Still Waiting to Exhale

The television purchased on the 15^th, from the Big Box store, was due to arrive today, between 9:00 and 12:00 noon – “They’ll call you when in route”, sales said.

Shortly after 9:00 this morning, I get the call, “I’ll be arriving between 10:00 and noon”.

Great!

The old TV is hanging in there but, because it takes 30 minutes to power up in the morning, and it began to look like it wasn’t going to turn on at all, I’ve been leaving it on 24/7, turning the sound off at night.

I figured that can’t be good but, expecting the replacement to arrive in six days, I opted to risk it.

Delivery calls me again around 11:00 – “I’m stuck in traffic in Victorville. It doesn’t look like I’m going to make it, and I have other appointments here in Victorville. Are you home most mornings? … I’ll try to get there tomorrow or Saturday”.

My first thought was … I didn’t book the appointment for most mornings. I booked it for today, and it’s already been a six-day wait.

My second thought was … Cancel.

Instead, I accepted his, “I’ll call you tomorrow and let you know.”

However, on the drive to pick up a package at Amazon Locker ─ Toffee, because I can no longer trust the postal delivery service to get it right … yet again, I began to fume and told myself that when Delivery called tomorrow and said it wouldn’t be until Saturday, that I’d tell him to cancel.

Arriving back at the complex, I get an email that delivery has automatically been rescheduled to the 27^th between 10:00 and 2:00.

That’s freaking ridiculous! – two weeks to get a television delivered and set up.

I cancelled.

Big Box will get no more of my business …… ever!

I’ve got time remaining on the Nerd Squad computer service but, once that expires, I’ll send my repairs to Office Depot.

The plan now is to head to Walmart or Costco tomorrow, and look for something small that I can get up stairs and setup all by myself.

The having to drive out-of-the-area to an Amazon Locker is due to the fact mail is once again being misdelivered. The regular mail carrier is female, and she’s been doing such a good job of making sure the key to the lock box for packages goes in the correct mail box, that I personally told her how much I appreciated her getting it right, that the guy before her – the one who retired, who said, “I don’t make mistakes” was constantly putting the key in the wrong box and whichever resident was the recipient of his mistake wasn’t honest, they kept my packages.

Lately, however, she’s not been the one delivering. I had a key put in my mailbox to a package which was not mine. I walked it over to the resident.

All was made clear when I saw one of the other mail carriers sorting while talking on his cellphone. I should have taken a photo and mailed it to the post office with a complaint about how this is why the errors are being made, but didn’t think of doing so until days later when a resident was honest enough to walk over a package meant for me, but the key was left in his mailbox.

So, the plan for me now is not to order anything that has to go through U.S. Postal Service for delivery, which pretty much leaves me with Amazon, because I can have it sent to a Toffee Locker.

The only thing I have no control over, in bypassing the postal service, is when I’ve qualified for a Virtual 5K and the medal is mailed through U.S. Mail. If the package, or the key to the locker in which the medal is placed doesn’t make it to my mailbox, then I’m SOL.

Oh, and by the way, right after Delivery said he was stuck in traffic in Victorville, I logged into CalTrans Traffic Report of freeways out of Victorville to San Bernardino and saw no major hiccups. He just didn’t feel like driving this far.