Under promising, Over Delivering and under communicating

Stepped off the plane in Sydney, topped up my Opal card for the trip to Blackheath, took the train to Central and found the train destined for Blackheath and settled into my seat. Checked my email. Found one from the transportation company that I had engaged to ship my van from Queensland to Melbourne. Dated today at 10:39am.

Just confirming delivery of Toyota Hiace is scheduled for this afternoon...We will contact you approx. an hour prior to arrival, Thanks

WTF?

I had spent some time yesterday checking out mechanics and places where I could have a roadworthy check performed.  And it seemed as though the mechanics with the better reviews on google were going to be shut down from about now through to mid-late Jan.  So I was very comfortable with the indicated delivery date of the week of Jan 16th.....

Now I was in Sydney, the van was in Melbourne and I certainly didn't want it languishing at the side of the road in an unregistered state until I could return to Melbourne and sort it out.

After a couple of phone calls I'll be paying $200 for storage at one of the AirBnB's that I have stayed at. The van will be delivered there and I'll have to deal with it when I return to Melbourne on 31st or December or 1st Jan.

Phew!.  Almost turned around at Central and headed back to Melbourne to see if I could get it registered. In which case I would have then driven it back up to Blackheath.

So I have had a Christmas present delivered unexpectedly today. Yet I am not there to see exactly what it is like.

At least a plan B came together fairly quickly.  My recommendation to the transportation company is that if they are going to under promise and over deliver in that fashion they should communicate a bit more....  At least we could laugh about it once I had a place to keep it for the next 10 or so days.