Your recent Smith and Hawken Order

From: Publius
To: customerservice@smithandhawken.com
Sent: Saturday, October 9, 2004 2:03 PM
RE: Inquiry about Amazon.com merchant order

This order never arrived. Neither did my other order of the same item - 058-3241405-8125902. Please cancel order number 058-3241404-8125902.
Please deliver order 058-9002304-6330700, but please do not charge me
for the expedited shipping. I would frankly hope that where an order is this grievously late, there would be no charge at all for shipping.
Both of these orders were placed through Amazon.com.

Regards,

Publius

-----Original Message-----
From: smithandhawkencustomerservice@innotrac.com [mailto:smithandhawkencustomerservice@innotrac.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 12:11 PM
To: Publius
Subject: RE:Inquiry about Amazon.com merchant order #058-9002304-6330700 [#383590]


Dear Mr. Publius,

We apologize for the inconvenience of you not receiving your order. We currently show that the Watering Can is on a shipping delay, and expected into the warehouse November 3, 2004. Per your request we have cancelled your Order Number 058-3241405-8125902.

Sincerely,
Smith and Hawken
Customer Service

--- End of Message --

For the love of god...into the WAREHOUSE on November 3rd!!!

Now doesn't it seem to you that when you order a product like this, you pay 26 bucks for EXPEDITED SHIPPING, and are promised delivery in three business days, that a quality vendor would consider it germane to mention, oh by the way, that the ACTUAL delivery date will be roughly a MONTH later? I put this in the category of material omissions punishable by fingernail pulling. Put it in small print if you must, mark it with an asterisk and footnote it to be sneaky, but for the love of Christ, TELL ME.

Omissions I view in a similar light [with required footnote] include:

- "New car for only $29,999" - [Asterisk: seats and wheels are an extra $10,000]

- New Drug: "Fast relief from mild constipation" - [Asterisk: 7 out of 10 patients develop incurable oozing genital sores within 3 minutes of ingesting this drug]

- Dating: "She's good looking, and lots of fun...what have you got to lose?!" - [Asterisk: She reads actuarial tables in her spare time]

- Home buying: "I think you and your wife will be very happy here" -- [Asterisk: That assumes, of course, that you can get over the terminal heebie jeebies likely to be triggered by the knowledge that it's built over a mass grave filled with dead midget lepers who once traveled en masse in a caravan of hearses doing carnival tricks by day and prostituting themselves by night in bartered exchange for domestic pets which they then skinned alive, roasted and ate, until they were ritualistically slaughtered by a satanic band of Croatian nomads who despised little people because they thought they smelled like cabbage."

Cripes!