So House of Fraser had a January sale and I found a couple of treasures while perusing their pages, the highlight of which was an L K Bennett dress knocked down from an unreasonable sum to a really quite tempting and attainable one. Congratulating myself on the imminent acquisition of one excellent bargain, I ordered the dress and a small selection of other items without hesitation.
A few days later and a box arrived bearing my spoils. Splendid, I thought, tearing into it with some considerable enthusiasm, for I loff L K Bennett - albeit usually only from afar in view of aforementioned weighty price tags.
All other items were exactly as anticipated - except for the dress which, no matter which way one held it up to the light or from which angle one viewed it, bore all the hallmarks of... a jacket. An L K Bennett jacket, true enough, and the right colour, but a jacket nonetheless.
Awash with emotions which could reasonably be gathered up under the heading "disappointed", I lost no time in getting on to their Customer Services department to politely enquire after the obvious error. Not to worry, their standard auto responder seemed to imply, simply reorder on our web site and return the item that was sent in error. Mmph, I thought, slightly disgruntled, but went ahead as directed.
But wait! Said dress was no longer available! Arghhhhhh. I duly fed back this information to the good people at HoF, wailing about being on the point of missing out on this great and much coveted bargain through no fault of my own and enquiring as to what they intended to do by way of recompense. No, they replied, it is definitely still available. A quick search showed that in fact two sets of the same dress were listed, at different prices. One indeed was sold out but wait! the other one showed one dress remaining in stock, in my size and everything. It must be meant to be. So I placed another order and gaily awaited my parcel.
A few days later saw the arrival of another box.Splendid, I thought, tearing into it with even more enthusiasm than I had the first time. See if you can guess what was inside.
Yes, another jacket.
Working as I do in a front facing, customer service-oriented environment, I appreciate more than most the great importance of not taking out one's impotent rage on the poor sap whose misfortune it is to answer the phone when some sort of fuckery has taken place, as above. So I left it a few hours until my vital signs had returned to normal, and called them up once I was in a position to conduct myself in a friendly and amenable manner. The nice customer services lady (Jane) and I even bonded over the incredulity of being caught up in this improbable web of crapness not once, but twice. We left it with Jane placing the order herself directly with the warehouse to offset the possibility of any further malpractice and parted on splendid terms; I to await my third parcel, and she to do whatever the hell it was that she needed to do next. She even put it on free express delivery for me and gave me a tenner off.
The third parcel arrived yesterday. It looked a bit small to me but nevertheless I pressed ahead with the ceremonial opening, pushing down that little voice which was attempting to set off all those little alarms I have set up around the boundaries of my psyche to guard against attacks on my sanity and general wellbeing.
See if you can guess what was inside.
A skirt.
An L K Bennett skirt, true enough, and the right colour, but a skirt nonetheless.
There is only one thing to do in such a situation, which to give oneself over utterly to the undeniable humour of it all. Indeed, we speculated as to what might arrive next, were we to continue along this path which we knew by now to be strewn with veritable boulders of ineptitude and chasms of crapness. Some pantaloons, perhaps, or a playsuit. Maybe a coat of arms. By this point the mind was boggling freely while galloping off cackling into the middle distance.
On the plus side I now have a nice bargain L K Bennett suit. Less positively, it's clear that it was just not meant to be with the dress.
Jane and I thoroughly enjoyed this new development on the phone today, concluding with irrefutable logic that clearly, clearly there was some sort of issue lingering between what was listed on the web site and what was stored in the warehouse, all cunningly bearing the same product code.
So I ordered a Hobbs dress instead.
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