You have to love ThinkPad. Be it Lenovo or IBM before them, that product line has the fastest turnaround of any computer product I have ever dealt with. Jolene’s shiny new laptop had a bulging bezel around the screen – we think it’s been there since she got it a few weeks ago, but we only noticed it now. Call Lenovo. Returning box is sent to us on a Friday; will take about 6 business days to get to us. Box arrives the next business day: Monday.

We send the computer into them on Monday afternoon; they work on it on Tuesday; they ship it on Wednesday; thanks to UPS Red, it lands today – Thursday – by 10:30am.

Well, it should have – UPS got out the good ol’fashioned sand paper condom to make things complicated.

The tracking page online says: out for deliver @ 7:30am, to be delievered by 10:30am. Beautiful, right? Right.

Jolene goes to pick up the pack – ironically – at a UPS Store at 4:15pm – they don’t have it. OK, we check the tracking information at home: still not delivered.

I call UPS’s 1-800 number. After arguing with the voice system that I shouldn’t have to give it a tracking number to speak to a human, I give it the tracking number. It tells me, “It’s out for delivery, on schedule – would you like to hear this again?” I say, ‘Agent.’ It says, “I just gave you the updated tracking information – are you sure you want to speak to an agent?” I say, ‘AGENT!’

Agent says “whoa, it’s late” which is fine, and I spend 9 minutes on the phone while she tracks down information. Most she can tell me is she has no information; I tell her ‘The UPS Store closes at 6pm. I need my package. Today.‘ “We can call you back; give us 15 minutes.”

12 minutes later, a woman calls me: “Yeah, so, we don’t know where the pack is.” ‘Excuse me?’ “We think it might have went out today for delivery but it could have gotten lost… maybe it will show up tomorrow.” ‘I WANT MY PACKAGE DELIVERED TO ME. NOW.‘ “Well… the most we can do is put a tracer on it and find out where it might have gone.” ‘SET. A. TRACER??? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?’ “We have to run an investigation and we can’t do that overnight… it’ll take about a week to find the pack.” *silence* “Sir?” <attitude location=”eastCoast”>‘I PAID THROUGH THE NOSE TO GET THIS PACKAGE HERE BY 10:30AM TODAY AND YOU WANT ME TO WAIT ONE. WEEK. WHILE YOU FIND OUT WHERE IT WENT.’</attitude> “Uh.” ‘Really. You want me to wait until you unscrew this situation up. Right. Now. What’s the 1-800 number?’

Ironically, the 1-800 is Pick UPS. I’ll let that go.

“Hello! Welcome to UPS. Please say ‘Track a package’ or-” ‘Agent.’ “OK, I can connected you. But would you like to ‘Track-” ‘NOTHERFUCKING AGENT!’ “Please hold.” Never thought that would work. “Hello, thank you for calling UPS. How can I help you?” [insert the conversation above here with the tracking number] “Well sir. It says it will be delivered today.” ‘Right. At 10:30am.’ “Right.” ‘Sir, it’s 5:15pm’ “Right.” ‘It’s late.’ “Yes, but who told you to put a tracer on it?” ‘You guys did.’ “We can’t do that until it’s late.” *silence* “Sir?” ‘it. is. already. late. seven. hours. late.’ “Right, sir, but you needs to be one calendar day late before we can trace it.”

I know when I’m beaten; I just hung up, wrote down the tracking number, and will call them tomorrow.

Oh, yes – they get me calling them tomorrow: this is now my jihad.