Pants macabre.

I've lost four pairs of jeans because of this move already, and if I lose anymore I will be walking around like the guy in the barrel. 

Yeah, him
again

It has become ridiculous. 

The day we left the house, after spending a full day of work getting stuff together and working with the movers to load of the truck, I had intended to take a fast shower and then head out the door, leaving New York behind. This did not happen. The day was so arduous that my wife determined that we would never make it to our new home alive if we set out then, so we just left as is and went to a local hotel (since we were required to be out of the house that night). Of course, I left my favorite pair of jeans and a shirt hanging in the bathroom, where I had intended to change into them after my shower. I did not realize this. When I showered in the hotel, I figured I had just packed them somewhere and couldn't find them. Only a day and hundreds of miles later did I realize what I'd done. 

Jeans total: -1

On arrival in our new state, we checked into another hotel. Our things were roaming the land, as I noted in my last blog entry. I was pretty sure my second-favorite pair of jeans was in one of the boxes, but as of today, a couple of weeks later, they have yet to show. 

Jeans total: -2

So I ordered a couple of pairs from JCPennney. Mock if you well, but their stuff has always fit me well. I got the notice yesterday that my package of jeans had been delivered . . . to my old address. I did not give Penney's the new address. Because I'm stunad. I have no means of contacting the owners of our new place. And I wouldn't want to bug them if I did. 

Jeans total: -4

I did buy one pair at Kohl's while we were in the hotel, because I was not going to wear shorts or sweatpants to a lawyer's office for the closing. 

Jeans total: -3

I've heard of guys losing their shirts, but this . . . !

In sum, I'm down three pairs on the enterprise, and I'm afraid to try to buy any more clothes. I seem to be losing pants on the deal each time. Love 'em or hate 'em, you just gotta have pants. It's impossible to find a good barrel these days.

Bestill-er.

I am still a child when it comes to impulse purchases, and I sometimes suffer consequences. I'm better at avoiding sugar than I used to be, so cash register candy no longer makes it into my cart. But that's not the only issue. 

Sometimes an impulse buy does lead to a fun discovery. While I was not very taken by the Vlasic Pickle Balls, for example, a more vinegar-minded member of the household found them a tasty treat. So I got a point on the scorecard for that one. 

Last week at the supermarket I saw a bin of soda cans, featuring a brand of which I had not heard, a brand with outstanding, if not bumptious, promises to the consumer. 

Real old-fashioned soda with only 30 calories? The world's most "refreshing-est" soda? Classic flavors like root beer? And from Brooklyn, the land of my infancy? Hey, why not? There was a bin full of these cans, which usually means a discounted trial product -- or a clearance. Since I'd never heard of Stiller's before, I figured it was a discounted trial. 

Well, I was wrong on several counts. 

Let's start with the "refreshing-est" claim, which I grant you is an individual judgment and difficult to quantify. I didn't find it all that refreshing. It isn't sugary, since it has just a little sugar (organic cane sugar, mind you), and sugar can be heavy, so that was good. It actually has vitamins, which is nice, but electrolytes would probably be better for refreshment in warm conditions. I'm willing to let that go. Refreshment is a personal experience, and others may disagree. 

At the checkout I discovered it cost almost $3 a can, which is less of a personal experience and more of a painful one. If I pay an inflated price for a beverage, I expect it to be served at a tropic location in a tasteful glass with a little umbrella by an esteemed mixologist. Not in a can from a supermarket bin. 

The biggest disappointment was the flavor. The root beer was perfectly average for any store-brand diet root beer. The Shirley cola, a blend of cola and Shirley Temple, was just an okay cherry cola. 

Upon reading the fine print I found out that Ben Stiller is the Stiller of Stiller's. I have no problem with that. I think he and I disagree on many things, but we're both from New York City, we both like nonalcoholic drinks, and I've enjoyed some of his movies. But this soda is pretty meh, and way overpriced for the market. 

I promise that personalities did not enter into my review; I drank the root beer before I knew who made it. If it were great, especially if it was such a treat as to be worth $3 a can, I would have said so. 

