Much ado about deliveries

In his comment yesterday, Diogenes was pretty close to right about what happened with the delivery of the video I ordered on December 8. The company selling it had turned out to be an outfit called The IT Buffs, located in Leigh, outside Manchester, in England. Four days after placing my order, I wrote to the IT Buffs and asked if they could to get package tracking information about the shipping and delivery. I wrote in English, since the company in in England, and this is the answer I got back:

Salut,
Cet article n'a pas encore été expédié en France,
c'est à ce moment que vous recevrez un suivi.
Sincères amitiés,

By suivi, the person answering my message means "tracking information." The French is grammatically correct, but I had never before received a message from a vendor using the informal Salut greeting and especially with a closing of Sincères amitiés. I don't know who this person is, but some lessons in business French would be in order. I don't feel like we are friends. Also I don't understand why my message in English, sent to people in England, would get a response in French. Okay, because my address and the e-mail address I have on my Amazon are both in France. Oh well.

I wrote back, again in English, and asked when the display adapter was expected to arrive in France. I got this response:

Bonjour,
Les livraisons internationales prennent plus de temps que les livraisons nationales. Ne vous inquiétez pas, votre article vous est dû avant le 18.
Sincères amitiés

To me, that answer sounded slightly patronizing. I wasn't worried; I just wanted to know when, approximately, I might know what shipping company was handling the package and how I would get tracking information. Anyway, our friendship was developing nicely, don't you think? On December 19, I got this message after writing, again in English, to tell the IT Buffs that December 18 had come and gone, but no package had arrived. The  answer, again in French:

Salut,
il semble que DPD ait perdu ce colis sur son chemin vers vous.
nous pouvons renvoyer cela si vous le souhaitez?
Sincères amitiés,

The name of the shipping company mentioned in the response is one that makes Walt and me laugh every time we see one of their delivery vans. In French, DPD would be pronounced [dé-pé-dé], and when you say that you are might also be thought to be saying des pédés. As in: Tiens, voilà le camion des pédés ! I can explain more if you want, but never mind. In fact, des pédés avaient perdu ma carte graphique.

By then, I had decided I didn't really need to put a new display adapter in my old desktop PC, and I certainly didn't want the IT Buffs to try to re-send the item. I requested that the order be cancelled. This was the answer:

Salut,
cela a été annulé pour vous,
Sincères amitiés,

Okay, I figured that was that. I checked my credit card account on line and didn't see anything that indicated the IT Buffs had put through a charge for the display adapter. So much the better — I didn't have to worry about requesting a refund of my $35.00.

A few days ago, on December 21 (Walt's birthday) I think it was, the two of us were at the table eating our steak au poivre when a truck pulled up to the front gate and a delivery man rang our bell. I went downstairs and was handed a huge box that weighed almost nothing. It was big, but too small and far too light to be the chest of drawers I had also ordered. That particular package seemed also to have been lost, but by another shipping company, France's Chronopost.

I came back upstairs, sat back down at the table, and we continued our lunch. When we'd finished the main course and I went back to the kitchen to dress the salad I'd made, Walt said he couldn't stand it, he had to open that big-but-lightweight box. Inside, this is what he found, buried in a pile of pieces of bubble wrap of different kinds and sizes. The adapters were not in boxes and not shrink-wrapped in any way.

No, you are not seeing double. There were two display adapters in the box, which carried a DPD label specifying that the package weighed 10 kilos! Ha! It didn't weigh much more than 10 ounces. After lunch, I came over to my computer here in the living room and checked my credit card account again. There was my refund in the amount of approximatel $35.00.

That was nice, since I'd never paid for the display adapter at all. So I'm way ahead of the game. Not only do I now have two display adapters, one of which is completely superfluous, and I also got a gift of $35.00 for all my trouble. Altogether, that makes for about $105.00 in cash and merchandise. I don't plan to keep it, of course, but I think I'll wait until next Monday before trying to straighten all this out. By then, I will have tried installing one of the adapters in my PC, and I'll see if I need to send both of them back. I'll also ask for the $35 "refund" to be taken back too.

By the way, yesterday afternoon I was informed that the other merchandise I had ordered, the chest of drawers, has been dropped off at the post office in Saint-Aignan. That's another whole saga. Walt and I will have to go pick the package up tomorrow (today being a public holiday). I hope the carton or cartons will fit in our little Peugeot. More in a future post.