A Complicated Order

About 2 months ago I ordered a metal display ladder from an internet company called Decor Steals. The ladder was a Miss Mustard Seed pick. Here's the ladder I ordered:

I thought this would be great to display wreaths, pictures, or quilts. I could hardly wait for it to arrive. I waited, and waited, and waited. I was thinking it must be taking so long because it was ordered before the holidays or maybe it was on back order. Finally, one day when I got home from work, my husband said that he had hauled in a large package that had been left on the front porch. Sure enough, the ladder had arrived!

When I saw that box, I suspected that there was a problem. The top of the box had been taped ... A LOT... And, the rungs of the ladder were sticking out of the bottom of the box. Plus, the box was pretty short for the size of the ladder. But I though ... maybe the ladder was in two pieces. So I cut open the box and took a look. Oh, my, the ladder was a mess! Take a look:

Well, the box had been delivered by the United States Postal Service so I gave them a call the following day (on a Saturday) to report the damage. The lady at the post office had a very interesting story to tell me. Right away, she said, "oh yes I remember that box, it came in that way". And she proceeded to tell me more... well, in our town, the USPS has a contract with Fed Ex. Fed Ex drops off boxes at the post office and USPS delivers the boxes as a part of their normal delivery route. Well about 2 weeks before I got my box, a tall box had been brought in by Fed Ex for USPS to deliver to me. But, that tall box didn't meet the size limitations of the Fed Ex contract with the postal service. So the post office refused the box. Then, the day before I got my delivery, this taped box was dropped off by FedEx... at the post office... to deliver to me. The people at the post office realized there was a problem, but it fit the size requirement, so they delivered the box.

My next move was to find out how to contact customer service at Decor Steals. It's an internet company so all I could find was an comment section for e-mails. I was very pleased when I was contacted within 24 hours by the company (they sent me a reply e-mail on a Sunday). The person at Decor Steals asked that I send some pictures of the damaged ladder. I heard back from him quickly, he couldn't believe that ladder ended up like that! It was made of heavy metal... how could this happen? I shared the FedEx story with him. Is it possible that someone at FedEx had intentionally bent the ladder just to get the postal service to deliver it???? Well, I guess we'll never know that.

On Monday, the owner of Decor Steals gave me a call. She was extremely nice and even laughed about the entire incident. She said they had another ladder in the warehouse and would get it delivered to me right away. Sure enough, it came today (Saturday). And, it's PERFECT!

It came in this nice tall box:

And it's in perfect shape:

I'll have to say that the people at Decor Steals were wonderful to work with. They were efficient and friendly and certainly corrected the situation. I'll sure order from them again! I'm very happy with the metal ladder!