Company hijacked 24 hours of my life T
A SAUDI prince took his family away for a week to the seaside.
Which seems a modest and delightful idea. Except that it cost Al-aleed BinTalal bin Abdulaziz al-Saud £558,000. He flew into the Turkish resort of Bodrum on his private jumbo jet with 300 pieces of luggage,30 bicycles and 30 bodyguards, and rented a hotel and a nearby villa.
Still, who could begrudge him a sunshine break no matter the price?
Back in the 1980s, with a heavy mortgage and no money in the bank, my wife Maria sold her engagement ring so we could take our two young daughters, Siobhan and Sian, to Abersoch for a week.
We went in our secondhand Ford Cortina with two lilos in the back so the kids could sleep on the journey, rented a farm cottage and had a brilliant time with picnics on the beach and lashings of ginger beer. Holidays at that time were few and the memories are golden still.
And I guarantee we had a better time than the prince. HERE is nothing more soul destroying than waiting in all day for a delivery that doesn’t arrive.
This is 24 hours out of your life that has been hijacked by the failure of an online company to keep to its promised schedule. This happened to me this month: Not once but twice on the same delivery.
I spend a lot of time in my home office and decided I deserved a new super-dooper adjustable highbacked well-cushioned swivel computer chair.
As always, when I buy online, I researched the options before making my choice. The cost was just under £100.
The chair would be despatched from Germany and delivery was promised in five days.
Some companies offer time slots for delivery so you don’t have to sit at your front window in hopeful anticipation for 12 hours.
This was just a date but, with luck, it might arrive in the morning. But it didn’t arrive: morning, afternoon or evening.
There had been no news since it left a staging post in Belgium. An apology arrived with a new date, three days hence. Was it still lost in Belgium?
On the second designated date, the tracking link showed it had made landfall in the UK. As the day wore on, I kept walking to the window to chew the curtains and look down the road.
By early evening the tracking link showed it had now arrived at a depot in Leicester. What was it doing in Leicester?
Even if a driver put his foot down on the M1 it had no chance of arriving I was beginning to appreciate my old chair which, to be fair, had never let me down or been lost in Belgium. tonight. I went to the pub.
Next day, another apology and the news that it was out for delivery from Sheffield depot. By heck, this chair was getting about a bit.
My anger at being messed about by a logistics department that needed sacking had now turned to apathy. I was beginning to appreciate my old chair which, to be fair, had never let me down or been lost in Belgium. Mid-morning, a white van arrived and a friendly young woman delivered the boxed item. I smiled and thanked her. After all, it was not her fault. Happily, the new chair is exactly as super-dooper and comfortable as I wanted, and I have retained my old one in my office, like a faithful retainer. But I sometimes despair at the lack of efficiency and organisation in the growing industry that is online shopping. More than £133 billion was spent this way in the UK last year. I use it a lot because of the choice and convenience, but companies need to improve logistics before customers decide not to go to Argos or IKEA and pick an item up themselves. At my age, I haven’t got that many days left to waste staying at home waiting for a delivery.