Lockhart Steele is not much of
a crusader, it would seem: he will fight
for FreshDirect delivery on the Lower East Side only until they start
delivering to him. Then, he’ll just give up: his latest
post completely fails to communicate the utterly illogical craziness of
the new delivery area.
Let me illustrate, with the help of some extremely basic HTML, and using my
own block (why not?) as an example. My street is a narrow one-way road:
clearly, if FreshDirect can deliver to any of the buildings on any given block of Rivington Street,
it should be able to deliver to all of them.
In fact, however, FreshDirect delivers to three of the buildings on the block:
106 Ridge, 206 Rivington, and 210 Rivington, all of which are walk-up tenements.
It does not deliver to 203 Rivington, which is a nice deliveryman-friendly elevator
building.
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Ridge Street
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106 Ridge: YES! | 202: NO | 206: YES! | 210: YES! | 83 Pitt: NO |
Pitt Street
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Rivington Street
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203: NO
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The situation gets even weirder when you realise that Rivington Street runs
west, and Pitt Street runs north. In other words, in order to deliver to 206
Rivington and 210 Rivington, the only way that the FreshDirect trucks are going
to be able to get there is by driving north up Pitt Street from Delancey. Yet
none of the buildings on Pitt between Delancey and Rivington (like 65 Pitt and
67 Pitt) get delivery either. Meanwhile, all the buildings on Ridge
Street get delivery.
I phoned up FreshDirect to ask about this on Saturday, and spoke to a friendly
woman who agreed that it made no sense at all, and who said that she’d get
a supervisor to look into it on Monday morning. But when I called back today,
Tuesday afternoon, I got someone much less friendly, who simply said that the
Marketing Department hadn’t made the decision to deliver to my area yet.
I’ve been racking my brains to try and work out how you could possibly include
206 Rivington in your delivery area and yet exclude 202 Rivington, and have
come up completely blank. If anybody has any bright ideas, do post them here. Meanwhile,
FreshDirect people, if you’re out there, do let me know what kind of person
would single out individual buildings in this manner, refusing to deliver to them
while happily delivering to their next-door neighbours. Don’t you realise you’re
causing strife down here?
UPDATE: I eventually managed to speak to a very friendly chap
called John in Marketing, and he told me that the official boundary on Rivington
Street was Ridge. So how 206 and 210 Rivington got included no one knows. But
he said he’d talk to somebody, and today I checked the website again… and
FreshDirect now delivers to the whole block! Wahey!
Lower East Side Linkage
Catching up with the ol’ neighborhood… · Felix Salmon on more FreshDirect LES delivery absurdity [FelixSalmon.com] · Meanwhile: The FreshRegret Conspiracy rages on [The Other Page] · Corn chip fans rejoice: The Hat (El Sombrero) re-ope…
Just make a fake sign that says 206a or something and plaster that over the old address.?
Maybe we could just have them deliver across the street and wait outside for them to arrive.
Or maybe we could pay our neighbors in 206 or 210 a tip to accept our delivery.
Or maybe we could call Fresh Direct and annoy them into submission –
WE WANT OUR FRESH DIRECT!
XpressGrocer.com delivers 7 days a week with same day delivery to the entire island of Manahttan. They affer a far superior selections and has the same $50 worth of free groceries FreshDirect has. They are a much better compnay that has recently started business so therefore not as famous yet.
Great site, well done. I enjoy beeing here and i•ll come back soon. You do a great job. Many greetings.
Fresh Direst is democratic get on the site and when it says it doesn’t deliver to your area indicate an interest and tell the rest of your neighbors to do the same!
Enough requests they’ll be there.
BTW Express Grocers is actually Gristedes (the store that got me to start ordering from Fresh Direct in the first place)
Scary & dirty! I’d be afraid to eat their produce, meats, etc!
Fresh Direct is democratic get on the site and when it says it doesn’t deliver to your area indicate an interest and tell the rest of your neighbors to do the same!
Enough requests they’ll be there.
BTW Express Grocers is actually Gristedes (the store that got me to start ordering from Fresh Direct in the first place)
Scary & dirty! I’d be afraid to eat their produce, meats, etc!