strangely entangled

I gave up on UPS and drove out to their Richmond depot to pick up the package myself. To be honest, my first impressions weren’t all that positive. The jacket is substantially lighter than I had expected, and it didn’t look like it would fit me.

Once I got home I was able to get a better look at it and in the end I’m happy with my purchase. The medium sized jacket fits me perfectly and does look quite good. Overall quality is good, although I did notice a few loose threads here and there. It is water resistant, but I wouldn’t call it waterproof as the ScotteVest site claims.

The jacket certainly does contain a plethora of pockets, and their layout seems well thought-out. My one complaint about the pockets is that ScotteVest has stuffed a business card into almost every pocket, as well as a ziplock bag of cards in one pocket in particular. On the back of each card is a description of the function of the pocket the card was located in. What a waste of paper!

I’ll take the jacket for a spin in the great outdoors and will post a proper review, once I get over this horrible cold.

Update: I’ve discovered ripped stitching in one of the pockets. I’m somewhat annoyed about this as I really don’t want to return it (which would mean dealing with customs / UPS again). I’ve emailed SeV to see what they think. So far their customer service has been excellent (more on this later).

When I ordered my ScotteVest jacket, it wasn’t without some degree of hesitation. I had noticed that they shipped to Canada via UPS, which I consider to be one of the worst courier companies of all time. But the idea of a geek jacket with pockets inside pockets (and did I mention the magnetic closures?) got the better of me and I placed my order.

The jacket was originally scheduled to arrive yesterday. As I work from home, waiting around for it to show wasn’t a problem. And that’s what I did for the entire day. At 3 pm I noticed my package’s tracking status had been updated; apparently a delivery “attempt” was made, but they couldn’t find the main entrance to the building.

I called UPS and offered to pick it up at their depot instead. The woman I spoke to said that I’d get it the next day for sure, and that all I needed to do was give them updated delivery instructions. Our building has a 24 hour concierge, and he will accept packages on our behalf. She confirmed that the driver would leave the package with the concierge today.

Flash forward to 3:30 pm today. Nat comes in the door with a UPS delivery attempt notification. Apparently I owe brokerage fees on the package, something both UPS reps I spoke to last night mentioned nothing about, assuring me that the package would be left with the concierge.

If that wasn’t annoying enough, UPS wants to charge me $79 for “importing” the package. That’s 61.5% the cost of the WHOLE JACKET, and is completely, utterly and totally insane. I ordered a $2400 laptop from the US once and didn’t pay that much to import it.

In any case, I still want the jacket so I guess I’ll pay the damn fee. I did manage to get $30 off the jacket when I ordered it, so that offsets the brokerage fee somewhat. I called UPS and got a little angry (I apologized immediately as it isn’t the fault of the person at the other end), and arranged to pick it up at their depot (on Monday, as apparently they’re closed on weekends).

I’ve also emailed ScotteVest to inform them as to just what a ripoff it is to import one of their jackets into Canada. It’s not their fault that UPS charges what it does, but maybe they can look around for alternative shipping companies – I’ve had good experiences with Purolator in the past.

Sigh.

In a moment of fashion/geek weakness, I ordered an Evolution jacket from ScotteVest a couple weeks ago. According to UPS, it should arrive sometime today. I’ve never had the best of luck with UPS. How is it that they can ship a package across the country without difficulty, but are stymied by an apartment “buzzer” security system? I called them to point out that we have a 24 hr concierge in our building, so hopefully the driver will leave the package with him.

I’ll make sure to post a review and take some photos of the new jacket when it arrives. I don’t think I’m going to get much of a chance to wear it though, the temperature is supposed to hit 10 C in Vancouver today.