just put wax in her ears so she won't hear my cries of, "But it's $50 cheaper!"
My commute to and from work is usually pretty uneventful. However, living in the home town of the POTUS sometimes can make things interesting. One more than one occasion, riding home on a path that parallels the shoreline of Lake Michigan, I was turned back by Chicago Police, stationed along the path to turn back civilians attempting to enter an area cordoned off for presidential security reasons. I live in Hyde Park, which just happens to be the neighborhood where President Obama lives, and where he received his law degree from the University of Chicago.
President Barack Obama speaks to students at the University of Chicago
Law School on April 7, 2016 in Chicago, Illinois. Obama addressed his
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland as he hopes members of the
Republican party will give Garland a hearing and a vote in Washington.
(Photo by Joshua Lott/Getty Images)
It turned out that this evening was one of those days where the POTUS was in town and in fact had a speaking engagement at the university which is just a few blocks from my apartment. As I passed by The Field Museum of Natural History and the John G. Shedd Aquarium, I sighted a MV-22B Osprey attached to HMX-1, or Marine Helicopter Squadron 1 as it's known. Starting in 1976, the Marine Corps took over responsibility for maintaining and flying the helicopter fleet that carries the president, cabinet member, support staff, and members of the press. The Bell-Boeing MV-22B Osprey tilt rotor aircraft was adopted for a support role back in 2013. So far, due to a high instance of Osprey crashes, the president himself does not fly in any of the Ospreys but continues to be ferried about in a modified Blackhawk helicopter called a VH-60N Whitehawk, which adopts the call sign of "Marine 1" when the president is onboard.
A VH-60N Whitehawk, flies over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. - from Wikipedia
The unusual and loud Ospreys have become a fixture of President Obama's many recent trips to Chicago over the last few years, often attracting many a gobsmacked stare as they thunder across the sky, louder than any helicopter you could imagine. Imagine my surprise when I rounded a corner and found one of the MV-22B Ospreys had landed in a large parking lot next to McCormick Place. No police security was present, however numerous city buses lined the edges of the capacious parking lot as barriers to keep out hostile vehicles. The Osprey had touched down, and sat with it's engines at idle for a few minutes before throttling back up, taking to the air and fly back northwards the direction it came from. For a guy who still remembers being a kid fascinated by all manner of military aircraft and who built every imaginable fighter jet or WWII airplane model kit, it was quite the sight to see this amazing aircraft in action.
