My christmas deliveries

Jeff Jarvis notes some Christmas delivery problems with missing and late packages. My son had saved up his money for months for an iPod Nano and by the time he’d saved enough it was a week before Christmas and all the stores were out. He ordered an engraved one from the Apple store and paid extra for faster delivery. He was tickled when the Fedex tracking revealed it had been shipped from China, but was a little concerned that it would take too long to get. Three days after ordering it we came home to see a Fedex truck driving away and a “we missed you” slip hanging on the front door. We chased the truck down and got the iPod.

For Christmas I bought my wife a 30gig iPod and a Klipsch iGroove speaker dock, both ordered from Amazon in early December. Amazon promised delivery by Dec 23 with standard ground shipping, but when they still showed as pending shipment a week before Christmas I started to get nervous. I got a note from Amazon on Tuesday saying shipping was delayed but the order would still arrive by Friday. Thursday morning brought a note that the speakers had shipped and were upgraded to UPS next day shipping. Late Thursday night I was informed that the iPod had also shipped UPS next day. Both items arrived sometime Friday afternoon as promised. I assume that I wasn’t the only one with a similar situation, so Amazon must have spent a bundle on upgraded shipping.