Looking online, I find Stiller's is mainly sold in Target. That makes me think that it's targeted to viewers of The View, moms with moolah who will drop dough on pricey products they believe have superior quality. I fit none of those categories. But even to them I would caution that this product is not worth the money, and that stevia is a lousy sweetener -- on that last note I will nail my colors to the mast. Yecch. Products that contain stevia always taste like they passed their expiration date some time ago.

So those are my opinions of Stiller's. Had it cost a buck a can I would have had the same review, but I would have been less peevish about it. 

Stay tuned for our next entry, when another celebrity product gets the once over. Whose is it? What is it? WHY is it? Did I buy it on impulse or under duress? Find out soon!  

Crushalogs IV: The Revenge.

As a continuing social project, I am examining the volume and weight of catalogs I receive in the mail as the Christmas shopping season gins up into high gear. This is the fourth time I have done this. It's not as scientific an examination as I would hope; I have done these on different dates in November, and I have not spaced the years out evenly. 

In a nutshell, or perhaps a mailbox, I have been curious as to whether online advertising is killing the mail catalog business, so I have been looking at whether the sheer weight of catalogs has been decreasing as time goes on. Are they still considered an effective way to reach potential customers? If so, the overall catalog weight should be increasing or staying about the same. If not, it should be dwindling like the number of non-"commemorative edition" publications on the supermarket checkout magazine racks. 

Here are the results from the three previous entries:

Crushalogs I: November 4, 2016 -- Several weeks earlier in November than this year, and I estimated more than 10 pounds to that time; the catalogs seemed to be thicker eight years ago, but I may have exaggerated the total weight. Bad science, me! 

Crushalogs II: November 8, 2019 -- I also did not make either a count or a weight of the catalogs in 2019. I do note that in 2019, as in 2016, there was a giant dump at the beginning of November. This year it seems to have been parsed out over the month. I wonder if that is because Thanksgiving is so late in 2024?

Crushalogs III: November 19, 2022 -- Two years ago I did weigh the catalogs, and got a total of two pounds. Well, I think I can beat that weight this year! 

So let me load the catalogs into a plastic shopping bag, and then use the old luggage scale... And: 

Almost four pounds! So it looks like catalog mailings are up this year, double by weight from '22. It seems like in a lot of areas, smart businesses are pulling back from the new technological approaches and going back to what works. Maybe catalogs really are the way to reach holiday shoppers. After all, TV viewership is down, landline phones are way down, but if you live somewhere, you have a mailbox. It's a lot easier to focus on a few quality selections in a catalog than deal with the firehose of dubious miscellanea from online stores (hello, Amazon). If a company doesn't just chuck a lot of cheap Chinese crap at its clients, its catalog will likely be of higher interest. 

MAI Fulfillment says one of the advantages of mail catalogs is that they offer measurable results for businesses, justifying the large expenses of design, printing, and mailing. It depends on what kind of customers are being targeted, I supposed. 

What will 2025 bring to the catalog business? Oh, who knows. I have no idea what's coming down the road. I'm grumpy enough now. Maybe next year I'll go full Grinch and steal all the catalogs from all the mailboxes in Whoville and use them to build a giant bonfire to scare off the Whos. Not likely, but who can say what the future holds?

The end of an era.

When I was a youth, recently out of college, my mom gave me some good advice. She said I ought to get a couple of "starter" credit cards to start building a credit history. 

Tell kids now that it was not typical for college students to have credit cards even a quarter century ago and watch the blank stares. 

Anyway, for my starter cards we went to the shopping centers, I applied for cards from those titans of retail, J.C. Penney and Sears. 

There were no fees for the store cards, and so I held on to them year after year, using them occasionally. I canceled the Sears card when, essentially, Sears got canceled. But I used the Penney's card at least a couple of times a year. You could get deals, and the clothes usually looked pretty good on me. "Pretty good" is the best I can hope for; the clothes can only make so much of the man after all. 

Periodically I would receive a new Penney's card, activate it, chop up the old one, and off we went. Year in, year out, literally for decades. I had that account before I met my wife. I had that account before I bought my first new car. I never lived more than 17 miles away from a J.C. Penney. It was always good to know that JCP was there for me. 

