You try to do the right thing all the time.
You don’t steal pens from the office. You always greet everyone by name, and you try to do so with a warm smile or friendly handshake (back when handshakes were still in vogue).
You obey the traffic laws (within reason; I mean do we *really* need to watch for slow children?)
And then comes COVID. And still you do the right thing. You always wear a mask whenever you’re around others. You avoid getting too close to anyone. (So no more handshakes. And giving complete strangers a soul kiss might be right out of the question now.)
(Surprise frenchies were never that popular anyway.)
One day you decide you need a new frying pan. You’ve done your research so you know the one you pick will likely last a lot longer than normal non-stick frying pans. You’ve researched the user reviews on Amazon so you feel confident about your choice.
Wait. Amazon.
No, that won’t do at all. Amazon doesn’t need your business. Not really. The local store does though. So again you do the right thing and try and find that model from a local business.
Eventually you find one. It’s not really a local store; it’s a store under a familiar banner, and there are maybe 100 of them in the country. But it’s still smaller than Amazon, so it’ll do.
That’s when your descent into Purgatory starts.
They give you the tracking number and you carefully follow it until the day it says “DELIVERED!” But the address displayed is not your address. It’s not even your city.
You run to your door anyway but it’s not there. It’s not in your apartment lobby either.
The sucker was over $200 so you start the recovery claim process. First you call FedEx to see what happened. They can’t figure it out either. They give you a process number and tell you they’ll get back to you in a few days.
You wait a week but there’s no response. So you call the store from which you purchased the pan. The rep gets online and confirms it was delivered to the wrong address. He processes a replacement to be sent to you.
You sigh with relief and figure that’s that.
That is most certainly NOT that.
FedEx gets back to you the next day to tell you they found your parcel and it’s on its final leg of the journey to you.
After it arrives you quickly call the store back to tell them to stop the replacement process.
“What replacement process? Oh I see what happened. It turns out we didn’t have it in stock like we thought so we issued you a refund. But now that we know you’ve got it, we’ll process a re-charge on your credit card. So don’t worry if you see a refund and a re-charge. It’ll take a few days.”
No big deal, you think.
Yeah, it’s a big deal.
You get the refund. You see it in “pending” on your credit card, and then a few days later you see it clear back into your account.
Then you wait. And you wait. And your morality meter is flashing into the red zone.
A week goes buy and you still have this new frying pan (which works great by the way!) for which you have paid nothing.
Your brain raises its finger. “THIEF!” it bellows.
You could call the store but, knowing how things have gone so far you imagine they might process a new charge against your credit card, and then a few days later another charge for the same amount would be processed (the original charge that took its time coming forward), meaning you’d have paid twice for that stupid, ignorant, unnecessary excuse for a frying pan that you now wish you’d never coveted.
Better to wait, you think.
WTF knows. These flaming pants are getting a little uncomfortable.
View from a Wolf 