Amazon.co.uk lets me down

So, today I finally gave up waiting for my copy of John Garth's book, THE WORLDS OF J. R. R. TOLKIEN, to arrive.

I'd pre-ordered this back in May of last year along with two other books (TOLKIEN'S CHAUCER and TOLKIEN'S LIBRARY), both of which arrived in due course.

By mid-May of this year I was hearing that folks were getting copies already, although its official release date was not until June 9th. About this time I got a notice that my copy had shipped and wd arrive on July 8. As usual they included a tracking number that enabled me to follow its progress all the way to the evening of July 8th, when the tracking system said "out for delivery".

Then something seemed to go wrong. The July 8th out-for-delivery notice disappeared and was replaced by one saying it wd arrive between July 8th and 15th. I kept checking the tracking number daily and was still getting notices that it was on the way as late as yesterday, the 15th.

Then today I find a message that "Your package may be lost" and offering me an option of getting a refund. Re-ordering is not an option since the book is, they said, out of stock. So I gave up on amazon.co.uk, cancelled the phantom shipment, and re-ordered the book this afternoon from their US cousins, amazon.com. They say it'll be here tomorrow.


What makes it worse is that this is twice now they've done this to me. When I'd last ordered the year's Tolkien calendar from them they provided me with a tracking number to trace the shipment's progress, only to discover on the day it wd have been delivered that it was a phantom shipment: as near as I cd make out it had never been shipped.

And the moral is: if you happen to live a mile or so from an amazon fulfillment center you might as well take advantage of it.

--John R.
--current reading: Vaninskaya on Dunsany, Lockley on Rabbits