It was shipped within the U.S. I blame Samsung as much as the trucking company. We use Fahrenheit here to measure temperatures. Yeah, I know...people should know how to use Celsius — and the metric system for that matter, but damn, people. If you're shipping something within the U.S. use what people know.

DHL is supposedly a global company. They should have gotten it right.

Well, at the very least, it should have said 23 C (73 F).

If they didn't do that, then some blame could be put upon Samsung. If they did list it as above, and the person just didn't pay attention, then, it's totally on DHL.

But, in the end, the delivery guy being paid $11/hr by DHL probably isn't that astute to make that judgement by himself.

/but, DHL should probably be training them, and give them some sort of conversion scale sheet if they have to set the truck to a celcius measure.

SILLY BACKWARDS AMERICA

I wish America would go metric but on average you people believe the Earth is 4 years old and sprouted from God's buttcrack or something like that, so I guess we can't expect much.

/I keed...

lets use Kelvin?

I blame Jimmy Carter

/Wait, no I don't

Why the fark would they request celcius when it was an American shipment?

Could've been worse, could've been 23 Kelvin. Although I doubt any truck driver for DHL even remembers that there is a kelvin scale.

I ship for a living and quit using DHL because they cost too much, so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies.

It's Samsung's fault for using metric instead of American!

/By jingo!

You're spelling is sew rung, submitter.

Butt I degress.

C*9/5 + 30 = Fail

TFA doesn't say the instructions weren't in both celsius and fahrenheit ... I bet the refrigeration equipment in question has a C/F button anyway, shiat even my crappy car has one for setting the temp, this is human error ...

Maybe these shipping companies need to impress how valuable these shipments are onto their $17/hr drivers? Or more likely they're hauling hundreds of thousands in merchandise and equipment daily and this was just a dumb mistake.

I use DHL for all our shipping(although we're trying to get better rates from FedEx so we can convert fully over).

Our products sell domestic and international, time is a factor as they can only sit at ambient temperature so long (or cold packs can only go so far).

I've had a dozen problems with DHL, from global hubs going "on holiday" without warning (so the packages sit for extra days), to drivers not showing up to get local pickups.

MIguy: Why the fark would they request celcius when it was an American shipment?

Celsius and Kelvin are standard measures in the semiconductor industry. It's easy to forget that the rest of America uses the backward Fahrenheit measure.

That being said, I'm willing to bet the instructions actually specified 23 C, not just 23 (unitless).

I thought that was a clever headline, until I read the first sentence of the article.

Then there was the Mars probe where the propulsion team worked in miles while the control team worked in kilometers - or was it the other way around?

/Space Junk

ipsofacto: C*9/5 + 30 = Fail

cute!

This would never happen at NASA...

dletter: If they didn't do that, then some blame could be put upon Samsung. If they did list it as above, and the person just didn't pay attention, then, it's totally on DHL.

Putting 23C should be sufficient.

But, in the end, the delivery guy being paid $11/hr by DHL probably isn't that astute to make that judgement by himself.

If DHL charged thousands of dollars to ship this, then put somebody incompetent in charge of managing the shipment, DHL farked up. There's no doubt Samsung paid extra to have this shipped in a climate controlled environment, so DHL should have had a specialist configure the shipping container.

The rest of the world should convert back to the Old Style of
measurement. Forget about this centemeter and kilometer and what ever else they have.
This is AMERICA, C'mon.

/goes to buy a 2 litre of coke.

Jument: I wish America would go metric but on average you people believe the Earth is 4 years old and sprouted from God's buttcrack or something like that, so I guess we can't expect much.

/I keed...

That would certainly explain the smell.

Could have been worse. They could have stated it in Rankine.

What -I- wonder about is, why didn't DHL and its insurers pay them off- i.e. why did it get so far as litigation?

It seems to be a matter of clear liability.

kilgorn: This would never happen at NASA...

THIS

AthensBoy: That would certainly explain the smell.

I thought that was just my kitchen sink. Thank god.

Cue CNN screen shot with faster-than-light space shuttle...

/weeps for science education in this country
//thanks fundies!

But it is only wafer thin.

dletter:

But, in the end, the delivery guy being paid $11/hr by DHL probably isn't that astute to make that judgement by himself.



