The sad story of a pair of trainers and the incompetency of certain human beings

Once upon the time…

…The story I am going to tell you is a true story. It is almost unbelievable how could a pair of shoes be so desired and then so difficult to get rid of...

And the story begins...


Filipa and Pedro were talking about Pedro buying some trainers since his "collection" was getting old. Suddenly they thought there were those trainers with rollers, called Heelys, very appreciated amongst the kids and all generations I think, with an exception for the very old ones, I hope, but everyone knows what I am talking about, trainers with rollers, really nice to slide on a mall's floor or here in my department they would just work perfectly!

Me and Pedro we got quite excited about getting some shoes like that, for both, but since they are expensive I decided to offer Pedro a pair as a present for him being so nice; and because I didn’t get him many Xmas presents ;)

So I told Pedro I was gonna buy the shoes, we did some internet checking for him to decide which ones look better, we went for some black ones (very expected, Pedro wears in darkish colours usually)..
So I knew what to do.

Next day I came to work and went to the Amazon’s web site to buy the shoes, they had them in a few sizes and I got the size 8 (Pedro's size), paid and ordered. And it is here where the shoes' story begins.... the funny part!

Ok, as usual, Amazon works quite well, so in 2 or 3 days the shoes arrived, free of charged, very nice though. I decided to get them from Amazon because any shop I know so far here wouldn't have adult Heelys therefore I could only get them from Amazon or eventually from the Heelys web site. Moreover, I did order some stuff from Amazon before, like Pedro did and we have good impression from them besides Pedro had to return things before and it worked out fine for him. Thus, I thought Amazon would be, and I still think it is, the most reliable source for these sort of things (read unusual things).
Resuming.. The shoes arrived and Pedro tried them up, but unfortunately they didn’t fit him. Apparently the size 8 on those shoes is shorter than usual, so they were too small. Ok, decision was immediately made, the shoes had to be returned..

I haven’t returned any item before, so I didn’t know how it would be, I had to go to Amazon's web site and read the returning policies, and that was what I did the next morning when I got to work..

Amazon works with DHL for retuning purposes, I did work with DHL before too and everything was fine so I thought that was good to have DHL to do that. However, it happened that DHL works differently for different costumers..
So, as an Amazon costumer I couldn’t ring them to arrange the date for collection, I had to do it online by filling out a form and giving them an address and a date. Because I work in a quite complicated building (it is a hospital) I thought that would be better to ask them to go to my home. Pedro told me once, they would come in the morning almost for sure so I thought that wouldn’t be a problem to stay at home during the morning and wait.

On the arranged date, I stayed at home waiting for them.. the day passed and nobody showed up so far. The DHL people didn’t come, I rang them, 2 or 3 times during the day but I have been told that there is no costumer service for Amazon returning services and I just had to wait and wait and wait. The last time I rang them up, that was after 5pm, so after the time they were expected to come to me, and just by that time, never before, someone told me that the DHL driver had come by 11am!! I can promise you that no one came and knocked the door at all!! From their side no one said I was wrong, what makes me think that it happens that sometimes they don’t come but say they do, and in the end I just had to arrange another date... Of course I got very pissed off with both Amazon and DHL they made me stay at home the whole day, even doing some work but still very unpleasant to be waiting for nothing..

At this stage I already knew this was gonna be a complicated story..

And the shoes were still sitting there, waiting for some attention.. something to happen...

No chance to stay another day at home waiting, I thought, so I had to make them come to my working place. I had people collecting items from my lab before, but that’s true they rang me before asking for instructions how to get here. I wrote an email to DHL asking them to pick up the trainers from my work and additionally I left them some clues how to get here and not to get lost. I came to work with the trainers, asked everyone in the lab to be attentive on someone from DHL looking for me and told them the story too... (embarrassing)

Another day passed and no one came again... This time I wasn’t so pissed off since I didnt even realize the time passing as usually when I am working but still, when the day was done and I realized the trainers were still there, sitting in one of my lab’s chairs, waiting for me to take them home again, or to do something about them, that made me cry, grrrrrrrrrrr!! that’s irritating, bloody hell!

Ok, I went home took the trainers back again, understood that no one would ever come to fetch them and I would have to look for an alternative way of getting rid of them. Pedro suggested calling Amazon on their costumer call centre asking for help.

That was then the most logic thing to do.. Next day, and notice that since the trainers arrived has now been more than 2 weeks, trying to arrange dates for collection and bla bla bla, and the trainers were still there..

Ok, so I rang Amazon on the next morning, fortunately their call centre works pretty well didn’t get on hold for a long waiting time, and the person who I talked to seemed very useful. I told them my story and the problems with getting DHL to collect the trainers and they said that would be ok to go to the post office and send them back to them just by telling the post office the story because according to that person I was talking to, the Amazon and the post office had an agreement and the post office knew what to do.

