When overnight isn’t

Amazon really screwed up this time.

The morning of July 3, I ordered a new computer power supply. The order I placed had the option of Saturday delivery, to be delivered July 5. As I’m an Amazon Prime member, that "overnight" delivery comes at a much reduced rate, and I was charged only $6 to ship it. If the next day wasn’t July 4, it would’ve been an overnight delivery, but since the holiday got in the way, delivery was to be July 5.

And I say "was to be", because Amazon didn’t ship the power supply using anyone’s overnight service. Instead it got shipped FedEx Ground. FedEx Ground doesn’t have a Saturday delivery option.

Now the package was shipped from Coffeyville, KS, so someone probably thought it’d be an overnight delivery even if it was being shipped using the Ground service. Unfortunately there didn’t appear to be anything anyone at FedEx could do to get the package released, and the FedEx Ground hub is closed on Saturdays – I know exactly where that hub is as I’ve driven by it several times.

So instead I wrote in to Amazon demanding that they refund the shipping charges unless someone can get FedEx to release the package. I mean, I paid for overnight, they didn’t ship it overnight, so they at least owed me that, and they issued a refund on the shipping charges.

It’s a good thing that I’m not doing client builds – something I’ve actually considered doing – and that this order wasn’t for a client build. If it was, I’d probably have to visit my nearby Microcenter to see what other options are available as they don’t carry the power supply I ordered, and I ordered that power supply for a particular reason.