This past week I got a new Penney's card, as usual. This one looked a little different. Mastercard had gotten involved now. So I bothered to read all the paperwork that came with it. Hideous interest rates, minor fees for late payments, the usual stuff. And then I saw the thing that really irked me:

$1.99 fee for paper statements. 

Could that be right? I mean, they only sent me a statement when I had a balance, and when I had a balance I paid it. The vast majority of the mail I ever got from JCP was catalogs, coupons, and unsolicited advertising. My little mail statement was a tiny bit of postage for them. Were they really penalizing people who still want to write checks? People who grew up before 2000? People who, in other words, are the kind of folks who actually still like department stores? 

I called customer service, fighting through the computer phone tree every step of the way. When I got a live human being, whom I was determined not to take this out on, I asked politely: Are you really charging me two bucks to send me a bill? Yes indeedy. Well, please cancel my card immediately. 

She didn't even try to get me to stay. Just checked that there was no balance and closed the account on the spot. 

I don't know if old-fashioned department stores have a future in American retail. I do know that charging people to send them the bill is not a way to keep customers, though. I think we're going to see a lot more of this kind of thing ahead, because our retail companies, like most of our institutions, are run by dummies these days. 

Sorry, J.C. -- I was a steady customer for decades and you blew it. When you go the way of Sears, don't come crying to me. 

You load 16 bags…

Like all manly men, when I go shopping (and have buttered scones for tea) I come back with a lot of bags, and these bags must be brought into the house in one trip if humanly possible. That means that I might carry any number of bags weighing any amount. Because regardless of the bulk and weight, to make multiple trips is a sign of weakness. 

Well, my wife has leaped in to help me out! Or maybe she's just tired of crushed loaves and broken eggs. Because she got me the Click & Carry.  

What is this strange device? 

The Click & Carry is nothing more than a heavy plastic handle made for heaving bags around. The top twists open, the handles of the bags are inserted, and when it clicks shut the bags are, as it were, reduced to being a single bag as they are hefted by a single handle. Clever! 

You can hoist it by hand; you can sling it over your shoulder (it has a comfort gel strip where it meets your shoulder to keep it from digging in and keep it in place). 

A few of these and you can easily get a week's worth of groceries for a family of six on your person. You may not be able to move, but you can do it! 

There are, of course, a couple of caveats for the purchaser. 

1) It only works with strapped or handled bags -- no paper bags. I know some paper bags have handles, but I never trust them. It will work with cans of paint, as seen on the label.

2) The Click & Carry is thick and strong, but that means it itself adds to the weight. Probably less than a can of beans, though.

3) Because you have bags slung together and hanging on your person like humungous Christmas ornaments, your groceries might still get crushed. But your rep with the other dads will not. No guy wants the shame of being a mere "two-bagger."

4) The product was seen on Shark Tank, so it has a label to that effect. But also...

5) Once again we see tribalism in the Certified Women Owned label on the packaging. Nothing against women in business, but who cares? It tells you nothing except they may have gotten SBA loans and other preferences men couldn't get, and so the company could be propped up despite the product being crap because a 51% stake is owned by someone with two X chromosomes. I believe Jeremy Boreing of Jeremy's Razors should have Certified Man Owned label on his product packaging.

6) Caveman that I am, I'd say that it just figures that a woman would invent a product that helps one go shopping, but I maintain that this product is more helpful for men. Men have the upper-body strength to really put it to its maximum usefulness. 

So the bottom line -- Click & Carry is clever and it works. Get a few and bring in so many shopping bags from the car in one trip that you look like a monster from The Dark Crystal. The other men may actually applaud. 

Smart cart? Or dumb?

ShopRite, my favorite local supermarket, has gone beyond testing robots for pushing candy, as I noted with the adventures of Smiley in 2021. Nay, it has gone further, past even the inventory robot named Tally, discovered by me last October. Now we're entering the brave new world of the smart cart. 

Out: Smartcars. In: Smartcarts. 

