Every so often, something happens in real life that makes a good story. There is plot, there is conflict, there are characters. That happened to me last week. The characters were my daughter, her brother, and me. The conflict will be revealed if you read this post.
I’ve mentioned before that my daughter’s birthday is right around Mother’s Day. This year, given that I am in the middle of building a new house and selling an old house, I thought I’d done well to get several presents ordered for her, all to be shipped to her home. I tracked the packages, and I knew they were being delivered in a timely fashion.
Then, one evening last week, I got a text from my daughter. She’d sent it to me, my husband, and her brother, but my husband sensibly stayed out of the problem. (Actually, he was baking cookies to send to our daughter for her birthday. More on that later.)
Here is the exchange between my children and me:
Daughter: Mom’s birthday gift to me? Registering with the DNC?!
Brother: Say what? [It is well known in the family that I generally do not support candidates of the Democratic persuasion, and my children generally do.]
Daughter: Also, if someone ordered me a “conch republic 1982 key west” T-shirt, size men’s XXL from amazon, I’m very confused
Me [I’m a little slower at texting than my kids, so I was just responding to the first text about the DNC]: I would think not. But in honor of the occasion I will NOT donate to Trump. [I may not like most Democrats, but I’m not a Trump fan either.]
Daughter [forwarding this image]: 
Me: That Amazon gift is not from me
Brother: Okay now it sounds like a prank
Me [I restate my position]: Nope. Not me.
Daughter: Separate deliveries
Daughter: I got yours yesterday
Daughter: The T-shirt is today’s delivery, no receipt or message.
Daughter: I’ve never been to key west. And I don’t know what the conch republic 1982 is. [She sounds royally miffed, doesn’t she? I didn’t know anything about the Conch Republic either, but you can find an explanation here.]
Daughter [after forwarding a picture of the solicitation she received from the DNC, addressed to me at her address]: But I’ll give the Democrats your correct information for future mailings. [Yep, she’s miffed. At me.]
Me: Just don’t give them the new address. [I can live with the DNC sending junk mail for a couple of months, but I don’t want them following me to my new house.]
Brother [who has worked on political campaigns in the past]: Oh those mailings. I’d be really mad at the Dems about that but my friend got one just today from the RNC that called itself a “district census” and charged $15 to process his responses
Brother: They’re all awful and everyone who defends them is someone I tell campaigner friends not to hire
Daughter: Well, it’s very clear any money would be a contribution, not a processing fee, if that counts for anything.
Me [I’m ignoring the political stuff, other than hoping to minimize my DNC junk mail, but I’m concerned about the package I sent her. I’d been out to check my Amazon order history, and then I texted]: You should have received three smallish items from me from Amazon. Amazon says they’ve all been delivered.
Me: One was a t-shirt, but nothing about the Conch Republic
Daughter: Well, I have received two non-T-shirt items … and the T-shirt.
Daughter: The other two were in amazons standard gift packaging with gift receipts. This was not.
Me: Yep. More coming, but not from Amazon. At least not from me.
Daughter: But the T-shirt was from Amazon?
Me [It finally dawns on me—Amazon made a mistake]: Wait. So you don’t have a t-shirt from me yet? Because Amazon says one was delivered, but this was not what I ordered. The one I ordered had to do with crew. [Daughter is a rower.] And it was a women’s small.
Daughter: The only T-shirt I have is the conch republic poncho
Brother: Well I just ordered a GPS watch and amazon told me I was ordering the 42mm but I got the 46mm so I’m not super sold on their data matching these days
Me: The T-shirt I ordered for you was allegedly delivered into your mailbox on Monday.
Daughter: I hadn’t checked my mail for a few days, and this was in my mailbox.
Me [wondering, who doesn’t check their mailbox for days on end??? Didn’t I raise her better?]: I just sent you an email with a screenshot of the three items I sent you. Let me know what you did not get.
And our texting stopped and shifted to email.
Daughter [via email, after viewing the screenshot I sent her]: I think Amazon gave me the wrong T-shirt. It’s ok on my end, but if you want to fight on principle and get your money back… The XXL conch republic shirt did not come with any receipt.
Me: I have some kind of a return receipt with my order. I will figure out tomorrow how to send that to you, so you can return the T-shirt. I have already posted a nasty review on Amazon telling everyone in the world that I ordered a crew t-shirt and got a Conch Republic t-shirt. In any event, happy birthday, Love, Mom
Except Amazon did not post my review, so I’m writing this post as a complaint instead.
The next morning, I sent her the link to the gift receipt so she can return the t-shirt. And I sent her a list of everything her dad and I gave her for her birthday. I think the t-shirt was the only fail. But it was epic.
One of the items I mentioned in the list of gifts was the box of cookies my husband had mailed to her, which we knew would be delivered on Friday. Friday night she called us to thank us for everything. During the conversation she commented, “Dad, I can’t believe you paid $63.00 to have the cookies overnighted to me.”
“Sixty-three dollars!” I exclaimed. “I didn’t know you’d done that.”
Yes, I have a husband who ships cookies overnight to make a birthday deadline. Which in my mind is crazy. After all, I had all my gifts shipped on time—all it takes is planning ahead. More conflict. More characters.
The plot to this story has not yet been resolved completely, because the t-shirt has not been returned. I wonder if Amazon will accept a men’s XXL shirt promoting the Key West Conch Republic 1982 with a gift receipt for a women’s crew t-shirt, size S. I may have to fight on principle to get my money back.
When have you had a gift you gave go wrong?
Oh my. I’m amazed that with the volume of things we purchase through Amazon, that we haven’t had more than the 2 mistakes we’ve experienced, all in the past year. The funniest was: my husband ordered a roll of foam material to use in protecting sharp-cornered furniture items from our new grandson. In its place, he received a large “decorative” glass pumpkin, but received a notification that his roll of foam had been delivered…we begged to differ; returned the pumpkin at no charge and eventually received the foam.
Irene, given your experience, I guess Amazon’s substitution of a men’s t-shirt for a women’s is not so “epic”! Thanks for making me chuckle.
Theresa
I once overnighted my daughter cinnamon rolls when she was in the hospital in NYC to the tune of $45.00. She had asked for some home-cooked comfort after a very risky spinal cord operation. A couple of days later, I was given a ticket to fly to New York. When I arrived I asked about the rolls. She hadn’t received them. Finally, I found them behind the front desk in the lobby. No one had delivered them to her, five days later. So much for overnight delivery!
So my husband isn’t the only parent who overnights food? Sorry your daughter missed out on her fresh cinnamon rolls. I know how wonderful they are.