Someone I know tried to buy something in a large hardware store recently. They were told at the start of the conversation that when purchasing, they could pick a convenient delivery time. The words “time slot” might even have been used. When that part of the purchasing process was reached, it transpired that by delivery “time”, they really meant delivery “day”. A whole day. Not even morning or afternoon. £20 delivery charge, and you must take a day off work to accept delivery of the product we’re charging you for. And it was only coming from 3 miles away. Bit crap, isn’t it?

I’ve recently had to return something to a company, which had developed a fault. Here’s their actual website wording.

“to arrange a suitable time“. Well this sounds good. Let’s have a look then.

Convenient day? Between 9am and 7pm?! I can’t even have it collected from work, because there will be nobody in the admin-side, past 5pm. Well an entire day isn’t especially convenient. Oh well. It’s that or paying my own return postage, I guess. When you pick a day, you get a confirmation on-screen, saying:

Only between 9am and 5pm now. It was 9am-7pm a minute ago. Well that’s two hours I get back, I guess.

But then, the email confirmation from courier.

8am and 8pm now? In the space of 5 minutes, it’s gone from 9-7, to 9-5, to 8-8. I’m grateful for the collection, but that’s some variation between different screens/emails there, in the space of 10 minutes.