The Caper Cart, a shopping cart supposedly driven by artificial intelligence, has been developed by Instacart and is being field-tested in ShopRite markets.

Here's how Instacart describes these new wonders:

Caper Carts are part of Instacart’s Connected Stores suite of technologies, built to help grocers bridge the online and in-store shopping experience. By using computer vision and AI, the cart can automatically identify items as they are placed in the basket, allowing customers to bag as they shop and checkout directly from the cart. Customer reception to Caper Carts has been strong with users offering a net promoter score of more than 70. In addition to the new ad capabilities, customers appreciate the ability to link their loyalty accounts to the carts, giving them access to personalized promotions and savings while shopping in-store. 

This doesn't sound like AI so much as old-fashioned computer coding -- the computer reading the bar code on what you put in the cart and spewing ads that are paid for. As I've said before, AI in the 2020s is like dot com in the 1990s, a frosting you have to put on every cake to sell it. Still, the idea of avoiding the checkout would make the shopping process faster and easier, so I can't argue with that advantage. Of course, the upselling of crap while you shop will also make it more irritating. The main advantage to the store is customizing ads based on what you put in the cart, which online retailers have been doing for decades. Imagine putting hemorrhoid cream in the wagon discreetly, and your cart starts bleating an ad for adult diapers.

Lucas Frau of NorthJersey.com took one for a test drive, and explains the supposed advantages:

Some fellow shoppers found the cart amusing, with one saying, "Do you got blinkers on that thing?"

Sure, the build of the cart feels a little heavier than your average metal rolling bin. And yes, it lights up like a Christmas tree when you put an item in the basket. Don’t be alarmed.

He explains that the cart registers whatever you get, even weighing produce, and keeps a running list of what's been put in it. If you put something back on the shelf, its removal from the cart is also noted. At the end, you just wheel the cart to the checkout area designated for smart carts and pay -- no need to unload and reload the cart. 

Loyalty card holders may like the carts the best, Frau says, but the sheer weight of the cart may make it less attractive to other shoppers.

The shopping may be easier if you are a Price Plus member, because you can see the deals and where items are found. The average shopper, however, may not feel that lugging the cart is worth it to save a few minutes at the self-checkout.

I am skeptical, especially since I've used too many carts with bad wheels. If stores can't keep the wheels turning, what are the odds that they can keep delicate electronics working? 

If I get a chance to try one, you'd better believe you'll be hearing about it. Until then, Shopinator II: Judgment Day will have to wait. 

December: The Catalog Reckoning.

Back on December 1, I posted about the catalogs I had already received that were Christmas-themed. By that date I had received 14 catalogs. I thought you'd like to see what the pile looks like now. 

There we have it, friends! Thirty-nine catalogs as of December 1. Weighs close to eight pounds -- about as much as a dozen Charlie Brown trees. 

The pile could have been higher, but I excluded some catalogs. For example, Lands' End sent us a Christmas gift catalog, but also a winter-wear catalog; since the latter was not holiday-themed, it did not count. To make the stack, the catalog had to be Christmassy, intended to sell gifts or decorations. 

Some, like Grandin Road and Shutterfly, sent only one; others sent more. Herrschners, Ross-Simons, Hammacher Schlemmer, and the Vermont Country Store sent multiples. No surprise on that, since we've made purchases from these merchants in the past. Maybe not in fifteen years, but it is the season of hope. 

To date, the number of purchases inspired by this stack of catalogs has been approximately 0. However, their arrival always serves to remind us that they are there and that they have nice stuff, so if that motivates one of us to check out the company site, it's a win for them.

Maybe I should scour these catalogs, since I do not know what to get for my wife. Any ideas? And don't say Fredcoin. She could wallpaper the living room with Fredcoin for all she cares. 

Shopping, then and now.

When I was a pitiful waif in the city, the little shops along the streets were already in dire straits. Even in the outer boroughs of New York City, the automobile was taking its toll on neighborhood stores. People would drive to Jersey, Long Island, Yonkers to go buy stuff. And when those boroughs got official shopping malls of their own, it was devastating. Local service stores like the barber shop and the TV repairman could hold on, but the dress shops, the record stores, the card shops? Their time was dwindling. 