Those delivery drivers make alot more than that. Back in '96, I had a UPS driver at my warehouse brag about $17 an hour plus all the overtime he wanted. I'm sure they're making a lot more now

...but I degress...

ollin: I use DHL for all our shipping(although we're trying to get better rates from FedEx so we can convert fully over).

Our products sell domestic and international, time is a factor as they can only sit at ambient temperature so long (or cold packs can only go so far).

I've had a dozen problems with DHL, from global hubs going "on holiday" without warning (so the packages sit for extra days), to drivers not showing up to get local pickups.

I use Fed Ex and get a 40% discount and with UPS I get the same thing and my UPS rep is hot.

Samsung goofed. They should have known a company specializing in driving a box from A to B at the proper climate would have their entire chain of operations sabotaged, by assuming they actually knew what the letter C farking stood for.

I bet Samsung doesn't have to deal with morons in other countries.

The truck driver didn't decide to set the temp at 23°F - some asked for a refrigerated truck, which the driver duly brought.

/pulled out of my ass, guessing refrigerated trucks aren't needed for 23°C

NANCY'S MEAT PUPPET:

I use Fed Ex and get a 40% discount and with UPS I get the same thing and my UPS rep is hot.

PICS

Whatever happened to adoption of the metric system in the U.S.?



Dear Cecil:

A few years ago there was a lot of noise about the U.S. finally going metric. We saw road signs with mile and kilometer equivalents and soda bottles containing peculiar fractions of liters that corresponded to quarts and ounces. Then what happened? No one talks about metric anymore. How come? Is there any serious metric movement? Is not going metric part of the decline of U.S. industry in world markets? --Eric Gordon, New York

Dear Eric:

Like hell. Had U.S. industry suffered a real (as opposed to relative) decline, Americans would have quit screwing around and converted to metric long ago, just as the UK did--and remember, the British are the ones who invented this dram-bushel-inch stuff. As it is, U.S. industry is sufficiently prosperous and the domestic market is so large that the country can afford the luxury of supporting two separate systems of measurement. Which is basically what it has. Most big multinational firms use metric for goods they sell abroad, and some (e.g., the automakers) have abandoned the inch-pound system altogether. Smaller companies serving primarily the U.S. market and of course most ordinary folks have clung to the old system, mainly for lack of a compelling reason to change. If significant numbers of midsize firms routinely had to convert from millimeters to inches (how fast can you multiply by .03937?), opposition to metrication would evaporate. But in the U.S. they don't, and it hasn't.

One of the reasons the U.S. will probably never fully convert to metric is the country's genius for compromise--its saving grace in politics, maybe, but not so useful when it comes to weights and measures. The first round of attempted metrication, which took place following passage of the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, is now remembered as the time when "we made a mistake ... trying to force metrics down people's throats," one advocate says. Baloney. It was a typical let's-please-everybody muddle. Dual posting of highway signs in miles and kilometers cost money without any compensating advantage and, by calling attention to the fact that one kilometer equals .621 miles, made the metric system seem needlessly complicated. The folly of dual measurements persists to this day. Rather than baffle consumers by pointing out that a gallon of milk equals 3.78 liters, it would be better to simply replace gallons with four-liter containers. The two-liter pop bottle no doubt succeeded because it was just that simple.

Opponents of metrication have succeeded in painting it as a one-world plot, with the introduction of an alien system of weights and measures the obvious prelude to a takeover by the Bolsheviks. To this day you'll hear media commentators moaning that recalculating football fields and baseball diamonds in meters threatens the integrity of American sport. Converting to metric will cost money, the critics say, and unless you're involved in foreign trade it confers no benefit.

These arguments are specious. If people still calculate horse races in furlongs, a medieval measure, there's nothing to prevent them from using feet and yards in sports indefinitely (although the Olympics have gotten people used to meters). And while converting to metric costs something, much of the money has already been spent. Rare is the auto mechanic, for example, who doesn't have metric wrenches.

As for the metric system conferring no benefit--come on. For many everyday purposes the inch-pound system is useless. How many people understand fluid ounces, bushels, pecks, rods, and grains? How many can visualize an acre? (A hectare, the comparable metric unit, is 100 meters on a side.) Two centuries ago the U.S. adopted a decimal system of currency, and today everybody's happy they did. A decimal system of measurement would be at least equally useful.

