My bike finally arrived ...

My bike arrived, to my honest surprise, on 7:15PM, last Friday evening.

UPS must have figured out that since the bike arrived at the Deerfield Beach depot at 6AM on Friday, they could get it to me on Friday rather then on Monday. Good for UPS ... certainly the customer came first, and here the old addage applies ... under promise and over deliver.

Target customer service also got back to me, the delay was probably related to international time zone differences (I think they outsource their support to India). I got a very nice, and very well written, email of apology, and they waived my original shipping fee of $16.99 ... which was a nice gesture.

The lessons learned here (hopefully by both Target and UPS) is that it's not about the mistake, it's about how elegantly you recover from the mistake.