SodaStream

Sunday

I got a SodaStream a while ago. Whichever model it was that they don’t make anymore. The OneTouch. This thing:

It makes club soda

And that was okay, for a while. Because, sometimes, I get sick of drinking MisterPibb or whatever; and making coffee in the Keurig next to the SodaStream is something more of a hassle. So there’s this, as an option.

Until Sunday night—four days ago—when it suddenly sproinged.

When it sproinged, it just kinda emptied out the carbonation canister all at once and didn’t really make the bottle of water all fizzy. So that’s not really good anymore.

The problem at the time was that it was Sunday night, so there was really no one to talk to about it. At least, no one at SodaStream.com. They’d be open the next day.

Meanwhile, on their site, they’re boasting that, if I get a new model of SodaStream right now, from them, it comes with a warranty of three years.

That’s actually bad news. Because I’ve had the one that just sproinged for more than three years. Which means that it’s just broken now.

Took the thing apart to see what actually broke in there. Turned out to be this ridiculously tiny gasket—a little ORing thingy maybe 250 microns wide.

Look around to see if those are available anywhere….

Maybe. Grabbed a pack of something like a hundred of the little things for about ten bucks. So, on Sunday night, that’s on its way…eventually.

But the world isn’t really shut down on Sunday night. So let’s see what we can find out….

We can find out that target.com has the new model of my sproinged model for about a hundred bucks. Okay. Gaskets on the way, which might work on the old one; and I can just get a new one delivered by 6pm from Target if I jump on it now.

Givit.

Flaw.

target.com slightly lied: in fact, they’ve got the new model as a starter set, which comes with an extra carbonation thingy for an extra thirty bucks.

Whatever. Givit.

Order placed. Offer; consideration; consent. Plus/Minus a couple hours, because now it’ll get here by eight.

Whatever.

Go back to playing videogames for a while, with whatever club soda I currently own.

Until we get a text. It’s from a personal shopper that Target apparently hired to go into Target three miles from here and get this SodaStream thing I just paid for; the personal shopper wants me to know that Target lied about having this model at all, but he can get me a different one if that’s okay.

Not…really.

So now I don’t have a SodaStream, and Target pulled some guy into their store on a Sunday night to impart that they’d lied to me.

Whatever.

Cancel the whole damned thing. I’ve got gaskets coming in the mail.

[clock.ticking.jpg]

Nah. I want my thing, damnit. Hit amazon.com, where they always have everything ever. Hit me.

Order the SodaStream I wanted, along with a carbonation canister I really don’t need, and get that probably by Wednesday. Today.

I don’t need the canister because I use a lot of canisters. And therefore I set up a subscription service thing recently, wherein a local company just brings me a few canisters at a time and picks up the empty ones. It’s like fifteen bucks a month instead of thirty bucks a canister like you’d get in a starter kit. It’s not even somehow an offbrand thing; it’s just local refills, which cuts out a few middlemen and ridiculous shipping fees for mailing what amounts to explosives.

Anyway: I’ve got a SodaStream on the way from amazon.com. Sometime.

Monday

It’s now the next day. Monday. So SodaStream are in the office or whatever. Call them just to see if we guessed right about the gasket and to let them know that their thing broke after something like five years.

That’s tragic. But they can’t fix it for me, because the warranty ran out a while ago. The best they can do is let me get a starter kit thing for fifty percent off.

Oh I see….

Okay. Hit me. Sixty-five bucks instead of a hundred and thirty. Why the hell not.

So now that’s on its way. Also.

So, go back to amazon.com; cancel the order which hasn’t shipped yet.

Can’t.

Just so this is never overlooked, don’t overlook this:

amazon.com, for the first time in the history of ever, cannot cancel an order that hasn’t even shipped yet.

I know: it’s like a sign of the apocalypse. It’s just weird.

But what amazon.com say I can do is to bounce the order back when the guy tries to deliver it; then amazon.com will get it back, and I’ll get my hundred and thirty bucks back, and that’ll be that.

O…kay.

Tuesday

The gaskets show up. They don’t fit. I don’t have a SodaStream.

What also shows up is sorta weird, and theoretically unrelated. A rack system I ordered the other day for my synth, because I’d ordered one a year ago, from NewEgg.com, which showed up broken; and then NewEgg.com didn’t care that it’d shown up broken, and they just made me keep the broken one and they kept the last money I ever gave them.

