Never Work With Animals, Children or Couriers

What a day!! My stress levels went through the roof at one point mid-afternoon. Here's why:

Over the last couple of weeks hubby and I have been engaged in an marathon eBay sell-a-thon, or so it seems; everything in this house that isn't nailed down is being sold. Well, it's not quite that drastic since the house still seems almost as cluttered as when we started, but you get the idea. Last month I listed so many things on eBay that I actually reached (for the first time ever, and I've been selling on eBay since about 2006) the per calendar month limit of 100 'free-to-list' items.

You can imagine the number of trips to the Post Office we've made recently and, forget the medal-winning Olympians, I think Royal Mail should paint the village post box gold in our honour.

Anyway, back to the story. Last week I sold a large item of furniture (let's call it a Plan Chest, as seen to the left of the photo below)

to a lady in Dartford; she arranged for a courier to come and collect it. Said courier was supposed to come on Saturday but didn't turn up; they claimed to have phoned several times, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case since I was in ALL DAY WAITING for them. Instead they said they would come today. Are you with me so far?

Yesterday I sold another item of furniture on eBay (let's call it a Pine Table.) The winning bidder emailed me about collection and I said that either today or tomorrow would be best since hubby would be around to help with the lifting and shifting, if necessary. Then I didn't hear any more from the buyer.

Fast forward to this morning when I received a phone call from a courier to say they would be with me in about an hour; the hour passed, the courier arrived and hubby helped shift the Plan Chest out to the waiting van. I voiced my annoyance to hubby that I had specifically told the courier company it was a large piece of furniture and it would take two people to lift; if hubby hadn't been there I don't think I would have been able to help. Still, that was by-the-by, the Plan Chest was gone and there was a lovely space in our kitchen (all ready to be filled with the new island - but that's another story), just like there used to be, as per this photo:

Fast forward a couple more hours and I received a phone call from the man who had bought the Pine Table. Can you guess where this is going? He said that his man + van had returned with the piece of furniture and, while it was a very nice piece of furniture, it didn't appear to be a Pine Table. SAY WHA???!?!?!?!?!!! Yep, that's right, the courier who had arrived was not the courier who was supposed to collect the Plan Chest, it was the courier sent by the man who had bought the Pine Table; except he hadn't told me he was sending a courier and the courier clearly had no idea what he was collecting, and we had no idea that he wasn't the courier we were expecting. A Comedy of Errors for sure.

The courier was no longer with the man who was expecting a Pine Table, and therefore he wouldn't be able to bring the Plan Chest back at that precise moment.

And then about 30 minutes later the couriers who were coming to collect the Plan Chest turned up. And there was no Plan Chest for them to collect. They could have had a Pine Table, but that wasn't what they'd come for.

More phone calls, discussions about Plan Chest couriers possibly meeting Pine Table courier somewhere on the M5, a lot of frustration and a heartburn tablet for me, and we had to concede that things were not going to get sorted this afternoon. The Plan Chest is hopefully being returned tomorrow; the Pine Table will hopefully be collected tomorrow and head to its rightful home; the Plan Chest will then be collected on Saturday when the couriers are next in the area. And then I can heave a big old sigh of relief. And wait for the negative feedback to come flooding in on eBay.