there's a hole in the bucket, etc.

[fox]

late September/early October
I get a heads up/reminder that school picture day is October 18, which includes a notice that dark colored shirts photograph best (better yet, with collars). I assume they mean dark colored shirts photograph best on white kids, but as my kid is a white kid, fine. He mainly wears goofy printed t-shirts, so I appreciate the alert and get him to agree that if I get him a Nicer Shirt he'll wear it for school picture day.

early October
Almost daily I remind myself to order the kid a new shirt for picture day and then forget to do this.

October 9, morning
(a federal holiday) I order a small variety of items, all of which are listed as in stock at my local Target: trash bags, some eye drops Himself forgot to put on the weekend grocery list, a couple of six-packs of Dr Brown's diet cream soda (which I love and can't get anywhere else), 9V batteries because he used the last one in a smoke detector, a new shirt for the kid for picture day. I pay for all of it and check "pick up in store."

A couple of hours later I get a notice that my order is ready to pick up, less the items that were out of stock. Which were, of course, the batteries and the shirt. I cancel the batteries, check "ship it to me instead" on the shirt, and drive over and pick up the things I only ordered in the first place because I was already going up there to get the fucking shirt. The website assures me the shipping is free in this instance and I should have the shirt by October 13.

October 10
I get a shipping notice with a UPS tracking number.

October 13
I get an email saying the item should arrive today. Indeed, when I click on the UPS tracking number, it says "estimated delivery Friday, October 13, by 7:00 p.m." and tells me the item is in my state, in a city I recognize, with 15 or 20 miles of here. It still says "estimated delivery by 7:00 p.m." at 6:45 p.m. without the thing being marked "out for delivery," though, which gives us some pause.

7:00 p.m. comes and goes. The item is not delivered. I refresh the tracking page and it now says "estimated delivery Wednesday, October 18, by 8:00 p.m." and no indication that they'd ever promised anything else. Of course this is too late. I try to click "change my delivery" so I can go pick the damn thing up rather than wait for them to deliver it. This option doesn't work (It says "you have to sign up for My UPS Something-something to use this service." I sign up for My UPS Something-something. It says I already have an account there. I think, great, and I click on the "change my delivery" button. It says "you have to sign up for My UPS Something-something to use this service.").

I call UPS customer service, who over the next half hour or so explain to me the following things:

• When it says it's shipped on October 11, it can take five to seven business days to reach you. (No: They told me it should arrive by the 13th or else I wouldn't have asked them to ship it at all.)
• The sender chose UPS SurePost, which means we deliver it to the US Postal Service for final delivery to the customer, so that's why the "change my delivery" button doesn't work. (Okay, but the USPS tracking number shows that they're still waiting for the package. If they don't have it, that means UPS still has it, right? So can I please come and get it, is my question.)
• The package is not actually in your state at all, ma'am. It is still in [another state hundreds of miles away]. (. . . How? Why? It was in my state an hour ago, according to your tracking information.)
• That tracking information doesn't show the package's physical location.

Doesn't show the package's physical location. At that point my head damn near explodes, so I ask (very nicely, I think) to be put through to someone who can explain to me how a package can be scanned in a place when it isn't actually physically in that place, and a few minutes later I get a manager type who tells me basically the same thing, which is that UPS has three types of scans—logical, derived, and physical—and apparently the scan showing that my package was within 15 miles of my home was a derived scan, not a physical scan, so bottom line, it's not coming on Friday and I can't come pick it up and she promises to be in touch with location managers in my state and the state where the thing actually is to try to expedite correcting all of this, and they'll try to get it to me by Monday or Tuesday, please keep my phone nearby and answer when they call to discuss the matter.

Did you all know that when they say the package with this tracking number is in this place that information is actually meaningless? I didn't know that. Anyway, on Saturday I went back to Target while I was out grocery shopping, and they had exactly this object on the shelf, and I bought one. So the stress of how to dress the kid for picture day was solved. I assumed when the shipped shirt arrived I'd take it up there with my in-store receipt and return it.

Saturday: Nobody from UPS calls me. Monday: Nobody from UPS calls me. Tuesday: Nobody from UPS calls me. Of course the item is not delivered.

October 18
I get an email from Target saying something should be arriving soon. When I arrive home in the evening, there is no package; I check the USPS tracking number, and it says the item was returned to sender because it was undeliverable due to insufficient address.

I call Target customer service. I say look, I'm not mad at you, but I originally ordered the thing for in-store pickup more than a week ago because I needed it today, and I solved the problem of needing it today four days ago, and at this point I don't care about the thing that's been shipped, and I'm sorry UPS are such a bunch of lunkheads, but can I please just get a refund?

They process the refund in less than five minutes.

October 19
The package is delivered. (Sure enough, it looks like the mailing label went in the printer crooked, so it has a 1/2 margin on the right and cuts off half the address and the return address both on the left. So maybe it was Target's fault after all and not UPS's, although I still think it's unforgivable that "not physically scanned" means anything other than "not scanned.")

The person on the phone yesterday assured me that if I got an email telling me I had to return the item before the return could be processed I should disregard it, because they didn't expect me to return an item I hadn't received. Of course now I have the opposite problem, which is that I've been refunded for an item they said they couldn't deliver to me but which I eventually got. Oy vey. /o\