Officially the U.S. is still trying to convert to metric. In 1988 Congress reiterated that the metric system was the "preferred system of measurement." Federal agencies, which procure more than $300 billion in goods and services annually, are supposed to require their vendors to supply metric products. Most still don't. But who knows? In an age when every dieter can quote you "fat grams," the metric system may sneak up on us yet.



/headline pops

Subby learns difference between Celcius and Celsius is the difference between Right and Wrong.

Ouch. Expensive. Should have gone with UPS. Arrived at the right temperature but in pieces.

jestme: The truck driver didn't decide to set the temp at 23°F - some asked for a refrigerated truck, which the driver duly brought.

/pulled out of my ass, guessing refrigerated trucks aren't needed for 23°C

On a drive from San Jose to Austin they sure as hell would be.

ipsofacto: C*9/5 + 30 = Fail

fail indeed. it's +32, not 30

jameson: SILLY BACKWARDS AMERICA

Arbitrator: It's easy to forget that the rest of America uses the backward Fahrenheit measure.

How is one system of measure be more "backwards" or "forwards" than another. They're both based on fairly arbitrary reference points, but given that, they're both fairly well-defined, and capable of equal levels of precision. The conversion factors between the two are well-defined. So how can one be more "backwards" than the other?

That's like saying that Portuguese is more "backwards" than French. They're just different languages, that's all.

I'm kinda a dick at work. We're an international company, so when giving times to people overseas, I always use UTC. Nobody ever has any clue what I'm talking about. "What is that in British Standard Time?"

Oy. At any rate, if they listed the carriage instructions at 23ºC, they did all they need to. Metric is a standard and common system of measurement. So long as you clearly state that your measurements are in a certain unit, you're good. While metric isn't in common use in the US, it's not exactly a mystery.

mama's_tasty_foods: What -I- wonder about is, why didn't DHL and its insurers pay them off- i.e. why did it get so far as litigation? It seems to be a matter of clear liability.

Ahem. My background is in transportation law, so let me jump in to confuse the issue.

It will depend entirely on what was on the Bill of Lading. The BOL is the contract for transportation service. If they specified the temperature, then the carrier is duty bound to maintain that temperature. But if the carrier doesn't, and something like this damage occurs, there still might be a limit to liability. I've been away from the package business for a number of years, but it used to be something like $1.25 a pound. So if this machine weighed 10 pounds, the carrier could damage it and only be liable for $12.50.

And in this case, there seems to be more than 1 carrier. Ergo, Samsung is suing everyone who touched the thing. The refrigerated trucker is probably just a broker working for DHL. I suspect the lawsuit stems from the value of the goods rather than just the damage.

One of the legal "excuses" for not paying a claim is what is called "inherent vice in the goods". My first year in the business, our Claims Department tried to get out of paying a claim for a large plate glass window that we drove a forklift through. The Claims Manager said it was "inherent vice". That didn't work.

Torc:
On a drive from San Jose to Austin they sure as hell would be.

I was guessing an air-conditioned truck would be different than one that's actually refrigerated.

..so, what? we buy your crap anyway..why would sam-gunk care?

Dropped, Hidden and Lost strikes again.

/worst carrier ever

Virulency: lets use Kelvin?

First, I don't want to know what kind of machine needs to be shipped at 23 degrees Kelvin.

Second, I don't want to see the truck that can deliver that machine.

Third, if they accidentally ship it at 23 degrees Fahrenheit, nothing will be left of the machine when it arrives.

Doc Daneeka

One is based on science.

The other is based on the size of people's feet in medieval England.

kilgorn: This would never happen at NASA...

While it was dumb, I can see how that would happen. My fluids professor insisted we use a book from the 60's for his class. It took me a while to realize that pounds-mass and pounds-force are two completely different units and you have to ignore multiplying by g if you want pounds-force in stead of pounds-mass*feet/sec^2.

Almost all of the young engineers are much more comfortable with metric while the old farts who run the show have no idea what we're talking about without a conversion chart.

nobius: DHL is supposedly a global company. They should have gotten it right.

Here's where it is-they agreed to ship and get it there in one piece