Apple wanted to know how my first shopping experience went with them...
Out of three recent orders, each for Airpods, none for myself, I sent the first order off and it went fine. The first 2 delivery attempts were missed but I allowed for a 3rd delivery attempt because the recipient had claimed they'd be home all day to receive it.
The other order contained a personalized item that shipped internationally so there were several problems with it. I had to cancel and re-order the personalized item so that it would have the correct engraved personalization. Thankfully the new order was processed and shipped within a day and it was in the destination city ready for the first delivery attempt the next day.
The UPS driver however made 2 failed delivery attempts because I couldn't specify to make the attempts after 5PM. After this occurred I made the decision to have the item held at a nearby Access Point for pickup. This intercept costed me extra money. The recipient failed to pick up the item because she didn't have access to a ride to get to the access point. Given that it was half way through the amount of time the access point would continue to hold the item and the order process didn't clarify refund options on a personalized item and I didn't want to incur further charges from Apple in the event of a return, I decided to pick it up myself and hand deliver it.
This meant driving 16 hours from Canada to the US to get to the access point. On the way there I picked up a 225 dollar speeding ticket for trying to pass someone downhill in an unfortunate speed trap location.
DHS ordered me out of my vehicle because my story was preposterous to them. They searched my vehicle and took a customs declaration and a clear statement for my intent to enter the country.
At least I got to the access point an hour before closing time for them. They however refused to release the item to me because my name wasn't on the UPS sticker. I had to ring up UPS CS for them to confirm that there was nothing they could do about it. The first agent transferred me to another agent for international shipments. This second UPS customer service agent also confirmed they couldn't do anything about the situation regarding making the access point release the item.
Eventually we worked out something after contacting the recipient. After releasing the packaged to me I had to do some leg work to complete the delivery myself.
I didn't have data for my iPhone 8 so discovered that maps doesn't work even though I had pre-loaded the couple of places I needed to go. I also discovered that Maps either fails on its own if you're off route too long or just fails and won't resume. That was not cool since Maine is a terrible state to try to navigate in the dark (after nearly hitting a deer on the road 3 times i decided to drive even more slowly). By the time the delivery was completed I was a few hours late getting back to the border than I had stated it should take to complete the delivery. So that meant submitting to another vehicle search by CBSA and a brow beating from the clerk because she also didn't believe I'd put myself out to deliver 'Airpods' without getting anything in return.
The final set of Airpods arrived minutes after the first notification from FedEx that it was out for delivery.