Our daughter only asked Santa for one thing this Christmas. It’s some silly toys that come with some children’s books. Not an unreasonable request. However, Santa has had an unreasonable time fulfilling it.

It was an item that my daughter saw at her school’s book fair. Since the fair was over a long time before we knew about this my wife was forced to go to the company that puts on the book fair. They told her that she had to come back last Saturday to get the set, and they promised her that they had plenty, would continue to have plenty, and she would have no problem getting one on Saturday morning.

She got there 15 minutes after they opened on Saturday. They were out. Turned out that their huge stock of the item was nearly depleted by ongoing school book fairs during the week, and that there was a line of parents waiting for them to open an hour before they did on Saturday.

Saturday night we turned to E-Bay. I’ve never used E-Bay before. The whole idea basically freaks me out for the same reason that I hate automobile dealers. I like to walk into a situation and know exactly what I’m going to pay. We found one person on E-Bay who was selling two sets of the toys/books. I clicked “Buy It Now” and when I realized that the only shipping options were regular mail and priority mail, I hit the back button and tried searching Amazon again for it. After failing with Amazon I returned to E-Bay and clicked “Buy It Now” again. Shortly thereafter I realized that I had mistakenly bought both sets that were being offered. I didn’t really care though, one of them could get dropped into a Toys for Tots collection bin, Santa was going to be bringing my daughter exactly what she asked for.

Yesterday afternoon I started to wonder if the package was going to make it on time. The seller had emailed me a link to the USPS site for tracking it. I clicked it, and was promptly informed that they couldn’t track it. This is about the time when I really started to freak. I assumed that the reason I couldn’t track it was that the seller hadn’t shipped it yet. Turns out that wasn’t the case at all. While I was calling my wife in my generally freaked out state, I was re-reading the email from the seller. Turns out that they were sending it to the wrong address too.

This goes back to me using my wife’s E-Bay account to make the purchase. Apparently, she incorrectly entered our address when she made the account. She’s never been able to change it. When she wins an auction she always just requests that the seller’s send it to the right address. This is a crucial piece of information that she failed to convey to me on Saturday night. She assures me that it’s not a real address, so the postal service will take the time to look up her name and deliver it to our house. I was convinced that this meant the postman was going to slap “Return to Sender” on the package and it wouldn’t even make it back to Washington before Christmas, nevermind the return trip to Utah.

So, she contacts the seller again who has another two to sell. She agrees to buy another one and have it shipped next day delivery to us.

Some simple math to determine how much has been spent up to this point on Santa’s surprise. First two items due to my stupidity, $20 + $20 + $10 (S&H) = $50. Next item to make up for the potential of not getting the first two here in time, $20 + $30 (S&H) = $50. $100 – $20 = $80 more than the thing should have cost.

This afternoon I got a call from my wife who was heading home. The first two did indeed get delivered to the wrong address. However, a good Samaritan who lived there took the time to look us up and contact my wife regarding the package. She headed there and got them. Now we’re just waiting on the final one to arrive.

I guess, if there’s a moral to this story it’s that you should never give up hope. However, this story probably performs a much better service as an example as to why people really hate this time of year. It’s easy to be a Grinch when nothing appears to be going your way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 8:47 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.