Shipping Christmas

This year, as I have done in the past, I ordered some items on-line. But this year I may encounter a problem; an item not making it here in time. I thought I gave sufficient time, ordering two weeks before leaving for home, but now it does not look that way. There were two things impeding the delivery; the item wasn't shipped until a week after it was ordered, and the shipping agent (Airborne Express) has the slowest delivery time across country I have seen.

While this was stalled by both contributing factors of total ship time, I feel this could have been avoided. The problem was I had never previously ordered from this retailer and did not know the order-to-ship turnaround time and their shipping agent.

So I offer this advice; do not to trust a retailer who has not built up a reputation in your mind, leaving plenty of time before the order must arrive. This is probably obvious, but it's easy to blindly trust unknown retailers.