A Beautiful Scheme

It all started when I decided I'd like to have good pictures of my baby, once he hops out. A new camera. Not one of these primitive film-operated gizmos that charge dozens of quarters every time you need some prints, but a real, honest-to-goodness digital machine. Naturally, I sought the solution at Amazon.com (may they offer me some small token of their appreciation). Yea, and having placed an order for what can only be considered a beautiful little camera, I did wait. Oh, how I did wait. Delivery placed on the 24th of December. Yes, I made some shopping on the very Eve of the holiday. Shipping delivery estimate: 7 January. I don't know how the maths work there, but it did strike me as a bit generous on time, that estimate. Nevertheless, hope and all that convinced me to think I might even take the new camera with me to the eastern coast, where I spent the first full weekend of the new year. Time does pass quickly, tho, don't it.

Here we are, on the 13th day, which is a Friday. The camera never arrived. Indeed, the good people at usps never even received the package. Or rather, the tracking number Amazon gave me was never recognized by the system. Amazon is fully convinced that the item is somewhere "lost in transit," while I am equally fully convinced that my order never shipped. See, when I placed the order, the camera that I was ordering was described as "only 1 left in stock, order soon." I did order soon, but I'm willing to bet that someone else did as well, and that theirs went with better shipping, or more accessories, or something else that made them better than me. And so, the camera was out of stock. My order was already placed, so (according to my conspiracy theory) they decided to save face by making usps look bad - "see, they lost it after we gave it to them, they're too lazy to even scan the item into their system, even tho they created a tracking number!" Naturally, I'm not deceived. I know that somewhere out there some other lucky kid got a great camera for post-Christmas, and all I got was the replacement (which should arrive with expedited shipping tomorrow). Not sure I learned any lessons here, but I will eventually be very happy with my camera!

Update Jan 18: The original order arrived today, here's the tracking information I got off the usps website:

Note that I spoke with Amazon customer service on the 13th of January. Seems a bit coincidental that the camera suddenly popped up in the usps system on the day I spoke with Amazon. More suspicious still is the fact that the package arrived having been opened and then taped shut again. Here's what happened: Amazon thought they sent it out on the 28th, which is when they generated a tracking number for it. The package sat on a shelf in Amazon warehouse for the next 15 days. When I chatted with customer service, they sent a "find this package" notice to the warehouse, and suddenly the package "appeared." Before sending it out ("again"), they opened the package to make sure that the order was right, then dropped it into a real mailbox and off it went. Five days later, here it is! Too late, but better never than that, in this case. Now I have to ship the stupid thing back to them - postage paid, of course!