Online Order Woes

“Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line. All calls will be answered in the order received. We will be with you shortly.”. Then the musak played on and on and on.  After listening to this same recording for seventy-one minutes last Friday, and sixty-six minutes on Monday, I felt my brain had fried. Adding injury to insult (or is it the other way around?) I woke up in the middle of the night with the insane lyrics from the musak going over and over in my memory. I just might sue for pain and suffering!

After the first half hour of this on Friday, I felt my investment was already high. After all, my precious time was being devoted or more like sacrificed to finding out where in the world a very small piece of furniture we had ordered online had disappeared to, and why this huge company seemingly couldn’t hire enough people to man their phone lines. The person who finally did answer had a heavy accent and sounded unable to help. “Do you mind if I connect you to my supervisor?” he asked.  “She will be with you shortly.”  And then, you guessed it, another forty minutes of the above message and musak. By the time the second person came on the line, I almost cried because... she finally came on the line, and because I could understand her! However, while she was helpful in taking off the premium shipping charge, three days later we still had no delivery.

Monday, I bit the bullet and called the number again because I hate paying for something which I don’t receive. So, the same drill, and incredibly the same two tunes. The first person I waited thirty-three minutes on the line for had a heavy accent. He passed me to his superior, and thirty-three more minutes later, I got to talk to a woman I could understand. Again, I felt emotional. She found in checking through the order, that there actually wasn’t an order, and she reordered!!  She assured me that I would be able to check on the delivery progress using a tracking number she gave me.

Unbelievably, this saga is not finished as we got an email today which said our order would be delayed up to twelve days. L When my husband typed in the new tracking number, a message appeared on the screen, “You are not authorized to enter this site.”
So much for ordering anything else online. I think we've learned our lesson.