Since I discovered online shopping I’m like the kid from years past with her head buried in the pages of the Sears Christmas catalogue. I even have an online wish list! I love the convenience of having stuff I order come right to my mailbox, saving the gas and time I would otherwise need to go to town. One day I started thinking, gee it’s been quite awhile since I put in that order for canning jar lids and wine yeast, seems like it should be here by now…? I tracked the order online and found out that the package was supposedly “dropped in the mail slot” two weeks ago! Huh?
I began to wonder about my brain. Did I forget? Did I already pick this package up at the mailbox and stow it all away? Just in case I checked my pantry - no new jar lids. I looked in my wine supply drawer - no new yeast packets. My next thought, and this is the usual route amongst those who’ve been married for a long time, I’ll bet my husband picked it up and forgot it in his truck. His response to that query? “Nope.”
What to do? I called our local post office. The postmistress said she’d check into it. She called me the next day, no luck there. Again I questioned my brain. I looked in my own car and, not trusting my husband’s ability to find things, glanced in his truck too. No package. So now I needed to contact Amazon. I found the “package not received” section under orders without too much trouble and somehow found a chat line to discuss my problem. I had a long conversation with a person or AI named “V”. In the end I received a full refund for the missing order. Being pretty impressed with Amazon’s service, I thanked “V” and signed off on the chat. The credit appeared on my account in minutes. So, since all was fixed I decided I’d better order lids and yeast again, but got busy and didn’t get around to it.
Several days later my husband and I were heading out to town. I was putting on my coat and boots while he was warming up the truck. He came back in the house and nonchalantly plopped a package on the entry stairs. “Here,” he said.
Well that wee statement nearly knocked the stuffing out of me. “What the….” said I. “Do you have any idea of what I’ve been going through over that package? Where was it?”
“Up the back by the window,” he said, completely oblivious to the steam exiting my ears. It must have been well hidden I thought, but the truck’s back seat is always chaotic - dog beds, tools, stuff, more stuff. Finding a single item is kinda like trying to find a missing pack of wieners in a fully loaded chest freezer.
Now what do I do? I got a credit for a package that is not missing. I tried several times to find the appropriate area to reverse the credit but navigating Amazon’s site this time proved daunting. Customer service has nine pages of choices to select from but, like nearly every telephone tree I’ve ever encountered, not one selection addressed my problem and there was no place to simply type in a question. I searched and searched for that elusive chat line I found before but to no avail. Where oh where had “V” disappeared to? In the end I just gave up.
A couple days later I thought I’d better open the “lost” package and make sure it was all there. It was, but it contained the wrong size jar lids, wide mouth, not regular. I rechecked my order and, sure enough, I’d ordered the wrong lids.
North of 54
https://www.facebook.com/Northof543/,
March 9, 2025
