Friday, November 03, 2006

It's a good life if you don't weaken

I have the worst luck with ordering things and using the postal service. When I was six, my Nintendo Entertainment System came with a free subscription to Nintendo Power magazine. So I dutifully filled out the card and sat quietly as my mum drove me to the mailbox and I tipped it in. Almost sixteen years later, it still hasn't arrived. Should I send a letter?

In mid August, I ordered my Macbook and was given an estimated delivery date of the next week. The day after that rolled around, I got an email saying it been delayed another week. A week after that, I got a similar email. After a series of phonecalls with Apple, I got the computer discounted and the shipping upgraded to expedited for free, but nobody told Fedex. It shipped standard. Eventually, on September 6th, a full three weeks after it was supposed to be delivered, I finally got it. But they didn't deliver it - no, that would have been too simple, too easy; THEIR JOB,. I had to drive to the other side of the city with directions to the warehouse that included intersections that didn't exist. Think of something that could have gone wrong; it did.

On September 17th, I ordered two Sigur Ros singles off Amazon. The latter, Hoppipolla, had an estimated ship date of 1-2 weeks. On October 4th, an email said it was delayed 4-6 weeks. On Wednesday, another email amended that to another 4-6 weeks from now. The delivery date is now anywhere from December 4th to the 20th. That's three months after I ordered it. I've got no idea what to do; if I cancel it and order it in-store, it'll ship from the same place and likely take just as long. I've got this sinking feeling that next July as I step off the plane in Reykjavik, my first stop will be to a record store, who will probably just make me order it anyway.

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