Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with delivery

Should I trust Canada Post?

mellifluous — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:10:40 -0800

I need to get a letter from Toronto, Ontario to Berkeley, California by January 6. I sent it by regular air-mail yesterday afternoon. Is it going to get there on time or should I pay approximately $40 for guaranteed next business day delivery? Canada Post's website estimates the letter will get there in 4-6 business days, which is enough, but I'm a) unsure how reliable Canada Post generally is and b) the clerk at the post office warned me that things can be slower this time of year. She refused to give me any details about this, like whether "slower" means "give it another day or two" or "give it a week or two." The former is ok, but the latter is not.

I'm not going to starve or miss rent if I pay the $40, but that is a sizable chunk of money for me, and I don't want to spend it if I don't have to.

What say you, Metafilter?

Get our neighbors to the South drunk!

SassHat — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 13:56:58 -0800

Sending a gift of wine to Atlanta from Toronto - Atlanta companies that deliver wine/other solutions? One of my bosses wants to send some gift bottles of wine from Toronto to Georgia. It doesn't seem likely we will be able to buy here and ship across the border without huge hassles. Are there any companies within Atlanta that will deliver a gift basket of wine or just a bottle? Barring a local source, any national wine shipping companies that are legit and will ship to Georgia?

Gourmet Food Catalogs?

KathrynT — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:12:38 -0800

What are some good fancy-pants gourmet food delivery websites? Every year, I'm flooded with catalogs touting amazing-looking gourmet food, delivered, for an arm and a leg. I love to browse these, even though I never order anything. Well, they must have noticed that I never order anything, because this year none of them came! And of course I can't remember what any of them are called.

I've done my Google homework, but all I can seem to find is Dean and Deluca and Baludicci's. These are both fabulous, but I'm sure there were others. I'm talking about the kind of places that will ship you a whole beef Wellington ready to put into the oven, or fancy crab pouf appetizers, or what have you. I feel silly, but apparently drooling over these catalogs and web sites is a big part of what sets the holiday mood for me, and I'm sort of lost without them! What are your favorite catalogs or websites for this sort of ridiculously priced indulgence?

How do I turn a large list of locations into small, close groups?

solo — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:13:07 -0800

Given a raw list of several hundred addresses, is there an way to divide them into smaller zones based on proximity? No, nothing to do with the DARPA challenge. It's a Santa thing. My problem is this. I have around 800 packages to deliver around the city in a day, and about 50 people to deliver them. I'm going to assign each person to a zone containing 10-20 addresses. Traditionally, this would mean plotting each address on a map, and just eyeballing it to find clusters. It's a lot of manual work, and I'm wondering if there's any way to automate it.

After I have the zones defined, I can just dump the group of addresses into a Travelling Salesman solver to produce maps and routes, but I'm wondering if there's also a tool somewhere that would find the clustered zones for me. It doesn't need to be optimal at all. If there's a way to import all the addresses into a map, then selectively export a group, that would be an improvement. It's really just all the manual typing and cutting and pasting of each location that is so time consuming.

I guess that if I at least had something that could automatically produce the distance between each node for me, I could figure out how to calculate the groupings. It just seems like the kind of problem that someone else has already solved, and I just need to find it. Thanks!

Experiences with Schwan's Delivery Service

inturnaround — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:20:57 -0800

Does anyone have any experience with Schwan's Food Delivery service? Are they a good value? I had never heard of the company before I saw them mentioned on Top Chef, so I checked them out and saw that their delivery charge seemed actually more than reasonable. Is it really or is the idea of $1.00 too good to be true?

Has anyone tried them before? Are they a good deal? What's a must-order?

Because nobody likes airplane food

Diagonalize — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 10:05:03 -0800

What is the ideal food to welcome someone home with after a long flight, keeping potential delays and an long commute from the airport in mind? Bonus points for late-night Boston/Cambridge delivery recommendations! I'd love to have a super tasty meal waiting when my boyfriend gets back from Europe in a few days, but besides stew, does anything still taste good after sitting for several hours? Without a car, picking him up will take me at least a couple of hours round trip, so while I like cooking, I'd rather not have to, given all the time and stress unknowns.

