Day 42 - Does this happen to other people?

In preparation for leaving my current job and giving up my sweet laptop, I bought a new laptop. No idea if I'll get one with the newjob, but somehow I don't think it's appropriate to keep a kabillion photos on a work laptop. So the new one made good sense.

Ordered it a little over a week ago, and got a notice last week that it would arrive on Friday. Sweet! I came home early Friday, saw the laptop had not yet been delivered and there was no "sorry we missed you" note on the door, and did not leave the house until Ethan came home so I wouldn't miss it. The overflowing bag of dry cleaning is still sitting in the front hallway. The delivery guy never showed up and sometime that evening the website showed they had tried to deliver at 9:30 in the morning. But never bothered to leave a note.

I called DHL and they informed me that the laptop would be re-delivered on Monday and I would have to be there to sign for it. And no, I could not sign the little slip of paper (that they forgot to leave), I had to physically be there. Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM.

I called Dell and spent over an hour on the phone with 4 different people trying to get them to call DHL to 1) deliver on Saturday, 2) remove the signature requirement, or 3) change the shipping address to my office. There was a lot of nasty exchanges, and not all on my part. I was 'disconnected' twice. The 4th guy finally changed the shipping address, so I guess I was the most polite with him. The 1st guy suggested I should go pick up the laptop at DHL between 9-5/Mon-Fri and I asked him if he was going to refund me the amount of money I was going to lose in vacation time if I did that. The answer, no surprise, was no. He had a lot of other equally bad suggestions which is why I think I got disconnected when I insisted on speaking with his supervisor (and I actually had to say the words "I insist on talking to your supervisor" because he would only put me through if I "insisted").

As of this morning, no update on DHL's website, so I call to find out when they are going to deliver it. A lovely woman says the change has not gone through yet, but they could hold the package there and I could pick it up before 8 PM tonight. I can do this.

I show up at DHL at 7:20 tonight to find out my package is no longer at their facility; it has been re-routed for delivery to my office. Maybe tomorrow. And it's not even worth calling to complain about anymore, which is why my blog-readers are victim to this whole story :-)

Evan playing on my computer at bring your kids to work day