Alaska Shipping Woes

"Hello?"

"Hi, I'm trying to order something from your website and I can't find any information about shipping to Alaska."

"Sir, that's because we only ship to the United States."

Ohhh, sure. Laugh if you must but I'll bet most Alaskans have had that conversation at least once. It's at this point that a decision must be made. One can either try to enlighten the dolt on the other end of the phone - satisfying but useless - or thank them for their time and move on to the next website. The irony here being it is likely that the customer rep you just called is in Bangladesh. Wrap your head around that.

In addition to dealing with incompetence on that large a scale, another bug-a-boo is the 4 point font print that says, "Offer good in the contiguous United States." Or this one: The Continental United States. Hey! Last I checked, Alaska is part of the freaking North American Continent. 

Now, I will admit that things are better than they used to be. We don't really receive our packages via dog sled. Well, mostly. Heck, FedEx and UPS have some of their largest hubs located right in Anchorage. Overall, things have improved over the years. For that I am grateful. 

However, I believe that based on a couple of recent experiences, things may be backsliding. In the last two months I've had two online orders take the scenic route to get here. Both orders were from companies I had ordered from previously with nary a problem. They arrived in the given timeframe with no issues at all. Both of the aforementioned orders left their east-coast warehouses and were sent UPS Ground and DHL to the Post Office in Federal Way Washington where they were put in a storage bin marked, "Shit That Needs To Be Shipped To Alaska When We Get Around To It." Sat there for 15 days each before meandering towards my mailbox. I smell a rat.

Some companies have figured it out and do it right. Amazon, this Bud's for you. I've done nearly all of my Christmas shopping with them for years now and I've not had one order screw up. Not one. To top it off, Amazon Prime is the best present most of us Alaskans have ever received. Free shipping? I'll take it. And the beauty of it is that about a third of the time they ship the order UPS Second Day Air. Again. I'll take it.

Given the logistics of getting things shipped way up here, I guess it's not as bad as it could be.  After all, my igloo can only hold so much stuff at a time.