He's expressed a strong interest in almost any manner of Asian food, so while I'd be more than happy to just pick up some Chinese or Thai, I'm worried that a late arrival on a Sunday night will seriously limit our options. He really does not want pizza, and eating at the airport seems...non-ideal. I thought about stashing some sushi in the fridge, but that seemed iffy with the timing. Are there any take-out/delivery options that lend themselves especially well to reheating/eating cold? We're near Harvard Square, if that helps any.

Best way to deliver beer across the world?

drewgillson — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 08:54:40 -0800

I need to deliver a case of good beer to an address in Bristol, U.K. and I live in Calgary, Canada. What are my options?

Orlando Meal Prep and Delivery

pearlybob — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:54:24 -0800

I have close family in Orlando (near downtown) that have suffered a major loss. I want to have a nice meal delivered to them tomorrow night. Not just regular take-out or delivery. I'm looking for the kind of meal delivery that some catering companies and personal chefs do. They aren't up to anyone in the house yet so I'm looking for off site preparation and delivery. Google has lots of choices so I need personal recommendations. Meal for four, good, fresh ingredients, something special. Thanks in advance..

So damn smug I need my own room.

shiu mai baby — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 07:15:45 -0800

Is it worth it to switch practices just to have a better shot at getting a private room? I'm pregnant, due at the beginning of October. While I'm technically classified as a high-risk on the account of being a diabetic, I've been very fortunate that everything has gone very smoothly so far. The practice of doctors that has guided me through this has been pretty great. I've had a lot of appointments, a lot of ultrasounds, and overall I've been very pleased with the people I've been working with. The only slight drawback is that it is a pretty huge practice, so while I know my main OB/GYN pretty well, there are about a dozen other OB/GYNs whom I haven't met, and my understanding is that, depending on when I give birth, any one of them could be delivering this kid.

Anyway, last night Mr. Shiu and I took the tour of the maternity ward of the hospital (call it Hospital A) that this practice is affiliated with. All told, it's a very nice hospital, and the MW seemed to be a good place to have a kid, with one major exception: they only have four private rooms, and all the rest can be converted to semi-private, if need be. Whether or not you get a private or semi-private room is luck of the draw, and whether or not your semi-private room has another patient in it is purely driven by how busy they are at that particular time. Pregnancy being the unpredictable thing that it is, there's no way to anticipate how busy they'll be when I go into labor, so maybe I'd get a private room, maybe I wouldn't.

And this is really, really worrisome to me (as if I didn't have enough to worry about, right?). The pregnancy has been a bit of a struggle for me, emotionally; like, I'm happy about it, obviously, but I've never been one of those OMG! BIOLOGICAL! CLOCK! women, I kind of hate the majority of twee shit that surrounds pregnancy and motherhood, and I am mortified at Victorian-era levels by even contemplating all the squicky details of the actual birth process. On top of that, I have a weird antisocial streak to begin with, which I can usually hide fairly well under normal circumstances, but I imagine that nice veneer will be thin and brittle indeed after the grueling process of giving birth.

Anyway, according to last night's tour, while the delivery is in a fully private room, you're in there for about two hours immediately post-partum before they move you into the room you'll be in for the rest of your stay. Maybe it will be private, maybe it won't, it all depends on volume on that particular day. Moreover, unless you luck into one of the four genuinely single-patient rooms, it might start out as private, but then you might get a roommate the next day. Can I just say, given all the details of the preceding paragraph, how very, very badly I do not want to share a room with another woman, separated by only a curtain? Seriously, the mere thought of it just makes me panicky. Not only that, but if you're sharing a room your S.O. can't stay overnight, whereas he/she can if you're in the room by yourself.

This morning I called the maternity ward at Hospital B in the area. It's a little farther away from us than Hospital A, but not unreasonably so. A friend of mine who lives in my neighborhood had her baby at Hospital B in February, and my next-door neighbor, who is also pregnant, will be having her baby there in January. According to the nurse I spoke to, the majority of the rooms in this MW are fully private, and they only do semi-private in the rarest of circumstances, e.g. when volume is ridiculously high. Furthermore, at the end of this month Hospital B will be opening their humongous new expansion, and when they do the maternity ward will be taking over the entire second floor, which means even more private rooms. As I said, this kid's not due until October, so things will almost certainly be settled with the expansion by the time I get around to having her.

