07:53 – Barbara and I won’t bother to vote today, but Colin plans to vote. As he pointed out, North Carolina lets anyone vote, and he is a lot smarter than some of the humans who’ll be voting. Since he’s going over to the polling site to vote anyway, I told him to go ahead and cast a second ballot for me. I don’t think North Carolina has any problem with people doing that, either.
Speaking of Colin, I noticed yesterday that I was down to one box of Alpo Snaps treats. Colin signed us up several months ago for automatic shipments of five boxes of Snaps every two months from Amazon so we’d never run out. When I checked Amazon to find out why we were running out, I found that they had Snaps back-ordered with no in-stock date. I remembered that Wal-Mart also sells snaps, so I decided to order some from their web site. Big mistake. Note to self: never, ever order anything from walmart.com or samsclub.com. They are both stupifyingly incompetent. I wish I’d remembered that.
When I order things from costco.com or amazon.com, the order almost always goes smoothly. If something is out of stock, they say so. If I order in-stock items, they almost invariably ship the same or next business day, and I usually have the stuff within two or three days. With samsclub.com and walmart.com, the opposite is true. They seem to have no clue as to stock status of what I’m trying to order, and when they finally process the order it takes them days to weeks to ship and days to weeks longer for the items to arrive.
My order yesterday was for two boxes of Alpo Snaps and eight #10 cans of various Augason Farms storable food that I wanted for the book. After I’d completed the order, I got a screen that showed the expected arrival date of the items. The two boxes of Alpo Snaps were to arrive by next Monday. That’s pretty slow, but I could live with it. The box I just opened should last a week with careful use. The eight #10 cans of Augason Farms storable food all showed an arrival date of December 1, nearly a month from the order date. Geez.
Then I got the following email this morning from walmart.com:
Thank you for your recent Walmart.com order. Unfortunately, one or more of the items in your order have been delayed.
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DELAYED ITEMS
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Order Number: 2677214-568554ITEM QTY PRICE TOTAL
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1) Alpo Variety Snaps Purina Dog Treats, 32oz 2 3.14 6.28===========================================
We are working with our suppliers to ship these items as soon as possible, but we are unable to provide a revised delivery date at this time. If for some reason we can’t ship these items at all, we’ll cancel the items from your order and notify you. If you wish to cancel them now, please call Customer Service at 1-800-966-6546 and an associate will try to cancel the items. (Items that are too far into the shipping process may not be cancelable, but you can return them for a full refund.) Otherwise, there is no action needed on your part.