[lemonadelife_blog]

When it comes to ordering diabetes supplies, I’ve been lucky. What do I mean by lucky? I mean that I actually received them. On time. Without hassle.

My luck, it appears, has changed.

Last week I realized I was on my last batch of silhouette pump sets and that I had fully run out of insulin reservoirs, requiring me to reuse them (which I like doing because I have noticed my blood sugars don’t when I reuse the same supplies more than once). I put in my order by phone, because I have forgotten my password to the online Minimed store and the email address to retrieve it has been lost because the email address no longer exists and, well, there’s just too much involved in getting it fixed. So a phone call it is.

Since my office just moved, I gave them the new address. I don’t like supplies – or any package actually – coming to my apartment because my building doesn’t have a doorman. I’m protective over these thousand (!) dollar supplies.

A few days later, I decided to check the tracking status. Lo and behold, I realize that Minimed had written in the wrong address. They had added an extra digit, causing my address to go from 114 to 1414. I thought to myself that maybe UPS would know the right address of my company and be able to fix it on its own.* In fact, the UPS website even said it was attempting to get the correct address, so I thought that it would take care of itself.

Boy was I wrong.

The next day I went to the UPS website and it had said that the “corrected” address didn’t exist and that a postcard had been shipped to the recipient for correct information.

I decided to give UPS a call. I spoke to a representative and explained the situation. I emphasized that everything about my address was correct, except for the actually street address.

“It’s One-Fourteen, not Fourteen-Fourteen,” I said. “Fourteen-Fourteen doesn’t exist.”

The representative hemmed and hawed for a bit, but eventually said that she had changed my address and that I would hear back from someone in about an hour to finalize the address and delivery.

But I never heard from anyone.

On Monday, I looked at the UPS tracking site and nothing had changed. So I called UPS, again, and spoke to another representative and explained the situation, again. Same song, different verse.

“Yes, I see the zip code has been changed to…”

“No, no, the zip code is fine! It’s the actual address that is wrong. It’s ONE-FOURTEEN. Not fourteen-fourteen.”

The representative told me that a postcard had been sent to me and using that, I would be able to change my address. But I didn’t have a postcard, I said, and I couldn’t pick up the package because the UPS hours are the same as working hours (don’t people realize that some of us have jobs?) and I don’t have a car. Couldn’t they just change the street number? The representative said she made some changes, confirmed my address and said that someone would call me to confirm my address and delivery.

This time, someone did call me back. She confirmed my address and told me that the package would arrive the next day, on Tuesday.

Perfect.

But no package came.

On Wednesday, I called UPS again. Very irritated. I explained the story. Again.

This time the representative told me that I couldn’t change my address at all!

“You need the sender to call and change the address,” Representative #3 said.

“Listen, I have talked to three people so far and no one has said anything about Minimed needing to do this,” I said. But apparently this was true!

Fine. I decided to cut my losses.

I called Minimed. I explained to a very nice representative what was going on. She said, “Hold on, I’ll call UPS.”

When she came back, she said, “That was very irritating.” I tried to stifle a laugh. At least she was honest…

She explained that the representative had told her that only I could fix the address. Well, clearly, yes, if I had the goddamn* postcard which still hasn’t arrived. But even if I did get it today, the package is only being held by UPS until the next day. So what are the odds of getting it, calling tomorrow during working hours, and being able to get them to get the package to me before someone decides to send it back. Somehow I don’t think the odds are in my favor.

The Minimed rep told me that they would send me new supplies, overnight, and that if they didn’t get the supplies back, they would consider it a lost shipment and not charge me. Which is good because this whole debacle is technically their fault.

And then I spoke to the Returns & Shipment department, got my address figured out, and they sent my supplies overnight, which I received bright and early yesterday.

Thank. God.

Moral of the story: When all else fails, hit the reset button and start over.

P.S. I never did get that postcard…


Filed under: Diabetes, Dumb Things Other People Do, Humor, Pump, Things I don't like

More...