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> No thanks. I'll just get it for a penny plus $3.99 shipping from amazon, less than the cost of gasoline to drive into town to order it, pick it up, and return it (3 round trips). Says Mr. Fancy-pants here with a mailbox/street-accessible doorstep that packages can fit in/on. Us apartment-dwellers often end up with a notice that says that FedEx or whichever last-mile carrier couldn't in good conscience leave your box in the apartment lobby (and, implicitly, couldn't be arsed to come up the elevator and put the box in front of your apartment door) so instead they have driven your package back to the nearest FedEx warehouse half-way across town, where you're welcome to [pay for the gas required to] come get it. After, of course, waiting 30 minutes behind several people each taking 10 minutes to send packages, before you can spend 30 seconds receiving yours. Oh, and although you could have intercepted the delivery-man like a linebacker to receive your package today, because you didn't, it won't be available at the warehouse until tomorrow afternoon. Or maybe four days from now. And that's if they don't put it back on a truck to attempt to deliver it again, and again, and again (and give you no way to specify in the delivery instructions that they should just stop trying.) And after they do finally give up putting it on the truck, they'll make sure to only wait a few days before they send it back to whoever sent it to you, making the sender eat a huge shipping cost that'll make them unlikely to ever send you anything again. For me, receiving an Amazon delivery both costs more, and takes more time, than buying the same thing in a brick-and-mortar retail store, let alone going to the library! |