July 22nd, 2022Kyle’s Rant

I DON’T seem to have much luck with online ordering.
There was the plane that mesmerised me on Instagram with a wingspan of 1.8 metres and promises of going from amphibious to airborne in seconds with some new tech jet engine. However, when it arrived it was simply a 10cm tin toy with flashing lights and traction wheels. A quick check on the company who sold it and its ratings were abysmal. And, like my $US50, it had pretty much disappeared.
My postal-ordering dysfunctionality started as a child of eight. I guess I was at a loose end, my parents had split and I shared a small room with my two sisters in a tiny two-bedroom flat in Whangarei, New Zealand. I had found an advert in a cartoon magazine which promised to deliver plans on how to build a submarine in the backyard so I upped the ante to $2, popped it into the mail and waited with bated breath for my plans to materialise. Nothing arrived.
But I did not give up. In another magazine I tore out an advert for sea monkeys which showed mum and dad sea monkeys and lots of children sea monkey creatures, all floating around with big smiles having great lives. I hadn’t quite come to terms with how big these creatures would be or how they would be delivered or even in which part of our tiny little flat they would reside. There were other questions like did they live in water permanently or just require a bath a day, as we had one of those. We also had a creek that ran out the back of the flats where all the divorcees’ kids would play but this raised a whole other set of questions. I could settle the sea monkeys in the creek but amongst the wildlife down there was a huge legendary eel we called Jaws. The rumour was it could gobble down whole ducklings from the surface although none of us kids had actually seen this happen. Once again I sent my hard-earned, actually hard-found or probably hard-stolen, pocket money away with no result.
Fast forward slightly south of half a century (that’s scary) and I tried to order some online booze for our stay in the northern beaches of Cairns a few weeks ago. I was simply trying to stay out of the busy Dan Murphy’s store and tried to organise a click and collect from Smithfield – about nine kilometres from our BnB. After half an hour of setting up an account I was in. We were going to be there for a few weeks so my goal was to order two boxes of quaffable wine and one box of nice sippable wine.
The order went through and multiple texts and emails came through saying my order was on its way. On the way? It turned out I had put an order in for delivery which was dispatched from Burleigh on the Gold Coast, some 1800 kilometres away and was to be delivered in 10 working days. I then had a riveting conversation with a “bot” on the computer, was issued a complaint number and told, by the bot texting, they were going to stop the process and refund my money.
About a week later I got a card in the letterbox to say the booze was at the local post office waiting for collection. There, after queuing in a state where people don’t know about social distancing or covering their mouths if they cough, I found just two, extremely well-packed, bottles of the quaffable and the ordered box of the sippable.
With no idea about my refund or where my extra booze has gone, I sit here dry and frustrated chatting to my bot friend.
It is nice to be able to shop local again, rant over…