Everyone knew what the future was going to be like -- the world would be based on a shopping-mall structure, the humans merely consuming drones, the cities dead or gone. 

Science fiction writer Somtow Suckaritkul wrote a series of stories called Mallworld that were later published in book form. Humanity was living in a planet-sized mall that was hurtling toward doom, but all we could do was live mall culture. Howard Chaykin wrote and drew an indie comic called American Flagg!, set in a future where the elites govern Earth from Mars and people live and work in fortified Plexmalls, and the titular hero is essentially a mall cop. Warren Zevon released a song in 1989 called "Down in the Mall" that poked fun at our obsession with mall culture. We were all doomed to be mallrats by 2020 at the latest. 

Well, a funny thing happened on the way to Mallmageddon. 

Everything supplants something, and what Internet shopping has done to our shopping malls makes us wistful for the good ol' days of mallmania. No one wants to admit it. We are willing to admit that the big cities’ shopping scenes in old movies, where people shop for Christmas in little emporia and big department stores, looks pretty cool. But the mall? 

Yeah, well -- it was social, at least. We got out of the house. We didn't freeze while going from store to store. There were plenty of places to look for stuff, so if you couldn't find anything you wanted to get Aunt Hildy, maybe it was time for you to reexamine your feelings about Aunt Hildy, because man, there was something for everyone. Maybe you really just don't want to get Hildy a present. Did you ever think of that?

Also, you could play in the arcade, get a bite to eat, check out new books or records, even take in a movie if your mall had a theater. So maybe the mall had something to say for it. 

The old department stores -- which had supplanted a lot of little stores -- did have one thing that the malls could not match -- awesome window displays at Christmas. 

Lord & Taylor window, 1980. Christmas scene set
in the landmark Daily News Building lobby. L&T's windows were 
always better than Macy's.

Lord & Taylor is defunct, and I don't feel so good myself. 

Oh, well -- the old guard passes etc. None of us wants to give up the convenience of shopping from home, least of all my wife. 

Going out on a present-buying excursion usually entailed some frustration, loss of patience, and possibly screaming kids. But it also could have something that's in real short supply these days -- good, clean fun. Where do we go to get fun back in our lives?

November 1: Merry Christmas!

Happy November! Here is the roundup of Christmas catalogs so far. 

I've held on to all of them since the start of October. It's not a lot -- fourteen assorted catalogs. Some of them can be forgiven for arriving before the first trick-or-treater showed up at the door. You see Herrschner's in the lower left; that's a crafters' catalog, and crafters have been receiving Christmas-themed mailings since April. Some of those handmade Christmas presents take a looooong time. You think Ralphie's aunt threw together his pink nightmare bunny suit overnight?

Also, we have a couple of Catholic catalogs, and they feature items that the faithful may want for Advent. Advent begins on December 3 this year -- actually later than usual -- and if you want an Advent wreath or Advent calendar, you'll want it soon after Thanksgiving. 

The others are just piling on, trying to get top-of-mind when the season starts in earnest. 

November 1 seems pretty early for Christmas, but you know what? All together these catalogs are smaller than the famous Sears Wish Book, which used to arrive right after Labor Day. So there's that.

Sanitized.

Three years ago I was driving my wife's car in Pennsylvania. I stopped to pick up some goods at Walmart. The Chinese Death Flu was riding high at the time. I realized that she had no hand sanitizer in the car, so I grabbed a bottle to keep in the vehicle. I happened to notice it on Friday when I was using her car again. 

Didn't that take me back. Especially the scent, which is strong but pleasant enough for a hand sanitizer. Lavender? I suppose. 

I remembered that trip to the Walmart, how one of the store's exits had been closed off -- which funneled all customers through the same doors and ensured us being closer together at one point at least, but whatever. Also the masks. The arrows in the aisles. The dots on the floor by the register for social distancing. The plastic sheeting everywhere. The special shopping hours. The nitrile gloves, the weird shortages. All of it. All, apparently, for nothing. 

