For the Love of Delivery!

I look and laugh at my "my baby gets delivered Thursday" talk below. I purchased my precious loveseat in the "bark" brown color on the evil holiday, it is true. And, it was supposed to be delivered the following Thursday. I left work early, rearranged my living room (resulting in a temporary set-back in the back spasm area ... seriously ... have you ever started to pass out from back pain? I can now claim that experience. Not pretty), and sat nervously awaiting my major purchase of the year.

About a half hour after their two-hour delivery window passed, the door buzzer made me jump and I ran downstairs to greet the delivery men. I was pleasantly surprised that these men seemed belted or otherwise "covered" and show one upstairs to the area waiting for a perfect brown suede-y loveseat.

They had the loveseat at the bottom of the stairs when I suspected there was a problem.

I called down to them, "Um ... what color is that?"

"Red"

"Yeeeah ... I'm supposed to have a brown one."

"Brown?"

"Yeah."

*longer pause than you'd expect*

"Well, uh .... do ya want this one?"

*raised eyebrow*

"Noooooo ... I want my brown one."

After talking to the store, checking and rechecking the label ... as if that would suddenly convince me that a red loveseat is actually a brown loveseat ... they took their "Berry" colored piece and left.

The next available delivery time was Saturday morning, which a cancellation on my part of what, I'm sure, would have been a highly entertaining volunteer trip to the Veteran's Home. I was apparently second on the delivery list and the guys showed up soon after 9 a.m. I was SO excited!!

Until I saw the guy carrying this across the parking lot toward my door:

"Um .... what color is that?"

"Red."

"I'm supposed to get a brown one. That's why this was rescheduled from Thursday."

*delivery guy #1 yelling to delivery guy #2* "It's supposed to be brown."

"Brown?"

"Yeah, brown."

"Oh."

It was after this visit, that I made a call to the salesperson at Art Van who sold me the now mythical loveseat in "bark" brown. Tom was shocked, SHOCKED, at what had happened and meekly added that I should be entitled to some sort of compensation for my trouble.

Some sort of compensation?

"Not some sort of compensation, Tom. Let me tell you what I expect ... I should not be paying for delivery. I said nothing after the first failed attempt because I understand that mistakes happen ... but this is the SAME mistake that once again is taking up my time."

To his credit, Tom called me back in 5 minutes with the authorization from his manager to refund my delivery charge, rescheduled delivery for this past Wednesday, and added that someone would be calling the day before to make certain that the piece loaded on the truck is brown.

Loveseat: $479

Delivery: $0

Color: Bark .... and it's perfect.