Wednesday, October 29, 2008

The Birthday Present

There’s a birthday coming up at This D*mn House! The problem has been trying to ensure that the birthday present doesn’t go to This D*mn House – until I take it there.

I bought the mother, whose birthday is next Friday, a Bose Sound Dock. The crappy little speaker/charger I bought with her iPod Shuffle on Mother’s Day has died. Rather than replace it with an equally ineffective piece of junk, I decided to look into a serious upgrade. And when I found one online at an amazing price, I decided to bite the bullet. (Even so, this is going to count for some of her Christmas, too.) I still have to buy an adapter for it, also. Ugh.

Ordering was no problem. The difficulty came with trying to have the item shipped to My D*mn Office. (It would kind of ruin the surprise for it to show up at home. Where the mother is. All day.) I regularly have things that I buy for her shipped to work as there really is almost no other way for me to retain the element of surprise.

Three emails and two phone calls to and two more from the credit card company and I think we’re finally clear. At least I think we are. Or, I hope we are. I did get an email this morning telling me that the item had shipped and should arrive Friday. Whew! I was beginning to think that a week wasn’t going to be long enough to get it here.

I do appreciate that both the merchant and my credit card company want to be sure I’m me. I guess that hassle beats the hassle of trying to prove I didn’t buy something, right?

Ever had difficulty buying something online and having it shipped anywhere other than home?

4 comments:

StuccoHouse said...

Buying my ipod was a nightmare for the same reason. I did point out to Apple/Visa that I had the ipod engraved with the same name on credit card, but that did little to sway them. They finally agreed to ship the thing but only if I was there to sign for it personally. Fine. However, the delivery guy knocked on my front door with what I swear was a feather, because even though I did not step foot outside my door all day, I missed him. I ended up driving 3 cities over the the main FedEx office to sign for the thing a few days before Xmas (yeah, that line was fun). Good luck w/ your gift :-)

Jayne said...

That's a really nice gift. I had a little bit of trouble shipping an mp3 player to my son's house instead of mine--what is it with music stuff & shipping problems?! My son, however, is the King of Shipping & Purchasing Problems. A couple years ago someone stole his debit card number (not sure how) and used it to buy a variety of items all over the world, including plane tickets to Italy and bus tickets somewhere in the Mid-East. Now the poor kid can't buy anything out of town without an alert hitting his debit card and sometimes placing a hold on it! I appreciate their concern for him, but seriously...

Ty'sMommy said...

If it comforts you at all, I have stuff shipped to my office all the time. Living in the country with a yard dog that likes to chew on things makes home delivery hard, especially when Fedex likes to leave things on the porch. At least the UPS driver knows well enough to leave them in the garage or the spare car in the drive way...

NV said...

Stucco --UGH! I think mine is going to get delivered. It was in Chicago this morning and says it's "on time for delivery" tomorrow. Crossing fingers.

Jayne -- Oh man! That sucks. I would hate to have THAT happen. I guess because they aren't cheap and they're so popular, they just feel that extra layer of security is necessary.

Tysmom -- THAT would be bad. Wouldn't want my dog to eat the Bose! :-)