Once Ordered You Have To Pick Up Via Floo Powder

My brother’s birthday is coming up and he wants a certain big-ticket item concerning a certain boy wizard. It’s an exclusive product found only at a certain store.

I’m determined to get it for him, so I sign up for email alerts that will let me know when it’s in stock. When the alert comes in, I snag it to buy online and pick up in the store and mentally congratulate myself.

Suddenly, I get three emails in rapid succession: “Your item has been delayed,” followed by, “Your item is ready for pickup,” and then, two minutes later, “Your order has been canceled.”

I decide to swing by the store and see what’s going on. I find the pickup counter and tell the employee my tale. He responds with, “Oh, your order got canceled because you didn’t pick it up in time.”

Oh, no, you didn’t.

I ask for a manager and tell her the same tale. I also show her the time stamps on the emails that prove there was a two-minute difference between “Ready for pickup” and “Canceled,” and they know from the order that my name is not Barry Allen, thank you very much.

Her response is, “Well, sometimes we get a lot of items in the shipment and don’t feel like looking for all the pickup orders, so we cancel them sometimes. Sorry about that.”

Oh, no, you didn’t.

I probably could kick up a fuss, but I don’t want to make a scene. And clearly, if they don’t “feel like” doing their jobs, it’s not going to help.

Instead, I resolve myself to spending the weekend online and hoping some scalper has it on Amazon or eBay.

However, when I get home, there’s an email asking how my “buy-online-pick-up-in-store” experience was.

Oh, no, you didn’t.

I proceed to detail everything to that little comment box and send it off to cyberspace. I’m surprised my keyboard doesn’t catch fire. The next day, I receive a very apologetic email about my experience, offering a frantic dance of appeasement and free stuff.

They offer to ship the product to my house, free of charge, so it doesn’t have to get lost by the incompetent store employees.

Oh, and my brother loved it, too.