Special Delivery

For anyone that thinks American deliveries are too consistent and convenient, I say this: Move to London.

Our first experience was when we ordered our bed from Ikea. When we scheduled the delivery, the guy at the counter said that the driver would call us an hour before arriving. Since the new place didn't have internet yet (and in fact still does not) rather than take a full day off, I planned to work from the short-term apartment and then hop a train to the new once once I got the call. When I did get the call however, it was from the delivery guy already at the new apartment. I looked at the receipt with the printed "We will call an hour before delivery" note to verify that I had not had an unreasonable expectation, and asked what was up. He claimed to have tried to reach me, but found the number out of service. As we were talking on that same number, this seemed unlikely to me. He asked if he could leave it ("it" being my queen-sized mattress and box springs) with a neighbor. I countered with "Can you deliver tomorrow and actually give me that call?" We settled on he'd have his manager call me and I headed in to work. By that evening I had heard from neither him nor the manager, and the number that I had been given for the delivery service had rang unanswered all day and had no voicemail set up. At seven that night I finally got through to the manager and arranged delivery. As this was two days before our short-term let ran out, it was a bit stressful to not have a bed in the new place.

Later, we ordered four items from a very odd store here called Argos. It's sort of like if Amazon had a storefront. You go in to what is effectively a small lobby, with some computer kiosks. You look up what you want from the kiosk, hand your slip of paper to the person at the register and pay for your items, then they are pulled from The Back and brought to the counter for you to take away. For larger items, you can also get delivery. Since we were getting a TV, a moderately-sized dehumidifier, a flat-packed wardrobe, and a dresser we went with delivery. We were given an eleven hour window (7 am to 6 pm) and an empty promise of a phone call an hour before.

On the appointed day were were delighted that they showed up in the early half of the day, but then a little surprised when only three items were brought in. The dresser, which we were arguably most excited about (it meant getting our last items out of suitcases) was missing. I called the nice folks at Argos and they let us know that that item is apparently sold out for delivery, but we could pick one up at our local store. The item. That I ordered for delivery. That they sent a confirmation email for. Was out of stock for delivery. We re-arranged to pick it up from our local store, and they have us a discount and gift card as an apology, but we are still pretty baffled that "just don't deliver an item with no warning or email" was even on their radar as an option.

We've had a few other fun run-ins with the service industry here (our apartment keys not actually including a key to our apartment; the electrician that we scheduled four times and had out twice, both times all-day) but while we can somewhat laugh about these later, it's making for a pretty down post. Ikea did later make up some goodwill with us -- when we went a different one (this on the same side of the city as our new place is) they not only had next-day delivery, but on a Sunday to boot. And they even brought all ten of our items and called an hour (and twenty minutes) ahead!