That’s Logistics

UPS came up with this catchy holiday jingle.

When its planes in the sky for a chain of supply that’s logistics.
When the parts for the line come precisely on time that’s logistics.
A continuous link that is always in sync that’s logistics.
There will be no more stress ’cause you’ve called UPS, that’s logistics.

It’s a pretty high impact ad.  We hear the word logistics more often these days than we used to, especially here in Distributionville, Memphis, Tennessee.   Bottom line: Logistics is Getting Stuff There – from origin to destination.  So here is my holiday logistics story.

Time Line

December 3 – I sent some .jpg files to Snapfish for normal 4×6 prints, requesting standard shipping.  I like Snapfish; they are efficient, quick, inexpensive and produce good quality prints.  In this case, though,  it took them 10 days in the lab.

December 13 – Snapfish turned my completed order over to Streamlite (a logistics company).  Streamlite tracks the packages they handle.  The best I can tell.  They find the best shipping solutions for companies like Snapfish (That’s Logistics!).  According to Streamlite’s tracking, my package arrived in Memphis 2 days later.

December 15 – Scan reads Location: “Jet Cove Annex 381”   “Activity: Accepted by USPS“.  Obviously the package had made it to Memphis.  There are 2 notes under the scan info: “Expect delivery in 2-4 business days.” and No further events will be provided for this package.”   Might as well have said, “not our problem anymore.”

December 19 – Began to look real hard for the package.   Asked a USPS employee, who didn’t seem familiar with the Streamlite process.  Another USPS employee referred me to USPS.com.  After a number of emails to Snapfish, they refunded my order.