[theo_luddite]

Have to agree on the UPS thing jjamez. They once took about 9 months to deliver an "overnight" loan item to Coventry from a supplier in Yorkshire that they had in their Tamworth sorting office at least 6 times. They sent it on sight seeing tours to Essex-on-Thames 3 times as well as on tours of Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Lancashire. Every time I logged in to find out where it was, it moved somewhere else around the country again a day later. When it eventuually arrived the packaging looked like it had been through a few rugby scrums and used as a World Cup football. Fortunately the Ultrasonic Bath survived the ordeal.

I printed the "Grande Tour" off and put it on a notice board with a "12 REASONS TO AVOID UPS AT ALL COSTS" heading on it. That was roughly the number of times they claimed they had delivered it, but it was actually just hidden in another of their warehouses.

Tamworth to Coventry is 6hrs walking distance, about a 30 minute drive.

Beyond that they almost always deliver everything (including the relacement) to the Amazon Warehouse next door these days, so it eventually arrives about a month later when the (ahem) highly efficient Amazon sorting machine coughs it back out, or they let one of us in to look in their "neighbours bins" to see what they've got that we should have had.

PS - the suppllier was daft enough to send both that one and the replacement back to him via - well guess who? I didn't have tracking info on those .....

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PS the other bit of the Radio Local grilling finally appeared too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0kv7yzt