The Wonder Book Kiada

 

Bureaucracies, bureaucracies thy presence, power, and reach is legendary. You are everywhere and in all organisations and institutions. You are our logos, our god, or saviour. All hail the power of bureaucracies name.

As I mentioned yesterday I ordered several items from the Washington DC area bookstore Wonder Book. Unfortunately, they use FedEx to ship some of their items. 

I say unfortunately because as I noted yesterday the FedEx van was within five blocks of my house during the time they said they would be but they did not deliver my Wonder Book package for a reason or reasons unfathomable to me. If I had more knowledge—something FedEx is unlikely to give me—I might be able to figure it out should I want to and I kind of want to because I am interested in how “rational” and “efficient” bureaucracies work and how irrational and incompetent they too often truly are.

In response to this utter failure by FedEx to deliver the package to my nearby address I told FedEx to return the items to the sender if they could not deliver them by 4 pm, almost two hours after the time they said they would and could have. Or I suggested another option: pay me $75 dollars for my time and effort (something I still expect). They have not, unsurprisingly, accepted that offer yet either.

Scene shift to today. Though I told FedEx to return the items to Wonder Book should they not be able to deliver the items by 4 pm or compensate me for my time and effort—time is money—the package is once again out for delivery against my express orders. Oh joy. So much for attempts at communication with FedEx.

I did, of course, contact Wonder Book, explained the situation to them and told them too to try and issue a return to sender order. They wrote back today and said sorry, we can’t since the item is on the truck (which it should not have been given my orders to FedEx to cancel the delivery and return the package to sender). They also told me that I will not be refunded for these items until they receive them.

I responded to their email saying sorry but once I refuse delivery my responsibility for the order and the items in that order is over. They, I told them, needed to contact FedEx, their deliverer of this order of choice, should the package come to be missing in action or delayed. I also told them if I am not refunded I will take a variety of actions, including, possibly, small claims court.

Perhaps we would should just stop struggling with bureaucracies and submit to them as our holy saviour. Why keep fighting that which cannot really be fought? I don’t know.

Postscript: I have now been banned from Wonder Books. I will wear this ostracisation with honour. After all, there is no shame in complaining about the practises of Wonder Books, practises that include occasionally inaccurately describing the condition of a book, selling an edition of the book different from that pictured, or providing false information about the publisher of a book, something that should be shameful even in the age of Trump. Nor is there any shame in complaining about a company like FedEx being five blocks from one's door within the time frame they said they would deliver a book, a time frame one took time out of one’s life to be sure to be there when the over $100 dollar package arrived. What there is shame in is, beyond the false information about about items for sale, is Wonder Book's (and Fed Ex’s) silence about why FedEx did not deliver the package when they were five blocks and five minutes from my house when asked about it. That is a shame, one assumes, Wonder Books (and FedEx) will not even recognise but then they are one of your typical corporations in this brave new world, a world in which an interest in the customer’s problem is largely feigned and wrapped up in tiny bows of ritual and cliched apologies.