2005-07-20 - 9:12 p.m.

the continuation of the ink cartridge saga

Because I know none of you could sleep for worrying about it...

I got home from work yesterday and found two things: #1, a note on the door from UPS, saying they'd attempted to do a pick-up and delivery, but there was nothing to pickup, hence they delivered nothing. Said they'd try again tomorrow. Well whoopee, but I had taken the ink cartridge to work, thinking I'd be shipping it out. I can give it to UPS or walk it to the post office much easier from work so I'd taken it there. #2 thing was a message on the answering machine. Serves me right for putting my real phone number on an online order. So this woman whose first language is apparently Moron (which is what they speak in her home country of Moronia) left me this rambling message saying, well, it says here you need to return something, and I'm not really sure what, I guess it's this ink tank, is that it? And you... won't be home? Well I guess maybe you could leave it at the door or something, does UPS do that in your area, I don't know. (Um, do what?) So I guess, okay, well if that's not what you called about (hello, I didn't call, I sent an email) then I guess you can call us back.

Of course at THAT point she turns into Miss Speed Reader of 1974 and says "our number is oneighthreightwoneisevefosixfouven. Thank you for choosing Office Smeepo." Well okay not quite. But it rhymes with smeepo.

Nothing is obnoxious in quite the same way as someone who leaves you a moronic message that rambles for ten minutes, then speeds through their return number so fast you have to go back and listen to the message AGAIN. Bleagh.

So, I called. Explained the thing to the operator. He at least was informative, even if he did kind of exude an "I don't really give two fucks about this job" attitude. There's a difference between an "I hate this job and therefore I hate you too" vibe and an "I hate this job but it's not your fault" vibe, and at least he had the latter. So I ask him - do I need to address this to someone or package it up or what? And he says, did you open the box the cartridge is in? I said no. He said okay then, you don't need to package it up, just hand it to the UPS driver. Which doesn't sound right to me but... okay. So I tell him, okay swell, but, I won't be home to hand it to him. I kinda have to go to work. Office Smeepo dude seems surprised by this. Oh, he says, hmm... well, you can just leave it at the door. And if the UPS driver doesn't get it, don't worry about it. Because honestly, when the item is less than $25, we really don't care. If the UPS person won't take the bad one, just throw it out.

Um... okay. I guess I can kinda see why they didn't want to give me those instructions in writing.

So. Now I'm finally set with instructions, but UPS is coming again the next day (today) and I know I won't have the thing. I hope you can see why I didn't even TRY to ask Office Smeepo if they could arrange to do the pickup and delivery at my office instead.

So, I figured I'd be nice and call UPS and tell them not to bother coming out until Thursday. I mean, if it were a normal delivery and they needed a signature or something, and I knew I wouldn't be home for a few days, I'd call to arrange to pick it up or have it delivered on another day or something, so they know I'm not sitting in my house, hiding behind the sofa, laughing hysterically at forcing the delivery guy to stand there and write me out yet another infotag. So, I called.

I will skip the adventures with the idiot voice-recognition software that I'm supposed to talk to. Let's just say that I finally hit the ZERO key to speak to an operator and went through the "are you sure" twice. Good thing that software isn't bitchiness-recognition software, or they'd have kept me on hold forever from the tone of my "YES. I'm SURE."

So I finally get a UPS operator who asks me for my infotag number, and then before I can speak a word, reads me out the status of the package, which is the same information the robot read me in the first place. I'm all, Yes, I KNOW they attempted to deliver today at 3:10 pm and no one was home and they're going to make another delivery attempt tomorrow. I'm calling because there will be no one home tomorrow either, and nothing to pick up, so maybe you can tell them not to come until Thursday so they won't waste a trip.

The UPS chick says, I'm sorry, there's no way to change that schedule. ????? At 6:30 pm there's no way to change the fact that something's going to be on the truck to my house tomorrow? Okay.... so the chick actually giggles and tells me that oh well, they'll just have to waste a trip.

Oooookay fine. Try to be nice.

So, I wrote a note for the UPS driver today and left it on the door, saying as concisely as I possibly could (should have just left this URL, huh?) that I was sorry they made the trip for nothing, I'd leave the item for pickup tomorrow and I tried to stop the delivery attempt today but wasn't able to.

So I got home today and also found two things... #1, the correct ink cartridge. The driver went ahead and left it. #2, a note added onto my note. The driver wrote, "Thanks - see you tomorrow." See? I've never had any problems with UPS drivers. They're always great. The people who answer when I call their offices, not really so much. And forget Office Smeepo completely.

So tomorrow I'll leave the bad cartridge. What I really can't believe about all this is how keystone cops the entire thing was... am I really the first person ever to order something from Office Smeepo to be delivered to their home, who needed to return part of the order, but wouldn't be home?? The entire situation seemed so foreign to them. Oh well. I won't be bothering them again.

my mood -

the mood of the whole world wide bleepin' web -