Date:         Wed, 20 Aug 2003 23:44:18 -0400
Reply-To:     maurio11@COMCAST.NET
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Maurio <maurio11@COMCAST.NET>
Subject:      Re: A Bad Week Here at the Bus Depot
In-Reply-To:  <000f01c36779$8a36b250$0100a8c0@RON>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Hey Ron keep up the good work, I know myself and a lot of other people
appreciate the fact that you even exist let alone put in all the hours you
guys do.  I'm sure we can deal with waiting an extra couple of days for our
parts!



-----Original Message-----
From: Vanagon Mailing List [mailto:vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com] On Behalf Of
The Bus Depot
Sent: Wednesday, August 20, 2003 8:17 PM
To: vanagon@GERRY.VANAGON.COM
Subject: A Bad Week Here at the Bus Depot


For those who have ordrs at the Bus Depot, just a quick note that you can
expect them toward the end of the 7-10 working days that we quote for ground
orders. If you ordered via Expedited (Red label, Blue Label,
3-day) your order should ship as scheduled and arrive as promised. A huge
run of bad luck has put us in this state, whereas for the last 9 months we
were averaging half the quoted time for most ground deliveries.

We have been upgrading many customers to air delivery at no additional
charge, and are all working mondo hours to get out from under, so the 7-10
still stands. But if you need your part sooner, try using Expedited shipping
for the next week, by which time we should be easily caught up. The worst is
definitely over.


For those who care about a week in the life of a small business owner, look
at this timeline and imagine how many gray hairs I've gained...

Day 1:  I learn that a container from Europe that we've been waiting for has
been delayed because of a Customs paperwork snafu.

Day 2: My store manager and another employee leave for vacation.

Day 3: The container shows up. We're already two men down because they're on
vacation. A third's car breaks down and he never makes it in.

Day 4: We miraculously manage to get everything from the container put away,
even with a skeleton crew, and think we're back on easy street.

Day 5: A flash flood submerges the front 20% of our shop in 3 inches of
water (and the front entrance in nearly a foot of water). We manage to save
all of our parts from water damage, but it takes the better part of two days
to relocate the parts, bring in a bunch of duhumidifiers, peel up the soaked
carpet, etc.

Day 6: We discover the new W32 virus on one of our workstations during a
routine Norton Antivirus scan.  It hasn't done any damage yet, so we install
the repair utility and consider ourselves lucky. We try to install the
Microsoft update so that we won't be vulnerable anymore, but this requires
an update to our Windows 2000 O.S.

Day 7: We install the latest Windows 2000 Service Pack on all of our
computers, so that we won't be vulnerable to W32 again.

Day 8:  Our entire computer network goes down.

Day 10 (Today):  After having spent 2 days dimantling everything and trying
to figure out why our network is working at a
S--N--A--I--L--S-----P--A--C--E, we are almost ready to give up, except that
this is not an option. After a ton of troubleshooting, we had come to the
conclusion that we must have another virus that Norton is not detecting, as
all of the hardware is working properly, and the settings are right. But we
can't find any viruses. Then one of my employees has a brainstorm - the
problem occurred shortly after we updated our Windows 2000 to the latest
service pack.  He tries uninstalling the update one computer at a time, and
everything starts working.  Thanks, Microsoft!!

Day 10 (Today):  After all of my employees have spent the week-from-hell,
between wading through flood water, unloading a 40 foot container by
themselves, and putting up with their computers going down every 10 minutes
as we tried to troubleshoot our computer problems, they still have about 3
days of frantic work ahead of them to get us caught up again.  They will,
too. They're a great crew.  But please go easy on them if you call, as we're
all about ready to collapse...

So, such are the trials and tribulations of running a small Volkswagen parts
business.  When it rains, it pours, I guess. (Literally, in this case!).  As
I said, we're still sticking to the 7-10 as promised in almost all cases,
even though it's going to cost me deep in the pocket in upgraded shipping
costs. And expedites are still shipping same-day if called in early enough,
so it could have been worse.  By next week, it will all be a bad - a really
bad - memory.

And now I'm going to go home and get good and drunk.  :-)

- Ron Salmon
  The Bus Depot, Inc.
  www.busdepot.com
  (215)  234-VWVW

_____________________________________________
Toll-Free for Orders by PART # :  1-866-BUS-DEPOT