Livestock Group Order **CLOSED**

[Delphinus]

Originally Posted by Beverly

Maybe I'm being paranoid about cargo bumping, but I'm not so sure Friday is a good day to ship.

Just popping in here to say "hi" and ... that's it's not that bad of an idea to be paranoid about cargo bumping. In my experience it happens all the time. And here's my story about how I don't like to do livestock orders on weekends anymore. It's a while ago now (December '02) that I got my Red Sea sailfin tang on a livestock order. It was due to arrive by Westjet at something like 1pm on a Sunday. As it happens, the plane was delayed or whatever and the shipment was bumped and etc. etc., next thing I know, I'm standing in the Westjet cargo carrier's office at ten minutes to 6:00pm, flight's not due for another 60 minutes, but the cargo carrier themselves close in ten minutes. No problem, says the dude, you can pick up your package at 5:00am tomorrow morning when we open again. Yes problem says me, there's a fish in there and it's -30 outside, it will be dead. Well, OK, you can pay this $150 "after hours" fee and I'll stay until the flight arrives.

In the end I got incredibly lucky: there was a dog coming in on the same plane, the folks whose dog it was happily paid the after hours fee, so I just hung around and got the box. Technically I probably should have paid the afterhours fee, and if it wasn't for that I was invited to just hang around (by both the folks whose dog it was and the cargo agent), I probably would have, rather than take the risk.

But the lesson was learnt: Westjet contracts out their cargo handling. So each city/airport/whatever has their own company, essentially, handling the cargo. So there's no such thing as standardized hours. Winnipeg's cargo handling was open until 11pm on Sundays, but not Calgary's. So the risk assessment based on the shippER's hours was faulty, since it was way more generous than the shippEE's hours.

Anyhow I guess my point is that cargo bumping happens all the time. Most of the times I've handled group orders it's been the same, or a similar story. Due at 1pm. Nope, now 3pm. Nope, now 5pm. Nope, now 10pm. Etc. What a pain.

As long as you expect it to be a pain, then if it's not bumped, you get a pleasant surprise, but if it is, at least you were expecting it and ready for it.