Public Couriers

I learned a few new things over the last few days.

I learned that when a contract is failed you get back the collateral, the reward, and the 10k deposit to make it. I wasn’t expecting that 10k back for some reason and it surprised me. Also, while inconvenienced that my package did not arrive because it was important, making forty million ISK made me glow a bit.

You see, I had tried private courier contracts and wound up inconvenienced, richer, and puzzled as to what had happen.

The story transpires like this:

I am often reminded that I should use public courier contracts instead of using Red Frog. They are cheaper and just as fast, I am assured. I have used them in the past for moving blueprints and other  small items around where I wasn’t worried about when they made it to where I wanted them. However, the ebb and flow of TCS is such that Red Frog almost always moves my stuff within hours. I tend to write a contract, go out to the gym or store, and come back to find it in progress or done. I’ve not wanted to fly my freighter much since Rubicon’s release and have leaned more heavily on other methods to move my items. Plus, TCS is moving fast enough that I often have more than a billion ISK in items to move at a time.

This time, however, I was moving something personal. I needed it moved by Tursday night. To my embarrassment, somehow, I had forgotten to fuel my POS. I fueled it before I went away at the start of the month. I then went on vacation and enjoyed myself and in the back of my mind I have been thinking, “I just fueled my POS.”

Well no. Not quite. On Monday, I logged on to find my POS crying about fuel. Startled, I discovered that I was out of fuel blocks. That is abnormal. I normally have several weeks supply handy. I’m not smart enough to figure out how to do PI and make them on my own so I am stuck buying it from those who can figure out the PI process (an incomprehensible process to me). Yet, I found myself quite without POS fuel and a POS weeping tears of hungry agony with an almost empty fuel bay.

Of course, we are deployed. This makes it that much more inconvenient. I sent my POS manager back to Istodard and searched my assets for fuel blocks. Perhaps, I had just traded them to the wrong account? Alas, it was not to be and I undocked a Prorator and headed to Rens to buy a bit of fuel to hold me over until my supplies could arrive. If only I could blush.

I dumped two days worth of fuel in my POS and promptly forgot to buy more fuel because I was busy discovering that our deployment home is a .04 and I cannot produce boosters there. Fustrated, irritated, I played Minecraft instead and started to build a fantastic project that I am quite pleased with. Anyway, I forgot to buy the fuel and to make matters worse I purchased fuel for the deployment POS so somewhere in my head I had purchased fuel.

The shame.

Well, on Wednesday, like a good girl I woke up for work and promptly realized that my POS might be running out of fuel and I’d be helpless during my twelve hour shift to know or do anything. I checked and discovered via the in game calendar that I was good until Friday. Pleased, I took a moment to buy some fuel and create a private contract to send it to Teon. I needed to restock TCS and I could just take care of everything at once. It would be magical when I got home from work.

I got home from work and joined a fleet. I then flew like shit and died. On the way to bed I remembered about my contract and stopped to check on it. I didn't see it in Teon. I had assumed that it would be done so I doubled back to check if it had been picked up yet. Teon is, after all, only a few jumps off of the route to Rens. That was when I saw that it had failed which also explained the unexpected boost of ISK in my wallet. Puzzled, I looked up the pilot and did not see a wreck. I had sent around 360 mil in POS fuel with a collateral of 400 million. Worried that I had screwed up and accidentally contracted one of my expensive things I checked but it seems that I had not managed to accidentally hand over billions of ISK (my Rhea, Provi, Orca, container of Plex and random goodies). It seems that I had not lost anything of value.

I had purchased POS fuel for the deployment system. I sent that back to Jita, added some more to it, and shipped it all down to Teon via Red Frog. I had planned to stock tonight but my cold is fighting back and I will take care of it tomorrow when I hopefully, feel better. Or, at least, I will have the entire day to get it done.