Shop Around

My hubby always jokes that I just might have lied to him about my maiden name to hide my true identity. I didn’t, of course, but he really thinks that I come from a long line of people whose last name is (or should be) Murphy.

Murphy, as in Murphy’s Law.

I don’t know why strange and if-they-can-go-wrong-they-will-things keep happening to me, but they do. This week, I’ve been stuck with the Murphy bug when shopping online. I think I am going to have to stick to physical retail stores.

Last weekend, during my blogathon, one of the raffle gifts I offered was a $10 iTunes gift certificate. I went online, ordered it, paid and had it e-mailed directly to the winner. Easy enough, right? No, of course not. It never arrived.

I asked iTunes to resend it, which they say they did, but it still wasn’t there, so I contacted Customer Service. I was asked to forward the original purchase receipt along with my request for assistance in an e-mail. That is exactly what I did.

Imagine my surprise when I get an e-mail back saying that they couldn’t locate my order number on the receipt. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr. It was right there! At the top of the receipt in big blue, capital letters! Feeling JessiCat starting to emerge, I called the toll free number and two customer service reps later, I finally got them to email me an activation code for $10 in tunes. Unbelievable.

Murphy Instance #2 is probably my fault...my TMJ problems have been acting up again and I am always seeking ways to relieve the annoying pain. Our local NBC affiliate recently aired a health segment on the news about this new topical cream that is supposed to basically nothing short of an almost miracle in TMJ relief. Dentists were praising this product and they had several TMJ patients who participated in this study calling it a “lifesaver”. This wasn’t an infomercial, it was on the news! I grabbed my credit card, went to the website and had this $30 miracle cream rush delivered to me and my aching jaw joints.

It arrived three days later and I eagerly tore open the box, anxious to try the miracle cream. I opened the little jar and immediately was taken aback by a very familiar smell. Ben-Gay. I was sent Ben-Gay in a fancy little jar. Even worse, the miracle cream is green and takes a huge amount of rubbing so that it doesn’t appear you are wearing some mud-like spa face mask out in public. Actually, I think the intense rubbing it in process helps more than the cream! Now how am I supposed to make rock chick appearances with green jaws and smelling like Ben-Gay? I can't! Somehow, I don’t think this is quite the miracle I’ve been hoping for.

And...(yes, there’s one more!) on Monday, I went on an unsuccessful neighborhood search for guitar picks. Flirting made me one single guitar pick richer, but I knew that by the end of the day, that guitar pick would be missing, disappearing into a black hole never to be seen again. I definitely needed more than one guitar pick.

So, I ordered some online on Monday from a totally reputable site that promised “same day order processing”. I ordered, even paying a little extra for faster shipping and the delivery date was to be...well, yesterday.

Did I get the guitar picks? Of course not!

Instead, I got an e-mail saying that they are having packing problems, but my items are in stock and they are working as fast as “humanly possible” to complete my order. They are asking for my patience and they think they should be able to complete this feat in about 10 working days. They must be kidding. TEN DAYS is the fastest humanly possible time to put 2 dozen guitar picks in a box and stick a shipping label on it?

Thank goodness I have friends like Bon Jovi who gave me some guitar picks for sitting on wood chips the other day, because frankly, I just don’t know what I would do. Now if I could just get him to massage my jaws and sing to me, I wouldn’t need miracle creams or iTunes :)