Quantum ‘03 Update: Good News, Bad News
I’m an optimist, so we can start with the good news. Our batch of Quantum03s, the official footbag sneaker, are finally (at least) in the right country! They arrived in Los Angeles a few days ago. Now for the not so good news… Apparently the boxes have what the shipping agent calls a “* Marking Discrepancy.” I learned that this means effectively that the boxes were not clearly marked with sender/receiver shipping information. And so do the the aforementioned “Marking Discrepancy” the shoes are “On Hold” in their warehouse until they can get proper documentation. I’m still trying to understand just exactly what that means, and also waiting for my supplier to send me the proper paperwork.
Clearly, the supplier really didn’t understand what I was asking when I said I wanted the shoes shipped directly to Portland, Oregon (either that or it simply wasn’t an option, communications have been essentially one way on this). If the shoes had gone directly to Portland I could have driven out there to get them directly from the port. But alas, they were shipped to Los Angeles. There is at least, hopefully one small silver lining on the proverbial cloud. This “Marking Discrepancy” is a pain, but it may work out that I can have the shoes delivered by rial directly to Boise (a 1/2 hour drive from Nampa) rather than having them shipped to their current landing destination which is my good friend Ethan “Red” Husted’s house in Portland (a 6.5 hour drive). (Red was one of the main organizers of the US Open Footbag Championships which took place a few weeks ago - I’ll be posting the results shortly).
A lot of customers have pre-ordered the Quantum03’s and they just want a straightforward answer as to when they’re gonna arrive. If I could give this answer, I most certainly would, but unfortunately this stuff is not so simple. Once I can get the proper documentation to the supplier (best case is Monday - they are closed weekends and my supplier wasn’t able to get anything to me on Friday) they can stick the shoes on a train. Here I have to really hope that I can change the shipping destination mid-route - I’m not 100% sure that is even possible. Nevertheless, once they are on a train it should take about 2 days to arrive in either Portland (or, hopefully Boise). Allow at least one to three days here for being able to catch the right train.
Now, assuming they can be shipped directly to Boise, we won’t be out of the woods yet. (Which is really ironic, since Boise means “Grove” in French and is after all the “City of Trees”). But I digress, just cause they’re here on a train doesn’t mean squat. It usually takes at least two days to unload and sort through all of the containers on a shipment and have them ready for pickup at a warehouse. I’m jumping the gun here just a bit though because there is one last critical important step: “customs clearance”. This is super expensive, and, unfortunately potentially very time consuming - I’ll just flat out say it… Worst case scenario: Two extra weeks! But let us all think magical positive thoughts here… More often than not customs brokers chose not to inspect every package that comes into the US (this would be practically impossible), so it may simply clear customs in a matter of hours, not weeks.
That all being said, we’re realistically looking at 1.5-4 weeks before the shoes are finally able to ship from the Freedom Footbags Shredquarters. Probably not the news you were hoping to hear, but at least now you know the full story. I definitely be updating my blog as we move through this process, so check back often.
Peace.
August 14th, 2008 at 11:13 am
I’m just glad to know they are coming, and I am happy to know that there are people doing work like this to help the sport of footbag move forward.
thanks