On paper, at least, it would seem that Hospital B would be ideal. The problem, though, is that in order to have my baby at Hospital B I'd need to switch practices completely. Again, I'm technically high-risk, so this is a little more daunting than if it were a regular pregnancy. I have no idea how practices affiliated with Hospital B deal with high-risk pregnancies (although I'm certain that they do, they must), so I'm completely in the dark there. Since I'm diabetic, I have to be very closely monitored in the last eight weeks, too -- I have to go in for a fetal non-stress test twice a week. It also means that they might induce me early; at the very least, if I haven't gone naturally by my due date they are absolutely going to induce me on that date, because it's dangerous for women like me to go late.

So on one hand, I do feel sort of loyal to my practice, in that they've done a great job navigating me through this mess from the beginning, but on the other, I have major anxiety about sharing a room post-partum. Also, while I really like my current practice, it is, as I said, pretty huge, so I'm not, like, ultra-tight with any of the doctors. And I have no idea what to expect if I went to the other side of the fence. I'm fairly certain I'd be able to get a recommendation for a good doctor from one or both of my neighbors who are connected to two of the practices affiliated with Hospital B, but it's still a crapshoot. They'd probably be able to take care of me just fine, but there's no way to know that without actually pulling the trigger and making the switch.

Neither home-birth nor the crunchier birthing centers are options for me, given the high-risk status. Also, I <3 drugs, and intend to have the maximum amount of painkillers that they'll give me, so yeah, it's gotta be in a hospital.

And that's the conundrum currently percolating in my brain. Any suggestions, recommendations, and been-there-done-that insight would be deeply appreciated.

Need luggage delivered from France to UK!

FuckingAwesome — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:40:45 -0800

I have accidentally left some luggage at a hotel in France and need it delivered to the UK as soon as possible. All of the courier services I have been in touch with seem not to deal with personal effects. Any recommendations would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Delivery to hotels from outside restaurants

madcaptenor — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:59:35 -0800

Can you get food delivered from outside restaurants to hotels? When I've stayed in hotels and browsed through the room service menu in lieu of anything better to read, I've often thought two things:
(a) damn, this food sounds boring;
(b) they want how much?

So this got me to wondering -- let's say that somehow I knew a restaurant near the hotel that delivered. (This is not unridiculous, thanks to the wonders of the Internet.) Could I call them up and have them deliver? And if they did, would it be polite to tip a little more for making the delivery person have to fight their way past the front desk?

This is a purely hypothetical question; I'm not actually planning on doing this any time soon.

Ikebana

JakeLL — Wed, 27 May 2009 09:52:03 -0800

I have a little less than 2 weeks to arrange for a birthday gift (i.e. stuffed animal or flowers) to be placed in front of an apartment in Matsumoto, Japan. FTD wants to charge me an additional $40 international fee to arrange for a Japan local florist to send the flowers. I have to be particularly frugal right now so I just can't afford the added cost. Any ideas?

Postman Pat Fell Flat

fearnothing — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 06:42:43 -0800

UKPostalFilter: One of my friends was supposed to receive a package today via Royal Mail. The package was too large to fit the letterbox, so - without knocking or ringing - they dropped a delivery failure note through her door. Can they do this? To dispel the obvious "They just DID do that" answers, a clarification. Their note stated that "We tried to deliver"; the way I see it this is a blatant lie as an attempt to deliver involves an effort to put the item into the recipient's possession. UK letterboxes are a in the vast majority of a very standard size, and it is relatively easy to tell if a given parcel will fit through them so when they took the item they should have been well aware that delivering would involve more than a letterbox.

Does their pathetic excuse for effort constitute a delivery attempt? I know most of you aren't lawyers but maybe there're one or two, or someone with previous experience. The item's not big enough to make any kind of legal fuss about, I just want to know what language to use when I help her drag an apology out of them.

