Danielle saves Christmas

Well, it was a long couple of days waiting around for the Christmas packages that my mother sent. They were supposed to arrive the Friday before Christmas but by Monday we were getting worried. My mother called the shipping company and got nowhere. I called the shipping company--DHL, not a fan of them--and basically got nowhere. They told me they had tried to deliver at a time where I was home. I argued that they must have tried the 203 at the building next door to us. They insisted that they were at the right place. They assured me they would try again the next day. This was after me and Jaime both went up the chain of customer service and supervisors for the company. One of them claimed that there was no unit number on the packages so they didn't know which apartment to go to. They were grasping. Well, the next day I waited around for no delivery. I called again in the afternoon to get a status. They told me they needed to have someone from the facility down here call me. They said it could be 30 minutes to an hour. I waited an hour and of course got no call. I called them back--angrier now--and asked for a supervisor who says she called the facility down here and they had "the package". I told her there should be 4 packages and she could not confirm this information. She did confirm that the packages never went out on the truck tht day. I decided to go down the the facility, which is an hour away, and pick up the packages myself. The people on the phone are not real concerned with anything except getting me off the phone. They assured me they would be put on a truck the next day--Christmas Eve. I told them I was sorry but I didn't trust that they could handle such a task. I decided to drive down there and put a face to my situation. I can remember being in customer service and the people that were in person always got first treatment. When I arrived at the facility the man who helped me was very helpful. He told me that the person delivering was an outside shipping company that was hired for my area. He got her on the phone and she said that she had tried delivering the day before and today. I told him there was no way she could have tried delivering today because I was home all day and had a big note on the door to leave the packages. He got back on the phone and then she admitted that she never picked the packages up from a different facility at the airport where she had left them the night before. At this point the man knew he needed to help me because they had screwed up big time. I had to wait for him to finish up his night at work and then follow him to the airport where there was a locked cage. The packages were sitting there together with our address and unit number on each package. I am pretty certain that if I had not made the trip down there my packages would probably still be sitting down there in that locked cage. It didn't look like anyone down there was going to do anything about them.

The moral of this story is: Don't Ever Ship With DHL!

Update...

So another year gone by and another birthday under my belt. I just finished and passed my medical transcription exam and I am now in the process of finding a job. As you can see by the picture we have our tree up. We put it up a week ago. We bought it at Lowes where they were having a 25% off sale. Our tree cost $13.49. I have to tell everyone because it was so cheap. And it is not a bad looking tree. It is shedding needles by the handful but it is going to die anyway so what they heck. We also have lights set up on our porch for all of our outside viewers. It is very festive looking. This is the first Christmas in 5 years that the three of us will wake up together and spend Christmas alone. It will be very low-key and quiet. We will probably go and see a movie at some point. Christmas Eve is our big celebration. We have the Morrisions coming down from Mandeville and we will open the family gifts from the person who picked our name. That is tradition in our family. I am excited about having the Christmas Eve party here and have been cooking up lots of treats for the occassion. I have also been busy cooking up lots of treats and making projects for for neighbors, friends, bus drivers, and teachers. I am posting a video of a house that is down the street from us. They did a Halloween display and now their Christmas display is up and running and really cool. Well, my video did not upload. I had tried uploading it to Youtube too but it didn't work. I will try to post it another time. Well, gotta go. Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!