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Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

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Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#81

Post by therein »

steve918 wrote: post #17
gambiting wrote: post #13

The thing that surprised me the most about it is that FedEx didn't just pay them the 400k for lost shipment. They had all the proof that it was lost, all that Fedex had was a signature of someone who doesn't even work at their fulfilment centre. Even after their "higher ups" got involved all that FedEx could do was "huh, sucks to be you I guess?" Does freight shipment not have insurance? What's going on here?

This isn't surprising at all if you have every had an interaction with Fedex.

Every time I bought an electric unicycle, it got stolen at South San Francisco branch. It is totally reproducible, happened 3 times. One time I found some higher up at FedEx on LinkedIn and sent them an InMail. The regional manager really pushed this issue to highest priority for the branch. Branch managers got CC'ed in, drivers, people working at the warehouse; it was an all hands on deck situation. They reassured me that they have cameras everywhere and it couldn't be stolen.

It was stolen. They don't know who did it. FedEx is terrible.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#82

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

beAbU wrote: post #57
supermatt wrote: post #22

I wanted to buy a playdate when they first came out, but unfortunately they weren't shipping to my country. Now they do, so I just placed an order 15 mins ago and my partner just received a call from the bank to verify that it wasn't a fraudulent transaction. She just asked me - what is this "play date" you just sent $300 to? Oh dear. :D

This comment fells too reddit esque for me, as if it's crafted to solicit upvotes or "facebook up, hit your lawyer and delete the gym" style comments. - Why is your partner getting the call from the bank when you placed the order? - If it's a shared account, why would you not forewarn your partner about this transaction? If I'm about to buy pay for something big from our joint account, I sure as hell let my partner k…

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of Playdates

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#83

Post by [deleted] »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #74
throwaind29k wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does feel very reddit-esque the comment, because it seems a tad like an interesting yarn to farm attention without having content of substance.

HN tells personal stories all the time. I think they just wanted to tell a little joke about how suspicious the word "PlayDate" sounds out of context. I don't think it's so egregious to warrant the 3rd degree. If anything, the overscrutinizing on an innocent story feels more reddit-esque to me.

[deleted]

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#84

Post by joezydeco »

gambiting wrote: post #79
gus_massa wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I get a package from Mercado Libre here in Argentina they ask for my national ID number [1], take a photo of the number in the door and when it's expensive enough (USD$100?) they ask for a secret word that they send the previous day bay email. For USD$400,000 I'd expect them to do a DNA analysis :) . [1] I'm not sure how they check the number, because they accept the ID number of anyone in the family and even th…

Here in the UK Amazon gives you a code that you have to give to the driver for more expensive parcels specifically for this reason. Again doesn't seem like an outrageous thing to implement for a 400k delivery.

I've ordered expensive things from Amazon to my office in the US and they did the whole code ritual... the driver just dumped it at the door and ran. It's all for show.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#85

Post by joezydeco »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #75
Spooky23 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPS pays their drivers very well. FedEx… does not. I’ve had them “deliver” a bunch of PCs to a dumpster. Or drop off a laptop to a garbage can in a Manhattan office. How do I know? The courier took a picture to document the delivery.

I supposed this begs the obvious question I'll ask: why? It seems like this is an easy way to make sure any and all Fedex employess are looking to jump ship to UPS or any other competitor.

UPS drivers are unionized. FedEx drivers at the local stage are a network of third party companies that contract to FedEx and put their logo on their trucks. Look at the grey fine print by the driver door.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#86

Post by Spooky23 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #75
Spooky23 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPS pays their drivers very well. FedEx… does not. I’ve had them “deliver” a bunch of PCs to a dumpster. Or drop off a laptop to a garbage can in a Manhattan office. How do I know? The courier took a picture to document the delivery.

I supposed this begs the obvious question I'll ask: why? It seems like this is an easy way to make sure any and all Fedex employess are looking to jump ship to UPS or any other competitor.

UPS drivers are teamsters and are pretty committed to the company. You need to work your ass off in distribution centers and other places before you get in a truck.

When FedEx was falling behind by not having ground service, they bought another network (RPS iirc) and built out a network of contracted providers. In my area, it was the companies that did newspaper delivery. Some of them are ok, most of them suck. I think the residential delivery is all contracted, but business services are FedEx badged people in some scenarios.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#87

Post by supermatt »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #74
throwaind29k wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does feel very reddit-esque the comment, because it seems a tad like an interesting yarn to farm attention without having content of substance.

HN tells personal stories all the time. I think they just wanted to tell a little joke about how suspicious the word "PlayDate" sounds out of context. I don't think it's so egregious to warrant the 3rd degree. If anything, the overscrutinizing on an innocent story feels more reddit-esque to me.

Its actually 100% true! It happened no more than a minute before I made the post. I am nowhere near funny enough to make that stuff up :D

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#88

Post by brk »

steve918 wrote: post #17
gambiting wrote: post #13

The thing that surprised me the most about it is that FedEx didn't just pay them the 400k for lost shipment. They had all the proof that it was lost, all that Fedex had was a signature of someone who doesn't even work at their fulfilment centre. Even after their "higher ups" got involved all that FedEx could do was "huh, sucks to be you I guess?" Does freight shipment not have insurance? What's going on here?

This isn't surprising at all if you have every had an interaction with Fedex.

FWIW, I've had really good interactions with FedEx for the most part. Including for Apple hardware, where I had a FedEx driver pull into the end of my long driveway, wait 5 seconds and then leave. They marked the signature-required MacBook Air as "undeliverable, nobody home", while I was in fact home and waiting for the delivery. Called the local FedEx hub and they sent the driver back to me.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#89

Post by brk »

gambiting wrote: post #54
whazor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipment insurance is normally an optional add-on. IMO, if the shipper doesn’t get it, it is on them. It is nicer for the shipper to decide the value and pay the corresponding price for that. Because you need to know the replacement value of that lost item. This is dependent on all kinds of factors.

Is there any scenario where someone would knowingly decide not to take insurance on a 400k shipment? What would be the reason for doing so? In this case the shipper is the company behind the Playdate, so it seems weird to me they wouldn't insure their own stock. But maybe there's a good reason why this isn't done?

Package insurance is more of the exception than the norm, even for stuff like that. The insurance cost is proportionate to the value you claim, and it's not cheap (not like 10%, but still, for $400K, might be $1,000?). That cuts into margins, especially when you consider that you are expecting a global freight company to be able to globally deliver a basic freight item.

Re: Story of the two thousand stolen Playdate handhelds

#90

Post by gambiting »

joezydeco wrote: post #84
gambiting wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the UK Amazon gives you a code that you have to give to the driver for more expensive parcels specifically for this reason. Again doesn't seem like an outrageous thing to implement for a 400k delivery.

I've ordered expensive things from Amazon to my office in the US and they did the whole code ritual... the driver just dumped it at the door and ran. It's all for show.

Over here I was definitely told by Amazon drivers that unless they type in the code it won't mark the parcel as delivered. The same with GPS trace - unless they are within ~100m of the destination it won't let them actually mark it as delivered. Maybe your driver didn't care about having missing parcels at the end of the day, but the system is strict about it(again, over here, maybe Amazon US is different).
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