Help me track this package from Iran!

estherbester — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:40:09 -0800

Help me track this package from Iran! I have a tracking number but no idea who the carrier is. Someone in Iran mailed us a package for work (a video cassette) and I don't know where I can enter the tracking number: in the email they said they sent it "by coliy post no:RRxxxxxxxxIR from IRAN-TEHRAN-15" (where each x is a digit)

The most promising lead was http://tntsearch.post.ir/ but the number doesn't work when I enter it.

Give me my kimchee, please.

typewriter — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 08:28:50 -0800

Is there a Korean restaurant in Toronto that delivers? I love my bulgogi and I would like it delivered. Is there such a thing in Toronto? I can get Greek, Thai, and Eritrean delivered, but not Korean. Does anyone know of a place? I live in the East End of Toronto. Please hurry, the kimchee deprivation is making me weak.

Name for my brothers Business?

tradeer33 — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:27:53 -0800

Asking for family member: Brother is thinking of starting a merchandise delivery business and needs name suggestions for said business. Southwest TX if it matters.

Wait a minute, Mr. Postman...

cloudsandstars — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:48:36 -0800

What specific measures should I take to ensure that important people actually receive and read my letters? I often get an urge to send a letter to someone important. Sometimes for positive reasons (such as a thank you for a great service experience), and other times for not-so-positive reasons (such as a rebuke for a member of Congress who voted for something ridiculous). However, I usually decide not to go to the trouble because I suspect my letter will probably never get to the person who needs to see it, for whatever reason (safety concerns, apathetic assistants, etc.).

Do you all know of some tips or tactics I could use to increase the likelihood that the addressee will actually receive and read my letter?

Looking for Minnesota Grocery Delivery or Food Baskets

amanda — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:18:37 -0800

My parents are going to Minnesota for a hospital procedure and my mom will be staying there in a hotel for an indeterminate amount of time. I'd like to send some food over there for when she arrives -- any ideas for local or great online resources? I'm looking for either an online grocer who would deliver to the hotel or someplace online or local that could put together a really great fruit/food basket. Any thoughts on what and how I could send something over would be great. They'll be staying in Rochester.

The New York Times on Sunday, maybe?

vkxmai — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:04:52 -0800

How do I tell if my newspaper is being stolen or not delivered? I have read these three threads regarding this issue, but my question and problem are a bit different.

I subscribe to the NYTimes Sunday edition. In the past twelve weeks, I've received it three times. Of the three times I've actually received the paper, once it was the Wednesday edition. Each time I have what the NYT calls a "missed paper," I call in Monday morning and complain and my account is credited. I can also request a credit online.

My NYT, when it is in fact delivered, has always been placed on my doormat.

I've spoken to the property manager and her assistants in the office. They confirmed that the local delivery person usually comes through between 5:30 and 6:00 on Sundays.

I suspect that the delivery person can't be bothered by taking one NYTimes to the back of a multi-bloc apartment complex. I know most of my neighbors by name and don't suspect any of them. Plenty of people get other local (Akron and Cleveland) papers and those sit on their doorsteps until the early afternoon on Sundays, sometimes.

I am considering canceling my subscription and just buying it every Sunday. I don't mind the extra $2 at the newsstand, but I do mind the hassle of having to drive to get a paper that could be delivered.

Aside from tormenting the courier with a special bag/bell/secret handshake, posting possibly haranguing notes, or waking up at 5:00 in the morning to ply the courier with coffee or tea, what else could I do?

Have any of you decided to cancel a subscription because of a similar situation, or subscribed to a theft-proof e-Paper instead?

How do I make a formal complaint without being an ass?

sunshinesky — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:05:26 -0800

Food poisoning: How do I deal with the merchant? I ordered some thai/viet food for delivery tonight, from a restaurant I've never been to (I just moved to this city).

As soon as I opened my fresh rice wraps (w/ peanut sauce) I was struck by the 'off' small. I ate a wrap anyway, with the sauce, and quickly lost my previously roaring appetite. It didn't taste bad, but my stomach just stopped wanting more.

I picked at the other food items I got, and within an hour of eating, I ran to the bathroom for a small... explosion. It was nothing horrendous, or painful, but it was quite obvious that I had expelled my dinner, given the.. erm... 'contents'.

