So I had a little chat with DHL about my Ouya.

My ouya was planned to arrive between 14/6 (something like that) and the 1st. That’s what the email said and that’s the email that contained the mysterious tracking number that didn’t ever work anywhere, until some good Google Plus’er (Christian Buggedei I think) found out what site would take it and we all ended up at

https://www.globalmail.dhl.com/web/portal-asia/traceit?itemId=1004622130611

Well, at least you did if you live in Belgium.

Now, the packages final possible date was the 1st, that was yesterday, and the site said it hadn’t moved since the 17th, so I gathered there must be some sort of customs problem and they don’t know how to find me or whatever. Or maybe they just OOoopsie‘d it and lost it into their own living room, the mind goes places when a package doesn’t move for near 2 weeks.

So I called DHL (+32 2 715 50 50) today to find (the fuck) out where (the fuck) my (fucking) Ouya package was. (fuck!)
I called, armed with the Cust_item_ref or whatever, HKSHW0GAYXZ01, and was ready for answers. Sadly the woman informed me they needed a 10 digit number and couldn’t much use anything else. I’d seen other numbers on the trackit site, but as I do this while driving around in an attempt to not waste any more precious time, I couldn’t just look it up, calling and internet don’t really work at the same time. End to that call, back to the interwebs, copy pasteing codes and urls, .. 2nd try! I did see however that it’s in processing since the 1st, so thats probably what they meant. They’d start sending it to me the first!? Still, 14 days just laying there.. I wanted to know more.

I called DHL and tried to give the lovely lady the all digits item id code that is 1004622130611. She was very surprised at this and kept asking if I really had just given her 13 numbers instead of 10 or maybe 12. Sadly, yes.
I then told her I had some information and codes from the site, but that I had to use some exotic tracking site called globalmail.dhl.com and that she did know about.
She explained that the globalmail offering is a bulk mailing service usually used for mail order catalogues and the like. For when you need to send a lot of crap but ultimately don’t really care about whether it gets there or not! The guy in HK fills a big bag, there is no tracking of its contents and mails that bag to the country where it’s supposed to be, there the bag is opened and the contents are individually put into the regular mail system, so I’m guessing that’s bPost. There is no tracking of the individual parcels in the bag (that’s a word the DHL lady consequently used) and as such, the weird item number is just that, an item number the shipper assigned, and the tracking is just that reference correlating to showing what the bag does with a mention of your name. DHL doesn’t however know for sure that that package is even in the bag, DHL just picks up the bag and works off the list the sender provided. If he didn’t put it in, they don’t know. This also means that if you don’t get anything, you’re shit out of luck as far as DHL is concerned. Because they just say it was never in the bag to start with. The shippers know this, so getting a resend from them should be no problem.

It looks like the good people at Ouya were fucked by the company that did the shipping, whoever that may be.. Maybe the producer, maybe some other company.

Now, considering the final arrival date was about the big bag being unpacked in the PO office, and considering that happened yesterday, then taking traditional postal service into consideration, I’m guessing we Belgians will have our Ouyas on Thursday the 4th. I don’t have too much faith though so I’m expecting it around Monday next week, that ‘d be the 8th. Which is .. 2 weeks after the Ouya hit the shelves? Not quite as promised.

A little word about the Ouya people though.. I don’t blame them too much. Some very poor choices in shipping were made. I don’t know if they were made by them or the producer or some fuckwad external company, but do have the feeling they acted in good faith. [edit. They apparently used shipwire.com and I’m guessing they fffffucked up!] I can hardly blame them for going with cheap shipping as in the end, they need to get up and running, that was what the kickstarter was all about, and they don’t want to splurge money on whatever. I do feel they might have done good to prioritize differently and make sure we got the goods in time, but on the other hand, the (fucking) bag of Ouya’s has been lying in the (fucking) PO office in Brussels since the (fucking) 17th, (just rotting,) which would have meant that the Ouya’s could have been in our hands the 20th, well before the launch date. This realization however does not take away all of the the bitterness and I’m left with a double feeling.

That being said, it’s all on the move again and I look forward to unboxing the damn thing next week.

[edit: there is some very valuable conversation and information on Google+!]