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Jazz Is All
Member
- 861
As some of you know I won a French Couesnon Monopole II Alto on November 24th on eBay. Well, won is a bit overstated since I was the only one who either followed or bid, so naturally I got it at the initial price. The seller, who lives in Évenos France, shipped it off the next day from a office of La Poste in the nearby town of Sainte-Anne du Castellet. The package as many of you who have waited for it to arrive as impatiently as me arrived on Monday Dec 7th delivered not by the French Company La Poste but by the Spanish company Seur. It took a total of 13 days to arrive at my door in central Barcelona. In other words almost 2 weeks to go the enormous distance of 557 km. or 346 miles. Why it took so long stumped me all that time with no tracking info from along the route, but today I know the reason why it happened.
This morning before throwing out the carton the horn came in I looked at the shipping labels for the first time. The bigger one that had the La Poste label on it had my address and that of the seller Laurent. Ordinary enough. Then I looked at the smaller label which had the Logo of Seur on it. It also had very clearly right at the top the following:
De: Sainte-Anne du Castellete
A: Seur, Madrid
Then below that it had my address as the destination in Barcelona. And now friends you know the rest of the story which is that they sent the sax to me in Barcelona via Madrid. You see unbeknownst to me, and probably most people doing shipping between France and Spain, the most direct route is not necessarily the one they will choose. My confusion arose from wondering why if they shipped it from Provence via Marsaille and then to Perpignan it could take so long to go the 2.5 hours to Barcelona . And of course I had no idea that they would give it to a shipping company like Seur because I thought La Poste is a government service like Correos de España, whom I expected them to bring it the rest of the way.
Well La Poste is private and part of the consortium GeoPost which owns since 2012 has owned the major share of Seur, orignally a Spanish company with offices everywhere in Spain. Unfortunately for me, its headquarters are in Madrid which is where, totally against logistics and logic they sent it, to then be sent to Barcelona. If you look at the distances they tell the whole story:
From Sainte-Anne du Castellet to Barcelona is 557 Km.
From Sainte-Anne du Castellet to Madrid is 1,155 Km.
From Madrid to Barcelona is 624 KM.
So my package actually travelled 1,779 Km when it could have gone only 557 to get here directly. They took it 1,222 Km out of the way to get here....going westward by a two legged triangular route from the coast of the Mediterranean all the way to the center of the country and then back to the coast when they could have come straight south along the coast like even the dumbest tourist would do. I have to wonder if they triangulate all their routes like that out of some love for that geometric shape. However, beyond that is the question of why.
Barcelona is not a small town, but the 2nd largest city in the country and so has numerous offices of Seur too, including at the International Airport and at the two train stations which all have constant travelers between and from Southern France. They don't have to got to Madrid first to get to Provence. Duh!!
So was the sole motivation to send it to Madrid because their headquarters is in Madrid???? What the hell sense does that make? Would FedEx ship everything going from Miami to New York through Chicago if that were its headquarters? I mean that has got to be the stupidest and most Inefficient routing plan that any transportation company could possibly use and this is from a Private corporation that was supposedly making the National service more efficient.
I just input the data for this package on the shipping page of a company called Euro Sender and while the price was about 10 euros more than I paid, the projected time is only 5 to 7 days for a standard insured carton like the one I received. That's hald the time La Peste took. So my advice to anyone shipping between France and Spain and reverse is to avoid using any Shipping Company owned and operated by GeoPost including the worthless the Colossal La Peste.
Let the Sender beware.
This morning before throwing out the carton the horn came in I looked at the shipping labels for the first time. The bigger one that had the La Poste label on it had my address and that of the seller Laurent. Ordinary enough. Then I looked at the smaller label which had the Logo of Seur on it. It also had very clearly right at the top the following:
De: Sainte-Anne du Castellete
A: Seur, Madrid
Then below that it had my address as the destination in Barcelona. And now friends you know the rest of the story which is that they sent the sax to me in Barcelona via Madrid. You see unbeknownst to me, and probably most people doing shipping between France and Spain, the most direct route is not necessarily the one they will choose. My confusion arose from wondering why if they shipped it from Provence via Marsaille and then to Perpignan it could take so long to go the 2.5 hours to Barcelona . And of course I had no idea that they would give it to a shipping company like Seur because I thought La Poste is a government service like Correos de España, whom I expected them to bring it the rest of the way.
Well La Poste is private and part of the consortium GeoPost which owns since 2012 has owned the major share of Seur, orignally a Spanish company with offices everywhere in Spain. Unfortunately for me, its headquarters are in Madrid which is where, totally against logistics and logic they sent it, to then be sent to Barcelona. If you look at the distances they tell the whole story:
From Sainte-Anne du Castellet to Barcelona is 557 Km.
From Sainte-Anne du Castellet to Madrid is 1,155 Km.
From Madrid to Barcelona is 624 KM.
So my package actually travelled 1,779 Km when it could have gone only 557 to get here directly. They took it 1,222 Km out of the way to get here....going westward by a two legged triangular route from the coast of the Mediterranean all the way to the center of the country and then back to the coast when they could have come straight south along the coast like even the dumbest tourist would do. I have to wonder if they triangulate all their routes like that out of some love for that geometric shape. However, beyond that is the question of why.
Barcelona is not a small town, but the 2nd largest city in the country and so has numerous offices of Seur too, including at the International Airport and at the two train stations which all have constant travelers between and from Southern France. They don't have to got to Madrid first to get to Provence. Duh!!
So was the sole motivation to send it to Madrid because their headquarters is in Madrid???? What the hell sense does that make? Would FedEx ship everything going from Miami to New York through Chicago if that were its headquarters? I mean that has got to be the stupidest and most Inefficient routing plan that any transportation company could possibly use and this is from a Private corporation that was supposedly making the National service more efficient.
I just input the data for this package on the shipping page of a company called Euro Sender and while the price was about 10 euros more than I paid, the projected time is only 5 to 7 days for a standard insured carton like the one I received. That's hald the time La Peste took. So my advice to anyone shipping between France and Spain and reverse is to avoid using any Shipping Company owned and operated by GeoPost including the worthless the Colossal La Peste.
Let the Sender beware.
