I never thought I would quote Britney, but I couldn't resist.
What a day!
It all started about 3 days ago, with my laptop going belly up. It had been playing up for a while, but suddenly it wouldn't start at all. Not to worry though it's still under guarantee, so things could be worse.
After a bit of faffing around I ended up calling the customer service dept at Samsung it was all very clear they said, "We'll send a UPS carrier to you and they'll pick it up". Fine.
Unfortunately they can't guarantee a time, but sometime on Thursday. And don't worry if you're not home, they'll leave a message and then you can arrange a more convenient time... Naturally, I wasn't home. However it was easy to arrange a time for Friday - any time between 15.00 and 19.00. I knew I would be home because I would be on PalTalk with my students.
Friday arrives.
At 11.00am - just before I'm due to go out, a UPS van arrives. 4 hours early!
"You're early!" says I facetiously.
"I've come to pick up a package", says the nice young man. "OK", says I - a bit flustered, as I had an appointment. But I go and fetch the offending article and the young man says sheepishly "I haven't brought any packaging material with me."
Now, what you have to understand here is that on the Samsung agreement it states categorically that I must not, under any circumstances, hand over the laptop without the correct packaging material - ever.
"Oh!" Says I. "I can't let you take it then".
"Oh!" Says the nice young man. "I'll call my depot."
10 minutes later he admits he's not sure what time they might call him back..........
Eventually I tell him to go away and I'll call the UPS hotline. Off he trundles and inside I go.
First I have to call my client to tell them I'll have to cancel our appointment, then I call UPS to tell them about the mix up.
"We don't provide packaging materials." says an annoyed voice on the other end of the phone.
"But it says on your information that you do." I reply.
"But we don't." says she. "It says so on my computer."
"I'm not interested in what it say on your computer," says I "it says on my information that you do." She promises to check and call me back.
An hour later someone from the UPS depot phones and says (in German of course) "I'm sending the driver back. You can just give him the laptop, he'll be very careful."
"Will he have the packaging with him?"
"Er - no."
"Then he's not having my laptop."
"Why not?"
"Because it would break the terms of my guarantee."
"Oh," says he in a surprised manner.
Of course in the meantime the driver arrives at the gate. "I'm sorry," says I, "but you can't have my laptop."
"Oh, but the depot said I could."
"I don't care what the depot said," says I. "My laptop is under guarantee and if I break the guarantee I won't be able to get it fixed."
Off he goes again.
To cut a long story short, after 10 or so phone calls and e-mails between Samsung, UPS and I, I eventually got my laptop sent.
In the meantime, everything else I had arranged to do got pushed further and further back in the day (or also went completely wrong - but that's another story), until it was too late to do anything.
In fact at 6pm I was still on the road trying to catch up with all the things I wasn't able to do.
TGIF? I don't think so...