5534/18454
I got a threatening letter from Fedex today telling me to pay them the money they owed me or they’d basically be sending the bailiffs round.
Before Christmas I bought myself a present from America. I don't want to say what it was, but let's just say it was a specialist electronic item that wasn't yet available here. Um, it was a stand for my iPhone - yes that's right.
Experience told me that this would come with a hefty extra payment after delivery as tax and import duty was taken into account. I’ve been here before. It often puts me off. I thought I’d take the hit this time. I regret it. The thing I bought was not really worth the money I paid for it, let alone a 30% stipend on top.
Now I don’t understand why Fedex doesn’t just asked for the money on delivery. That would surely be the easiest. The delivery man has a contactless payment machine, you pay your stupid tax (the tax is stupid and so are you) and they give you the thing - done and dusted. Maybe they figure that people won’t pay and that once they’ve accepted the goods they have some kind of legal right to harass them for it. But if people didn’t pay, they would end up with the thing which is at least worth twice what they are asking from the stupid customer.
Anyway, I got my expected bill and sent them a cheque. Because I couldn’t be arsed to go through the rigmarole of ringing them. I don’t send many cheques any more because it’s not 1896, so I was able to see that the cheque had been cashed. I got a letter from Fedex after Christmas, but assumed that or letters had crossed in the Christmas post. But then today, more than a full month after Fedex Europe had cashed my cheque and probably spent all my money on staples or toilet paper, they sent me another. Threatening me for non-payment.
Believe me, I would have loved not to have paid them. But I had paid them and it’s really disconcerting to receive a threatening letter when you’ve done nothing to be threatened about. What a fucking useless accounts system they must have. I emailed them, showing them the payment from my account and telling them that I would let them have this email for free, but if they entered into any further correspondence on this issue I would be invoicing them £50 per email for my wasted time. So I am obviously really hoping they string this out.
I knew what it was like to irk a postman, but didn’t know how it felt to be irked by a postman. Oh hold on, what about that whole debacle regarding my daughter’s play table and Yodel. Yeah that was worse. Though at least they never asked me for money when they fucked up.
Is there an efficient postal service in this country?
The annoying thing is that the company sending the product chose Fedex and I never use them myself and so there's little you can do to boycott them. But I look forward to the visit from the baliff and trying to show him the proof that the payment has been made. Shit, I'll get a blog out of it.
The RHLSTP line up continues to confound and amaze. On March 5th I will be welcoming Katherine Ryan and Peter Baynham and I can’t even think of a better line-up than that. Apologies to the Dripsters who were told a different date, but Katherine changed her mind about which one she wanted to do. The theatre will happily exchange your tickets for the right day (as long as you get in there quick). But I will try to get someone equally exciting for February 19th (as if Trev and Simon wasn’t enough).
Buy tickets to all the podcasts (and believe me there are still greater names to come -this has to be the most impressive series to date already)
HERE.
