Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Monday, November 5, 2012

BC is back online

Nazca Plains' letter of authorization to publish "Bobby Carapisi -- the Complete Novel" arrived, today, so I let Amazon know. They said they'd get back to me in a couple days...but maybe this is actually on its way to being a reality. Fingers crossed.

It'd be nice if this does pan out. today was not a good day. We're missing a shipment of books valued at $250K. It was put on a truck and did not get off where it's supposed to, and the trucking company doesn't know where it went...and their customer service is doing everything they can to just get us off the phone.

We had something similar happen with this company about a year ago. Books being sent to San Francisco from Seattle were routed through Sacramento...and wound up being delivered in Denver. It took 5 days to find this out and get it rectified, and the only reason we discovered it that quickly was, the company the shipment was delivered to called us to tell us they had our freight.

I also had this happen with UPS, when I was at Heritage. A box with $100K in books vanished in UPS's Atlanta hub, and their reaction was, "File a claim." They said they'd checked the warehouse, there, and found nothing. They swore the box was gone, and they flat out refused to do another search...until I said I was calling the Sheriff's office in their county, having them shut down, and searched as a crime scene. They "found" the box an hour later, in the high-value cage. Nobody'd searched that warehouse till I made threats.

It seems businesses have become less and less invested in customer service -- real customer service -- and totally focused on the bottom line, even if it means hurting their reputation. Their attitude seems to be, "You don't like it, go elsewhere...if you can." Sometimes you can't.

So getting this done, and up past the party at Lando's -- which turned out very odd -- mitigates the mess from work, today. Need more like this; I've been feeling way too fragile, lately.

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