Ugh. I hate airlines.

joefitz

Premium Member
I'm not blaming TB Saltwater, but my shipment that was supposed to arrive in Boston at 5pm isn't going to arrive tonight. The airline isn't even saying it will show up tomorrow. Mary at TBS thought it would be on a flight through Chicago but it never made it onto that flight and is now sitting in Newark (not getting loaded onto the four flights from Newark to Boston that it could have been loaded onto).

I will never, ever have any dealings with Continental again -- this is no less than the fifth bad experience I've had with them (the others were as a passenger).

My suggestions to anyone in Boston ordering rock from Tampa -- make sure the airline you use has several direct flights (DELTA). Nothing is a gaurantee because the airlines apparently have 48 hours to transport the cargo with the type of shipping TBS uses but frequent direct flights certainly help reduce the likelihood of delays.

Now I've wasted an entire afternoon/evening trying to see if it would get on any of the later flights out of Newark...all for nothing. My rock and critters are sitting in NJ, dieing with everying passing hour and now I have to figure out how to cancel everything on my schedule tomorrow so I'll be able to pick up the shipment -- and pray that it does indeed showsup tomorrow.

Not the best situation. Ugh.

Joe
 
TBS uses Southwest as their main cargo distributor...

My suggestion is to have them ship it to Providence, Rhode Island, just 50 miles from Boston where Southwest has a hub.

I just got my first shipment from TBS tonight and NO problems whatsoever with Southwest, though I have never had any problems with Southwest with anything either.

Cheers!

Andy :wildone:
 
My first shipment was via Delta

My first shipment was via Delta

...and Delta worked just fine for my first shipment. RI is a bit of a hike compared to Logan for me so that wouldn't be an option I'd really want to consider; if you live on the South Shore I suppose it wouldn't be a bad option, but Delta has direct flights from Tampa to Boston on a regular basis.

Mary never mentioned Southwest to me at all; she said they use Delta to ship to Boston. And then when my first shipping date fell through they told me that Continental now has direct flights from Tampa to Boston.

The real problem here is that with "general freight" shipping, the airlines don't commit to putting cargo on any specific flight; they have 48 hours to get it to the destination. I'm guessing that is pretty much the same deal across the board in the airline industry so I doubt you can truly avoid the potential for running into delays no matter which airline you use.

I just hate Continental. :-)

I wonder if there is any way to find out how the airlines do in comparison with each other in terms of cargo shipping. That would be great information to have on a route-by-route basis. I'm sure that is just a dream though.

Joe
 
It's on their website about using Southwest as their main carrier. Obviously, she knows what they do better than I do. :D

But that makes sense, when they want to ship directly to Boston.

Cheers!

Andy :wildone:
 
It finally arrived

It finally arrived

So Continental finally put the rock on a plane and got it to Boston...I was able to pick it up around 6:15pm. When I got there, they told me there was a problem with the shipment...

One box had completely broken down, a second was also in very bad shape, two had the bottom half soaked through and the bottom piece of styrofoam starting to break through the cardboard and one piece was actually in good shape.

They wanted me to inspect the damage on site but I wasn't about to open all the boxes, let that nasty smell (which I could smell without opening the boxes) stink up my car... They showed me the damage had been noted in their computer systems so I will most likely file some sort of claim.

To their credit, they tried to re-tape two of the boxes but one was damaged beyond recognition as a "box" any longer -- it was just a mess.

I really wanted to just say no way am I taking and paying for that, but I figured some of the stuff (the critters in particular) deserved a better fate than that...so I took it all home.

When I started unpacking the stuff I was very upset by how rank the boxes of liverock smelled. Really pretty bad. Much worse than the first shipment. It wasn't entirely surprising given the 24+ extra hours of shipment time compared to my previous order.

All the rock bags had dead critters everywhere. I didn't see a single live critter in any of the live-rock bags -- the stuff on the rock wasn't all dead, but the crabs, worms...that I saw were all stone-dead.

I didn't want to put the stuff in my tank but what else could I do? I don't have anywhere that I can store dead, stinking rock... I put everything in my tank.

The critter box was the only one that seemed in decent shape. The guys seemed mostly alive. I followed the TBS acclimation instructions and I think a good portion of the critters survived the trip. I think I lost a cucumber or two, a handful of hermits and snails...

They shipped two anenomes. Pretty cool actually. One seems to be doing fine. The other one is questionable -- could be doing fine but I don't know...it seems to be hiding in a cave where I first dropped it in. I'd feel better if it moved somewhere else just to see it move, you know? I really hope they both make it because they are the coolest things they sent.

I tested the water last night before I went to bed. There seemed to be a slight ammonia spike last night but it was not huge. I checked again this morning and I didn't see much of anything (ammonia or nitrite). I plan on testing again later this evening.

I didn't do a great job of scraping dead stuff off the rock. There was a fair amount of die off...I did what I could. I ordered "the package" for a 100 gallon tank and this was the 2nd half of the order. My tank is a bit bigger than 100 gallons and I also have a 20g refugium and a 26 gallon sump. I had already added another 75 lbs of pretty high-quality (had been in tank for ~2-3 years) rock from a friend so there is a LOT of rock in the tanks. I'm thinking the extra rock helped deal with the cycle faster, but we'll see. There could very well be another big spike as the dead things continue to decay.

All in all, I'm very disappointed that the 2nd shipment was delayed so long. I'm not blaming TBS for that issue although if I had it all to do over again I wouldn't let them ship on Continental -- I'd just wait until Delta could take it. The same problem could happen with Delta, but for whatever reason, I feel it is less likely (they have more direct flights -- the Continental guy said they didn't have ANY direct flights from Tampa to Boston).

I'm still hoping to file a claim and get the airport to refund some money.

Joe
 
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