Following these hopeful instructions on the next morning before going to work I went to the post office which is fortunately just on the way from my home to the bus stop. I popped in the post office and talked to the people there. They told me that they couldn’t return the item like that, because I had the labels for DHL, that the Amazon call centre supporter said would be ok, but it turned up that the post office cannot take Amazon items with those labels and require a special one done for them...

Ok again (grrrrrrrr) I rang Amazon again, actually from the post office to disclose the truth about that and indeed the post office woman was right and this time the Amazon person said I couldn’t return it like that.. but well I then asked to be sent another proper label (that should have been sent before of course), and the women on the phone (from Amazon) said she would do so.. So I took the trainers back again, home..

Once I got to work I went to see my email expecting a new label but NOOOO... the labels I had got were AGAIN the DHL ones.... OH NOOOO, such a pain coming all over, no one deserves that, like could everyone be so incompetent???? like DHL people incompetent. Amazon people incompetent.. bloody hell, I just wanted to return the bloody trainers and another week was going to pass... Ok...

Breath in, breath out (just as like a friend of mine uses to say :) and call them again.. Explain my ridiculous story once again by the fourth??? time and this time a guy told me to take the bloody packet to the post office, pay myself to post it to Amazon and then ring Amazon to tell them the postage expenses that they would pay me that and he also told me not to use any labels and to send it back to another address different than what I had before.

Ok, it seemed promising then, since I was going to pay there was no reason why the posit office would refuse to take the item, and I saw the light in the end of the tunnel :))) finally I would get rid of the trainers and most important get my money back! That I could then use to buy another pair of trainers to Pedro and give him a present he could wear!

Ok, next morning, this was Friday, so maybe 4 weeks since I had got the shoes and I consequently started trying to get rid of them, I went to the post office, and sent the trainers to Amazon, paid something like 6pounds but I was happy to pay that and didnt even think about getting the money back from Amazon.. I was happy just by solving the whole story !!

And then was Friday and I got to work and the story could just end here, but no!!

On Saturday morning… me and Pedro had slept at my place, since we still haven’t moved out :( we end up staying at mine or his and that night we slept at mine. I woke up earlier than usual for a Saturday morning but it just happened that because we had spent the week looking for our new place I didn’t manage to get much work done so I decided to go work just like in a normal day, so I got to the lab by 10am.

At about 11.30am Pedro rang me (I left him asleep in my room, that he didn’t have to wake up so early), and he rings me with very surprising voice tone and his first saying was "The trainers are just outside your room"!!!!

WOW I was wondering, "which trainers???", I asked, and he said that the box containing THE TRAINERS... those trainers, yes the ones I had just paid 6 pounds to send back to Amazon, the ones that I had just got rid off, and the story had just been finished had just started over again!! Can you believe this.. it was like a curse, apparently I couldn’t get rid of those trainers!!!!
That would be just perfect if they would had fit Pedro at the first place, but instead they took me and even Pedro through a long journey of how to get rid of a pair of shoes and get your money back!!

Ok I couldn’t really believe the shoes were there, I laughed for a while but since I was at work I couldn’t do anything but wait until Monday to go back to the post office and ask why did they send me the trainers, basically why did they send the post to the sender???? How stupid is that??? (there was my address as the sender with a "FROM" before to mention that I was the sender not the destiny!!!, how could someone be so dumb??? like I go to the Beeston post office 1 yard next to my home to pay 6pounds to post something to myself???? it is incredible again the incompetence that I was talking about, so to add another incompetent person to those already officially incompetents from Amazon and specially from DHL!!!)

It was with some calm and relax that I popped in the post office on Monday morning to slightly complain about the mistake done by them. The cashier was a bit ashamed, apologized and took the pack without even asking for the receipt.

A few days later I got an email from Amazon acknowledging the trainers and promising the refunding soon.
In the meantime, I got the money in my account. I bought Pedro an ordinary pair of trainers, Adidas in sale, but of course that was not what I wanted to buy..
Before that I still bought another pair of trainers that were this time, too big for him, so then we went to the shop (but this time it was in a shop ... uffff), and he exchanged them.

I am still looking forward to buying some nice looking trainers eventually with some funny feature like wheels but certainly I am not getting anything like that from Amazon, not anything that it is likely that I am going to return.

And that is a very big story, but it is a story not a little post, is the story of a sad pair of Heelys trainers that were looking for a home but I could’t shelter them, and they insisted to stay and they became my nightmare, they made people arguing, but they made people know each other better, they reinforce the idea about how the world is full of incompetent workers and how that can affect single people's life’s and ultimately the world's economy, in a world wide perspective!