Now I’ve got this new, better thing I’ve been meaning to get to replace the stupid NewEggy broken one for a year.

The new, better thing shows up broken.

[tableflip.jpg]

Wait: it’s not broken; it’s just banged up to the point of satire. But the stuff inside the remains of what might once have been a box are fine. So let’s put that together and retire the broken NewEggy one for good.

Hunter mentions to the place sending out satirically trashed boxes that it was satirically trashed.

Too Small; Didn’t Read: ‘sorry; keep it; have your money back.’

So, let’s process all this: SodaStream broke; ordered a new one; didn’t get it; ordered a new one; ordered a new one; tried to cancel the unshipped one; couldn’t; got a hundred bucks back because an unbroken, unrelated thing looked broken. I could just about come out ahead on all this….

Later That Day

Too Stupid; Didn’t Believe: The SodaStream coming from SodaStream.com hit an unidentified delay; it remains delayed; it remains unidentified.

Christ on a Mexican SitCom….

Hunter, who’d ordered the thing from amazon.com after cancelling the order from target.com before ordering the thing from SodaStream.com whose SodaStream is now unidentifably delayed, gets hold of UPS to cancel the order from amazon.com: when they get the thing, just give it back.

They can’t.

UPS can’t.

They say.

They say they’ve got to deliver the thing, and then we can just give it back to amazon.com ourselves.

Oh.

So, now, we’re gonna get something we tried to cancel before we get something unidentifiably delayed. Like…sometime.

And that was Tuesday.

Wednesday

Today, a little over an hour ago, UPS show up to deliver this SodaStream from amazon.com that we’d cancelled.

Le’me just…it’s not worth uploading the video. So I’ll just tell you.

EXT. FRONT OF HOUSE. DAY.

A UPS GUY waddles up the path and sets down a large box.

He rings the DOORBELL.

He hurries away.

DOORBELL: We’re sorry we’re unable to answer the door right now; but, if you’d like to leave a message, you can do it now.

Time passes.

Crickets occur.

In the distance, a dog barks.

HUNTER opens the door and goes out to get the abandoned box she can’t refuse to accept in the absence of the UPS GUY before someone can steal it and complicate things further.

So. Now we’ve got a SodaStream in the house that’s broken; we’ve got gaskets that don’t fit; we’ve got a box presumably containing a SodaStream that we don’t want; we’ve got no way to bounce the box we don’t want back; and we’ve got a SodaStream somewhere in Unidentified Delay.

Hunter, who technically ordered the thing, goes back to amazon.com to mention that UPS delivered the thing they weren’t supposed to deliver, having accepted the thing on Monday after we hadn’t been allowed to cancel it.

Something called Deepak is very sorry to suck, but the SodaStream cannot be returned.

Okay. Cool. Be we tried to cancel it and couldn’t. And woulda refused to accept it, if anyone had fully delivered it. And we don’t want this thing.

Very sorry to incompetent cannot let to be returned.

Right. But—

*click*

It disconnected the chat. The thing called Deepak. So there’s no record of how unresolved the issue is now.

So that’s where we are, on Wednesday night: broken SodaStream; useless gaskets; halfprice SodaStream missing in action; fullprice SodaStream sitting here for however long it takes for amazon.com to ever want money from us again; a 24pack of club soda I grabbed at Safeway because I haven’t got a SodaStream.

And, no: I’m not recycling the cans of club soda. I’m murdering spotted owls with them. I was pushed to this.

Later on Wednesday

UPDATE: After I showed this to Hunter, she asked if I thought it would help to just refuse amazon.com’s chatroom and demand to speak to a meatbot in person. So, let’s do that.

Chatting with…?Charmelle. Maybe. She’s primarily composed of accents.

Hunter explains all the relevant parts of this entry.

Charmelle looks at the order on her end, and regrets to inform that the unopened SodaStream is a food item that cannot be returned.

Okay.

All she can do is refund the money and let us keep the thing.

Oh. Oh I see. Okay, then.

So, that’s where we are now: we’ve got a SodaStream we couldn’t not get, that we could now open and use; we’ve got a SodaStream unidentifiably delayed somewhere on the planet; we’ve got twenty-three and a half cans of club soda from Safeway; and we’ve got however many spotted owls already died.

I’d call it a win, overall.

Have a webcomic:

I’ve heard it argued that tapeworms and human embryos are different because reasons; I just haven’t seen those reasons mentioned in any proposed legislation yet.

More later….

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