Skip to main content

Online Humor

Like many people, the Mild Wife and I take advantage of online retailers. It's a pretty convenient way for us to do our shopping, since we don't even have to leave the comfort of our home. Heck, we can even occasionally find some good deals because the online retailers don't have as much infrastructure to maintain. It's not like they have to pay for rent for their stores.

Sure, shopping online has its downsides. We can't try on clothing before we make a decision on it, for example. Sometimes, the pictures don't adequately reflect the item, or we can miss an important detail about the product. There's just something to be said for actually seeing and touching the thing we're trying to buy.

Still, it's hard to beat the convenience of online shopping. The system just works well. We can decide to buy things, and they show up on our door.

Well, they usually do. We put in an order recently that led to a much different experience.

Everything started out well, and our online shopping experience was no different than the dozens or hundreds of times we've bought items online before. We placed several items in our shopping cart, and the website said that we'd receive our shipment a few days later. All was well in the world.

Shortly thereafter, though, the first sign of trouble popped up. An email popped up that said that the package would be delayed. Specifically, the package was somehow delivered to the wrong location somewhere in the supply chain. Clearly, that wasn't good. Of course, the website assured us that they'd re-route our package and we'd only have to wait two more days. It'd be a minor inconvenience, no more.

However, the second delivery date came and went, but we still hadn't received our package. It's worth noting that we have occasionally received packages fairly late in the evening, so we were willing to wait it out both that day and the next day. It was entirely possible that the delivery truck was still on its way, and we didn't want to be an annoying customer. So, we gave the website a shot.

Ultimately, it simply didn't show up. Annoyed, we logged back in to the website, only to be told that our order would be refunded. In short, they pulled a fast one on us.

Now, up to this point, this post is all about how we had a bad customer experience. That's irritating, but not particularly amusing. However, the Mild Wife's reaction to the whole thing definitely fell in the amusing category. Slightly paraphrased, her reaction went like this:

Mild Wife: "[The website] let us down! I should be eating food based on those ingredients right now!"

I don't think I've ever laughed about a delayed delivery nearly as much before. It was even funnier, to me at least, than the time we found a question about whether gluten was gluten-free or not. I think we're definitely going to have to keep up this online shopping habit. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Backlog

I am an information junkie. Always have been. I'm one of those people that cares far more about the storyline in a video game than the actual game play. At work, I will spend time researching things related to solved problems, because I want to know exactly why it failed in the first place. And if someone learns something new, I want to go see what it's about, because I want to know what they know. I know it's not exactly the average outlook on life, but it is what it is. Anyhow, this mentality leads to my habit of tracking various websites, blogs, and other internet web sources to keep my information flow constant. Doing all of this manually is tedious at best, though, so I use Google Reader  to organize all of these feeds. It just makes things simpler to have a single source of RSS feeds, so that I can quickly browse through items related to my interests. Given all of that, it should come as no surprise that I also try to keep up with my feeds on a regular basis. I ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Units of Measure

I mentioned it recently, but I have a bit of an opinion about valid units of measure. Specifically, I am a fan of the metric system when it comes to temperature . As I mentioned in that post, a system that tells me that the temperature is "negative four degrees" is much better at explaining that it is flippin' cold than one that tells me the temperature is "twenty four degrees." The negative sign matters. Now, as soon as I mentally conceded that the metric system made a ton of sense for temperature, I immediately started thinking that it probably makes sense for other units, as well. I mean, if I'm going to apply the whole "this just makes sense" standard to the ambient temperature, it makes sense to think about mass, volume, and length in the same general way. Why force people to remember that there are sixteen ounces in a pound? Or that, more confusingly, there are eight  fluid  ounces in a cup? The conversion rates just seem arbitrary at that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Moment of Truth

I forget where I first heard it (I think it might have been Descartes), but I have long been a fan of the notion that certain things just have a " ring of truth " to them. If you've never heard the idiom before, the basic idea is that some things are super-true. They are not just true, but they are so obviously true, that as soon as you hear them, you recognize the truthiness inherent in them. I usually get excited when I hear one of these, since it means that I am a tiny bit less ignorant from that moment forward. For the first time in memory, though, I experienced the ring of truth. First, let me paint the scene with a little bit of background. I'd made plans to have dinner with my friend, but we'd agreed to play it by ear. The end result was that we ended up settling on a pretty late dinner in a local spot. That worked out just fine, since we weren't shooting for gourmet, we just wanted to grab some food and catch up in the process. So, we headed out to ...
Post a Comment
Read more