TO HAVE NOT

As of yesterday, one of the “small parcels” that I was telling you about last week still hadn’t popped through our letterbox here in the ravaged outer wastelands of Lesser Blogfordshire, and as it was now eight days beyond it’s “estimated delivery date” and because I couldn’t find any policy document on their website with regards to how long I should wait before reporting it as “missing in action”, I decided to try and tell my supplier about the fact that it seemed to have gone missing.

It does, after all state quite clearly on their website that “If your order hasn't arrived after the estimated delivery date, please contact us and we'll do our best to locate it” so I was only doing what I was told to do.

Anyway, I plunged on through the murky forest of words that made up the lesser used corners of their website and you would not believe how difficult they are making it for you to suggest such a thing. It’s almost as if they find it impossible to imagine that any of their parcels could possibly go missing under any circumstances.

You are given options to return things, you are given options to explain things that have been wrongly delivered, and you are even given options to comment on the packaging of your item, but the non-arrival of your precious order doesn’t appear to exist as an alternative.

“Once an item goes out the door and onto the back of a (whichever postal carrier you use) wagon, then it ceases to be ‘our problem’” was something I read on a forum allegedly written by one of their presumably more enlightened and helpful ex-employees. (Ahem!) When I read that, I thought that it was a rather depressing attitude for someone in such a business to have had, but now, after my fruitless searches through their website, I’m starting to believe that it may well have been their company mantra.

The only option I could find under the snappily titled “Where’s my stuff?” area was an option to email (or phone, but I really wasn’t in the mood to talk to one of these people) so I started to do that when BAM!!! there was a sudden and unexpected power outage of the sort we get out here in the hinterlands every so often, which cut out the computer, the hub and the lights for just about long enough for me to have to reset every timer in the house.

The “broadband” light on the hub steadfastly refused to come back on for what seemed like an age, and I did wonder whether the internet gods were trying to tell me not to bother. “Everything’s fine” they were whispering suggestively “It’ll turn up tomorrow. You know there are problems at the distribution depots. You saw it on the local news…”

I saw the logic of this, of course, but then wondered why everything that I’d ordered after it had already arrived, so, once the light finally chose to illuminate itself once more, I ploughed on, and composed a terribly polite email and clicked “send”. I can’t bring myself to do stern and miffed even when I’m feeling stern and miffed. I suspect you can only tell whether I’m really fed up with you if I start being terribly nice to you. This may well be a social flaw and might explain a heck of a lot of things that have happened to me in my personal relationships over the years.

I did get a terribly helpful reply, though, and a replacement copy is now streaking towards me by first class post, which means I will no doubt end up with a Double Bogie (2 over par sounds about right) by the end of the week and end up with the magnificent faff of trying to get my head around the returns system, which just goes to prove how very hard it is to keep a customer satisfied.

It’s all just a little bit sad really, as there was a perfect free slot on Sunday evening that an old Humphrey Bogart movie would have slipped very comfortably into. Okay, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not really something to be sad about, but I’m sure you understand what I mean.

I’m also not so far gone yet that I don’t recognise the irony in having to wait for a title called “To Have and Have Not”. I do indeed, at this precise moment “Have Not” and I was beginning to suspect that I was unlikely to “Have” for the foreseeable future, until my own intervention. Perhaps Bogie has been taken in for questioning by the authorities as one of the “usual suspects”, but that would be the wrong film, and indeed that is one that I happily “Have”. Hopefully, as he wallows forlornly in his cell, he’s aware that I’m on the outside trying to get him free.

I do hope so.

*  *  *  *  *

In this spirit of “following up” on previous blog postings, I shall return (briefly) to matters of toast. Due to stocking issues, my local supermarket didn’t have any Warburton’s Farmhouse loaves at the weekend, so now my toast is having to be made using another bakery’s version.

Bah!

It’s really not the same.

I’m sorry if that might upset the hard working and lovely people at A.N. Other’s bakery, but I seem to have a very sensitive (or fussy) palette when it comes to these things. The really strange thing is that even I thought that I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, so it just goes to show how discerning and rather extraordinary the human body can be, even one as raddled as mine is.