Now, I gave that peanut sauce another whiff, and damn, I really think it was the culprit.

Is this the sort of thing I should approach the restaurant about? I'm not really sure what I want done, but I was pretty upset with wasting 30$ in food ordered in for only myself. Naturally, as confident as I am that the peanut sauce is to blame, I am not too keen on 'testing' the other foods, given that I'm not sure. I ended up ordering a pizza to fill the void (yay, another 20$!).

If I do talk to the manager/whatever what do I say? How do I avoid coming off as one of those customers that is always looking to get something for free? I too work in food service, so naturally I would like to approach this tactfully and politely, while still expressing my dissatisfaction properly.

MeFi, help!

How can I have a Christmas dinner delivered anonymously?

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:58:59 -0800

How can I have a Christmas dinner delivered anonymously? I would like to have a Christmas dinner delivered to a low-income family of my acquaintance who are otherwise unlikely to have one. They're in a suburb of Philadelphia; I'm on the other side of the country. I want to do this anonymously because I don't want them to feel a sense of obligation towards me.

I tried to do something similar once before through Pepperidge Farms, but they included a packing slip with my name on it (which of course they had because I paid with a credit card) even though they had assured me they wouldn't do that.

Any suggestions on how to get this done would be appreciated.

I'm looking for awesome delivery and take-out options in Washington, DC.

medpt — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:28:00 -0800

Awesome take-out/delivery options in Washington, DC? Can you recommend some excellent take-out or delivery options in the Columbia Heights / Adams Morgan / U Street area of DC? Bonus points for places that are open late.

Single cupcake delivery in LA?

Anonymous — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:45:26 -0800

Help me deliver a single cupcake to my girlfriend's hotel room in Los Angeles by Friday evening. I'd like to make a cupcake magically appear in her room, because she loves cupcakes and will be totally stressed out by the end of the week. She's leaving Saturday, so I have a couple days to try and work out how to get a single cupcake delivered. I tried Sprinkles but they have a minimum order of one dozen cupcakes. Perhaps there's some sort of baked good courier that rides around town? I'm happy to pay extra for the delivery. (Yes, this'll be the most expensive cupcake ever - but that's okay.) The destination zip code is 90045.

Dallas: Help me help someone

doorsfan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:10:39 -0800

North Dallas and/or McKinney area: Food Delivery Suggestions. Not looking for senior or meals on wheels. My wife's boss is an amazing guy and his family has gone through and will be be going through some tough times in the near future (medical procedure), we'd like to help them by setting up food delivery (to take 1 thing off their plate) but the phone book and google are failing me.

Instead of going through hundreds of listings online/phonebook and noting local places that deliver is there a service that would be able to coordinate? Or if there are 1 off suggestions from McKinney-ites i'd appreciate that to (sorry not sure where in McKinney he lives but anything would be a start).

Should I tip if there's a delivery charge?

mizike — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:47:24 -0800

I just moved to a new city and all of the restaurants charge a delivery fee, which often amounts to as much as 30% of the total cost, should I tip the delivery person on top of this? Pretty self explanatory question but here's a few more details. My new city has a population of over a million and I'm living right downtown so it's not as if I'm living in some weird place that's a pain to deliver to. I'm talking about getting basic stuff delivered, chinese/thai food, pizza, etc., nothing fancy and no 3rd party delivery services, just straight up delivery from the restaurant during reasonable hours of the day (ie., not 4.am).

I'm generally a pretty good tipper, but due to the delivery charges I feel like I'm getting gouged. Here's an example. I ordered $15 worth of food from a local (10 minutes away on foot) chinese food place. Delivery charge was $5 (33% of the price), and the extra $5 adds another dollar to my standard 20% tip (20% of $15 = $3, 20% of $20 = $4). Factor in tax and the total is over $25 for $15 worth of food. That means that delivery, taxes, and tip account for 40% of the total cost of the meal which seems unreasonably high to me. As such, I'm wondering if I can consider the delivery charge a "built-in tip" and only tip the delivery guy like 5% as I'm already paying for delivery?

I don't want to be a cheapskate, but don't want to feel like I'm getting ripped off either.