I don't know about you, but I'm not doing it again. 

The news is panicky about a new variant. Screw that. I'm not discounting it entirely -- three friends of mine over the age of 65 just had it. For one it was his third time with COVID, and he's vaxed out the bazooty. But guess what? All of them survived, even the one with severe physical degenerative issues in a long-term care facility. 

The whole mask thing was a bust. That's not just coming from the right-wing press. We know this, and they still want to start all over with it again. Closing the schools was a literal disaster for the kids. Watch what the teachers' unions do next. One thing for sure, it means we won't be allowed to ditch any of the rules for remote voting, the ones that made it so easy to, er, fortify the 2020 election.

I played along last time because we didn't know better, and the ones who did just lied. Also, I am not the kind of guy who believes in taking stands that inconvenience innocent bystanders. Why demand to shop barefaced and force some put-upon store manager to have to deal with me? He has enough on his plate. But I'm not going through that again, not unless the plague is the real deal, wiping out healthy people in the thousands like the Spanish Flu or the Black Death. So the Wuhan labs better cook up something really hot for our next election year. 

Speaking of which, that bottle of hand sanitizer expired in April 2022, long after my patience with the federal government had. And can you guess where it was manufactured?

Communist China: The cause of -- and treatment for? -- all the world's ills. 

The tripods have landed.

Lately I've been talking about my wife's crazy product purchases in this space, and I'll give her credit for two things -- the stuff she's been getting is not expensive, and if it works as advertised it would be helpful. 

Well, my latest present from her is this set of tripods. 

If you use liquid hand soap, or a shampoo or the like that comes in a pump bottle, you may find the Flip-It! bottle emptying caps useful. I like to get everything I can out of the soap bottle, which in the past has meant trying to balance it on its cap or just water down the contents and try to get an adequate handwashing out of what's inside. 

Well, no more! The amazing tripod cap allows you to stand that bottle right up on its top, and gravity does the rest. 

I didn't think much of the Flip-It! at first, but I was surprised how little residue is left in the bottle after Isaac Newton has had a chance at it. When the soap is gone, one quick rinse and into the recycling bin, to likely go in the landfill with the rest of the garbage. Well, at least I tried. 

The kit comes with two tripods and six adapters, so any standard bottle should be accommodated. I've used a medium adapter (the dark gray ring above) and a small one for two different soap bottles. I imagine shampoo/conditioner bottles need the larger adapter. 

Though I've taken a flyer on all sorts of gadgets and gizmos, I probably wouldn't have bought these. Still, it's always fun to see if an idea works as described, and the Flip-It! does. Two caveats: Because it is designed to adapt to shampoo bottles, you will likely get more liquid hand soap dispensed than you want if you're not careful. Also, both times I used it, the adapter was difficult to get off the empty bottle -- probably dried soap gluing up the works. 

Still, as cheap but clever ideas with no working parts go, I give this two clean thumbs up. My review: Flip-It? Good!

Trapped in the Amazone.

My wife likes Prime Days. She stocks up her Amazon shopping cart with things that are not needed in the near future -- which, if we're getting them from Amazon, is everything -- and orders them during the sale. 

Maybe not anymore, though.

Most of the stuff she ordered arrived in a variety of packages, but one package failed to show up as expected. It was reported Lost In Transit. We know it never made it to our door, as we were home all day and we have a dog. So somewhere between northern New Jersey and here, it vanished. Poof!

Fine. So, my wife wants to get to customer service and find out what they plan to do, which for most companies would be to send a replacement. But no. She presented me with the transcript, which I present below. Note that personal and product names have been changed or removed to protect... well, me, most of all. This is my blog; she doesn't want to be tied to it. Can you blame her? (Her side of the chat in red.)

Hi, thanks for contacting Amazon. I'm Amazon's chat helper.

I'm here to answer your questions & get the right person to help you out.

As I send you messages, you can select a button to reply. Give it a try.

6:51 AM

Got it

6:51 AM

Messaging Assistant | Customer Service

OK

[VARIOUS PURCHASED ITEMS LISTED HERE]

Is this what you need help with?

