It's All in the Stars

Apparently, according to astrological charts,  Mercury is in retrograde and this week we are all told to "expect cheques in the mail to be late. Postal and courier services will suffer from delays. Everyone will be dogged by silly errors and confused communications."

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm certainly experiencing something along those lines.

I won a $100 from Subway early in January, and while others who won this contest seem to have received their gift card, mine has not yet arrived.  I put in a query a few weeks ago, and they sent me a form that needed to be filled out and sent back. I did that, and they promised to mail the card out on January 20th. If I had not sent in the query, I likely never would have received the form.

It's now two weeks later, and my prize is still not here. I know Canadian mail is slow, but it doesn't take two weeks for an envelope to go from anywhere in this country, to someplace else in the same country.  I told them that and they are now looking into it, though that was several days ago, and I haven't heard anything since.

I even told them how much I'd love to tell my blog readers about experimenting with different combinations of Subway sandwiches that I haven't tried yet.  Let's hope I get that chance.

Meanwhile the Linen Chest was having a 75% off sale and I found something on their website that I've been wanting for months.  Hunting for, in fact. I even put it on my Christmas list, but I didn't get it.  I don't often buy stuff on line, and after my experience before Christmas, one would think I'd know better.  But I wanted new pasta bowls and this set was perfect, so I put in the order. 

The original e-mail advertising the 75% off sale also came with an offer of 10% off if I signed up for their newsletter, so I did that.  I expected an e-mail giving me that additional code to plug into my order, but it didn't come, so I put the order through.  Several days later I got another e-mail saying there was still something in my shopping cart, and if I completed the order, they would give me 5% off.  I went to look at my account, and it appeared that my order was "processing", but it did indeed show the pasta bowls sitting in the shopping cart.  To me, "processing" meant the order had gone though just fine.  I wanted the bowls but didn't want to duplicate the order, so I decided to e-mail them and ask.  I also asked why I would be satisfied with a 5% discount when they originally promised me a 10% one that never came through. 

I got a response that said, "normally one receives this notice if they did not complete their purchase or completed the transaction from a different computer or browser."  That wasn't the case here though.  They then offered to take the extra 5 % off this order if I transferred the offer I received back to them by e-mail.  I eventually figured out they meant I should forward that message to them, so I did, and got that extra 5% after all.  I also got a another e-mail from them giving me that original 10% discount off my next order.

Checking my account once again, I see the order is still "processing"  but at least now there is nothing in my shopping cart.  I have no idea when the package will arrive, but at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if something was broken.  That wouldn't be the fault of the Linen Chest, or the Post Office, of course.  It would just be my luck.....or perhaps I could blame it on the stars.

Did I mention I've been getting lovely e-mails in my g-mail account, complete with photos of a lovely little girl, that were all meant for someone else?  I alerted the person who was sending them, and he seems to have it all straightened out now. The e-mails were meant for someone with my last name and my first initial, so I can see how this could happen.  It's just the timing that seems to fit into the predictions at the moment.

According to astrologer Georgia Nichols, the kind of mix up and confusion I have been experiencing will continue until March 20.  Oh Joy.  Can you just imagine how bad the Ides of March will be?

But on March 21st, I get to celebrate my 40th Wedding Anniversary, and it should be good as I will be in the clear by then.  Hopefully......

 

The Furniture Story -- The Final Chapter

As I've told you before, I bought new furniture in March, but there were a few problems with both the original delivery and the replacement set 

The third time they sent a truck, they just brought me a chair and a loveseat, as I had accepted the replacement couch from the second set they delivered.  The guy came in, checked to see what kind of problem I had with the pieces he was about to replace,  then he went out to the truck and proceeded to pull the plastic off the furniture right there, instead of bringing it indoors first. Good thing he did that too, as he found the same kind of damage. In fact one of the pieces was actually split right up one side.  This means that the store had sent a truck, with two men, to my house three times, delivering a total of eight pieces of furniture, and only one of those was undamaged. (well, there is a flaw with that one too, but it was of a different nature and I didn't notice it for the first couple of weeks).

The store phoned and was prepared to give us a further discount on the loveseat, but they were going to send a man out to repair the chair.  Apparently he had to find the fabric first.  I wasn't sure how they thought he could repair this problem here, and I was somewhat worried that he would make it worse, or more noticeable, especially since I knew they would have a hard time replacing the piece I had. And why did they think they could repair one piece, and not the other, when they both have the same problem?  After some thought, I suggested that hubby tell them we would accept the same amount of discount towards the chair as they were willing to give us for the loveseat.  They immediately claimed they couldn't do that, and offered a much smaller amount. Hubby pointed out that it would likely cost them more than we were asking to send the man and material out here to do the job.  After only a brief hesitation, he agreed, and we were given the added discount. 

When we went in to get the credit card adjusted once again, my hubby looked at the receipt they tried to give him and saw that they had split the amount so that it included the taxes.  He objected, and said they promised us a certain amount and that he wanted the taxes on that amount, not included in it. He pointed out that if someone something back to where he works, they would get back the original purchase price plus the taxes and that this should work that way too.  He must have had enough of this nonsense to have tried for this extra bit, but hey, it worked. 

The fellow took another two weeks to get here to put the protective spray on though, since the phone number we were originally given was for someone who has not covered this area in over two years.  

So, now I have new furniture that is actually mine, and protected, even if it is not in perfect shape. For what we ended up paying for it, when all is said and done, we made out better than the store did, I'm sure.