For anyone following the disaster of a Jackery thread elsewhere in this forum (and love of god please don't start up here), my replacement Jackery finally arrived and I picked it up yesterday... along with another replacement for a necessary piece of equipment for my travels, so I'm departing Jackson Hole this afternoon and finally starting the rest of this journey. For amusement value, here's how picking up the Jackery went yesterday... it wasn't exactly according to plan... couldn't decide at the time if I was very amused or just wanted to rip my own head off.
Shipping my replacement Jackery to Jackson, Wyoming
Jackery power supplies are giant rechargeable lithium batteries and as such, pose a fire hazard and must travel by ground shipping. Jackery shipped my replacement on the Tuesday after Memorial Day and it was due to arrive in Jackson, Wyoming, that Friday. Friday came and went, I had a completely incomprehensible call with a guy at FedEx where he referred to some “issue” but didn’t give any further specifics other than that someone would call me. They never did. Ultimately, the online tracker updated to say that the package would arrive Monday.
On Monday, the tracker updated to Tuesday. Still no call, still no indication of what the “issue” was. And this was my first time shipping something to a location other than my house, so I was nervous that the whole process would actually work.
Late Tuesday, I got a text that the package had arrived and been signed for by JJOHNSON. It was too late for me to go down that day (Jackson is a 45 minute drive from where I was staying), and I ended up not going down Wednesday, either, because Verizon was overnighting a replacement MiFi device (the new one they gave me for the recalled device never once worked)—to arrive by noon Thursday. I figured that I’d pick them both up at once… and prayed that my delay in picking up the first package didn’t mean that they would have shipped it back to Jackery by then. I had no way to contact the local office to tell them I’d be in on Thursday.
Jackson has two FedEx locations—we’ll call them Location A and Location B. Both of my items were shipped to Location A.
Come midday Thursday and I drive into Jackson and go into Location A, hand them my driver’s license, and tell them that I think they have two packages for me. No, the nice lady says, they have one package—the overnight from Verizon. She signs that package out for me and then gets to work researching the Jackery package. Her computer says the same thing that it’s telling me: it was delivered to Location A and signed for. Except that they don’t have it. Nor do they have an employee named JJOHNSON. She picks up the phone and calls Location B. “Do you have it?” Wait a bit and they tell her, yes, they have it. “It’s down the highway a ways, just past the Mavericks gas station,” she says.
Back in the car I go, to a fairly industrial-looking FedEx location, then wait 20-25 minutes for several customers with complicated orders. Finally I hand the guy my drivers license and say that I think he has a package for me. An extremely short, middle-aged guy with a quirky hat and a quirky sense of humor. He checks and says that no, he does not have my package. If it was shipped ground, he says, it would be at Location A. I just came from Location A, I say. They called you, and you told them that you have it. No, he says, he didn’t talk to anyone. Maybe it’s in Idaho, he says? After a few more back and forths, he finally says, “I’ve only had one ground package delivered recently and it’s for John Moore.” “I’m John Moore!” I just showed you my driver’s license! I didn’t say that last part.
I unbox the new Jackery, put the old, broken Jackery back in the box and hand it back to him. How much to ship it home to San Diego? It’s a hazardous material, he says, I can’t fill out that paperwork for you. Go over to Location A, they can help you.
Back in my car, back over to the nicer, retail FedEx location. The same nice lady helps me again. “Can you help me ship this back to San Diego?” No, she says, we can’t do the hazardous material paperwork. You have to go to Location B. They can do that.
“I just came from Location B! He told me that I had to come here.”
Some discussion with management and they decided that if I used one of their retail computers and filled out the shipment paperwork myself online, they could accept the shipment from me… they just weren’t authorized to fill out the paperwork themselves. They set me up on a computer, logged me in to the right place on Fedex.com, and told me what to do. The old Jackery is now, I pray, on its way home to San Diego.
... So, what were the bears doing? ... 
