MiTEG's Journal: Stupid FedEx

On FedEx vehicle for delivery/SAN DIEGO CA 12/11/2002 03:40
Customer not available or business closed/SAN DIEGO CA 12/11/2002 16:19
On FedEx vehicle for delivery/SAN DIEGO CA 12/12/2002 02:36
Customer not available or business closed/SAN DIEGO CA 12/12/2002 16:33
On FedEx vehicle for delivery/SAN DIEGO CA 12/13/2002 02:23

I suspect the problem may lie in the driver's inability to get into my complex. But FedEx is supposed to be able get in here (maybe FedEx ground can't?). Not sure what I can do about this aside from waiting out in the driveway all day. We'll see how long many times this repeats.

Deliveries/Pickups/Boxes

[perfessor multigeek]

I gave up on dealing with that sort of thing years ago. At least a third of why I keep a box at Mail Boxes, Etc. is that I can give that info to anybody, they are always there for the pickup, and I get my box/registered letter/blah when I get around to it. I figure that this saves me at least one billable day a year, sometimes as many as five.
Warning, though. As I found to my dismay, MBE and their imitators are almost all loose franchises, which means that the quality and prices vary enormously from location to location. I, along with many of the really early dot-commers and indy design firms used to keep a box at the MBE in New York's Flatiron building (right in the center of what later was called "silicon alley"). This gave me a Fifth Avenue address, twenty-four hour access (if they liked you and you paid extra you got a key to the storefront), and an instant community of other entrepreneurial/creative types (look at funky, innovative NY companies from the eighties and nineties and you'll find that a seemingly impossible number of them had addresses at 175 Fifth Avenue). But . . . the franchisees got burnt out and sold the franchise to a real slime. I later found out that the president of MBE had been personally asked to get rid of this guy but couldn't do a thing under the terms of the contract.
So, the lesson in this? Getting a box is very handy and can save wads o' dough. But choose *wisely*.
-Rustin