6:51 AM

No, something else

6:52 AM

Messaging Assistant | Customer Service

So, what can I help you with?

6:52 AM

An item I ordered

6:52 AM

Messaging Assistant | Customer Service

Let's see. Could you select the item you're looking for from your recent orders below?

6:52 AM

[THING THAT DIDN'T ARRIVE]

6:52 AM

Messaging Assistant | Customer Service

Has it arrived yet?

6:52 AM

No, it hasn't

6:52 AM

Messaging Assistant | Customer Service

Sorry it hasn’t arrived. Give me a minute to check on this.

Looks like there’s more than one item in this shipment.

Ok, give me a moment to see what I can do.

I’ll get someone who can help with this.

6:53 AM

OK, thanks

6:53 AM

Messaging Assistant | Customer Service

Ok, you can chat with an associate now or request a call back.

You can also go to your Customer Service hub to fix most things or to search help pages. What do you prefer?

6:53 AM

Chat with an associate now

6:53 AM

Messaging Assistant | Customer Service

If you have details you think would help the associate, type them here.

An associate will join the chat.

6:53 AM

GUY has joined & will be ready to chat in just a minute.

GUY | Customer Service

Hey IZZY'S MOM, GUY here to help you.

6:54 AM

Hi GUY, I'd like to find out what's going on with an order that was never delivered. The tracking number is {NUMBER}. The site says the order is running late. It was supposed to be delivered on Thursday of last week; it was out for delivery.

6:55 AM

GUY | Customer Service

Sorry to hear that you have not received the package.

We didn't intend this to happen.

6:57 AM

Could you let me know what's going on with it? I don't want to cancel because it had a bunch of things that were at Prime Day prices.

6:57 AM

GUY | Customer Service

I see the package is lost in transit.

6:58 AM

Yes.

6:58 AM

GUY | Customer Service

Don't worry, I'll quickly escalate the issue to the shipping team.

6:59 AM

Last I could tell, it was out for delivery on Thursday from the TOWN, NJ facility. That's only about 15 minutes from my home. I really appreciate you escalating this.

6:59 AM

GUY | Customer Service

Issues like this are fixed once they have been reported.

I'm sure it will never happen again for your future orders.

7:00 AM

Thanks. That's a relief.

I appreciate your help with this.

7:00 AM

GUY | Customer Service

You're welcome.

Would you like to receive your refund as an Amazon Gift Card balance or to your original payment method?

7:01 AM

I really don't want a refund. I would like the items I purchased at the prices at which I purchased them. Can the order be refilled and sent to me?

7:02 AM

GUY | Customer Service

While we shipped your order, the inventory was provided to us by a seller and I'm not able to send you a replacement. [NOTE: According to my wife, there was no indication that any of the items ordered were coming from a third party; they seemed to be in Amazon's own inventory. But even so, why could the order not be placed again? No explanation given.]

7:03 AM

For NONE of the items? There were several things in that order.

7:04 AM

GUY | Customer Service

Yes.

7:04 AM

OK, refund it to the original payment method then, please.

Will I be sent an email from Amazon verifying all of this?

7:06 AM

GUY | Customer Service

Sure.

Refund issued successfully.

Is there anything else I can assist you with today?

7:08 AM

I would like a detailed response, please, stating Amazon will not be replacing items at the prices they advertised.

7:08 AM

GUY | Customer Service

Sure.

You'll receive an email.

My wife's request for Amazon to confirm via email that they have a policy of not replacing available items lost in transit at the price and terms at the time of purchase has not yet arrived. Go figure.

This reminds me of when Steve Jobs stepped away from Apple for a while and it started to go to hell. (Apple's doing that again now, but in a different way and for different reasons.) Maybe Jeff Bezos ought to go back to Amazon and see what's happening. Christmas is coming and they don't want to have widespread customer dissatisfaction.

But Jeff is busy with other concerns these days.  

"Ha ha, losers! Mine is the biggest!"
(Picture from New York Post)

It's tough, having your own personal aircraft carrier.