John’s Ramblings

Phone rang last night while I was out on the deck, layin’ a little fire on our chicken.  Terri passed me the phone when I came inside, telling me it was “someone from REI”.  Having no idea what REI would be calling me about I assumed the best, thus my greeting:

Me: “So, are you calling to tell me I have won a million dollars?”

Caroline: “No, but I may be calling to give you $54.63″.

Her story in a nutshell:  I purchased two pairs of shorts in November 2008, which they believe I never received.  The reason they believe I never received the shorts is that they have now received the package back in Sumner, WA (via their other distribution warehouse in Pennsylvania).  The twist is that the package, badly worn, now contains a single “buckle” and a used Banana Republic T-Shirt.

[Large light bulb illuminates over your author's head.]

Fast-rewind to September, when after graduating from the Culinary Arts program at South Seattle Community College, son Brendan decides to move back to Austin Texas on 9/22.  He ships most of his stuff via ground carriers, packs his car to the gills with essentials, and drives to Texas.  His move is 0.01% incomplete, however, because he leaves 1 Banana Republic T-shirt (black), and the two brackets which attach his pull-up bar to the wall.

Medium fast-forward to November, when I am cleaning out my shop / man-cave / gym to discover the brackets for said pull-up bar.  Thinking that three things constitutes a complete shipment, I decide to put the two brackets and t-shirt into the mail, bound for Texas.  I have large format paper envelopes that I use for work, but they are a little insubstantial to handle the brackets on their own.  I wrap the brackets in cardboard and packing tape, wrap the t-shirt around them and stuff them into… wait for it…

A Tyvek envelope in the garbage, that recently had been used to send me two pairs of exercise shorts from… REI.  I rolled that up (rather crudely), and stuffed it into the paper envelope (seemed ok at the time), weighed, applied postage, and mailed.

Slow fast forward to a week later, when Brendan calls:

Brendan: “Thanks for the package, Dad.  What was in it, because it was empty?”

So, wherever the inside envelope fell out of the outside envelope, some samaratan decided to sent it back to it’s original source, which would have been the Pennsylvania Distribution Center for REI (Sumner was out of those shorts, they were on clearance & I had to use my remaining member dividend, I’m cheap).  PA was stymied for a while, then sent it back across the country to Sumner, where the customer service department (in the personage of one Caroline), would straighten out the case of the missing shorts and the used t-shirt (“You won’t believe what was in the envelope when it came back!”).

Caroline was staring at a computer screen, not at Brendan’s package.  Truth be told, the standard operating procedure for such strange happenings is that REI will turn the goods over to their local Goodwill charity, as they have not set aside warehouse space for used Banana Republic t-shirts and pull-up bar mounting brackets that are waiting for good homes.  Caroline promised to personally have look for the items, however, and to forward on to Brendan if she finds them.

Thank you, Caroline.

Tags: customer service, rei

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