The Building Of A New Beast - All Horse, No Barn

At any given moment something can trip you up, so goes the latest plot twist. At this point I will say that I don't really think I can point the finger at anything but the "machine" in this case. Every Amazon employee I spoke with (that amounts to two guys) were extremely helpful in their own ways. Yesterday it was Amhara's turn (frame of reference rules apply again) with thanks for his courteous poke of the anthill to get my PC case going in the right direction, and secondly this morning to David for helping me clean up the detritus and move forwards, even with a little sweetener thrown into the mix.

So giddy as I was to be finally receiving my case today that I happened upon one last use of their parcel tracking service (the same one from the advert which keeps interrupting my anime viewing on Cunchyroll) only to discover that in spite of all the effort that Amhara had made to get my parcel moving, it once more read with an apology for the delay and a notice relegating delivery to anywhere between now and next Friday (again). Fuming I elected to cut the head off the dragon and cancel the order. In order to better clarify the new status I contacted Amazon again and David, my new ally, was most helpful. The fact that payment had still not been taken for this item even as it was "winging its way to me" left me deeply suspicious of any truths their tracker app swore by, and indeed according to David both he and I had conflicting information about where my parcel actually was. Mine said that it had travelled overnight from Manchester and was sat at Sheffield depot, ready for delivery. If this were true then why would it take them up to a week to drive it up the hill? I mean I know the post can be slow, but even that strained reality a bit for my tastes. David couldn't even see the existence of the parcel anywhere near these fair shores, so only certain faceless individuals might know the actual fate of my order. Add to that the fact that he'd received, as part of my cancellation, a note from the "couriers" saying they'd tried to deliver it this morning but no one was in to receive it.. frankly I think it was a relief to both of us that we each agreed to draw a line in the sand and call bullshit on the whole affair. David confirmed that payment hadn't been taken, and off his own bat (meaning that this wasn't sanctioned by Amazon protocols - the finger points at the machine again) credited my account with £5 against my next purchase from them for the hassles. A quality ally indeed! He did note that I had a free trial of Amazon Prime still to use (something I thought I HAD used up), but I opted not to at this time as we joked that even Prime probably couldn't get my case to me by tomorrow on this occasion.

So what becomes of all this? The order has gone to (another drum roll..) CCL Computers! A big shout out to those guys and gals again for managing to deliver my 3 way PWM splitter cable to me in record time (see previous blog v1.5 in the series) and congratulations for the reward coming on the tails of that record breaking service. Also bonus points for selling the case I want for £5 less than I was paying with Amazon (another colleague called David noticed the price reduction shortly after I placed my order with Amazon, so it's nice to be able to action this to be honest).

So, a fair amount of hassle in return for a £5 saving and £5 of credit to spend with Amazon when the machine is feeling more like a delivery service and less like a total dick. In their favour though is the fact that they did succeed in completing the other orders.. I have to wonder what went so wrong?