So…..having a little trouble with the Gap right now. I ordered a whole mess of stuff- most of it was to be returned. If you use one of the pre-paid return labels they deduct $6 from your refund which is a better (cheaper) option than paying the shipping myself. So I asked them to ship me a label. It never came. I asked again. It never came. Meanwhile I had another box to ship that came with a return label, so I said, forget this, Im going to stuff this bag of stuff into the box, use one label, save us both on some shipping and voila.

Imagine my surprise when 12 days later I get a package from the Gap. And Im thinking “I haven’t ordered anything….?” and I open it and it is the package that had been stuffed inside the box. It was unopened, had the same (used) postage, unreturned, no explanation- just mailed back to me. I emailed them immediately, at a complete loss, and told them I couldn’t begin to understand why they sent my RETURN back to me, but none-the-less what do I do now? I asked them to ship me return labels and they said “sure, we’d be glad to, it will take 5 business days. And oh by the way- your return is due in 8 days.” And I wrote back and said, SURELY you cannot hold me to the 45 day return rule given the circumstances….you know, like how I already RETURNED the package and you sent it back to me. What part of that is that my fault? And their response was “Sorry. Get it back to us before the 45-day deadline and we’ll accept it. If its after that, we’ll just return it to you.”

My next email to them began with: This is totally unacceptable. I would have used UNSAT to borrow a term thrown around this Marine household but I figured the average Sue at the Gap may not have grasped it. I said that, actually, YES THEY WOULD take my return, and if they didn’t then I would have no choice but to dispute the items on my credit card. I also asked that this be escalated to a supervisor since I was getting no where with the minions.

I get an email this morning from Susie supervisor. I think my favorite part of that email was the part where she told me she had reviewed the entire chain of emails and has to believe that the only plausible explanation for this is that the US Mail opened the box and returned the bag to me. Did you get that? A US Postal worker decided that today was the day they wanted to commit a felony by opening a box of ill-fitting clothing and provide some back room customer service for the Gap by separating packages, mailing one to me, one to them. Please. I call BULL SHIT. First of all, they would have had to cut through the mailing label to open the box. So I’d like to think that some lightbulb of a worker would have noticed that, hmm, I don’t know? the BOX HAD BEEN TAMPERED WITH. Also, if the box was going to be opened by some postal worker it would be to STEAL SHIT not to sort the inner contents and re-mail them for FREE. Furthermore- that would also mean that it took an INORDINATE amount of time for it to get from the post office back to me. The amount of time it took is more along the lines of how long it took for the Gap to get the box, somehow flop my package back in the “to mail” pile and for me to get it a week later. I did consider the box getting caught in some weird customs issue or the box getting damaged and needing to be repacked or something but when those things happen there is ALWAYS a note or a sticker or something explaining what happened. No, in this case, there was some worthless Gap worker on the other end that didn’t know what to do with, *get this*, TWO returns in one box. His brain may have exploded a little and my shit got sent back to me.

So- what would you do? I feel totally justified in disputing these charges on the credit card (its like $300 worth of stuff). In fact, Im pissed enough that I sort of want to just say forget it on the mailing (because Im going to go have to pay the postage AGAIN this morning) save myself the $40 on shipping knowing that these items are just going to get returned to me and dispute it today. But I won’t….I’ll let this all play out.

On a separate but somewhat related topic. I’m having someone make a necklace out of some jade beads PC got me in Burma last year and while searching for ideas I found these rings. Im in lurve. And I think once I get my freaking money back from the gap, I’ll have enough to buy one. But then I wont, because I’ll suffer from such indecision over what stones to get. Typical.

Filed under: This Is My Life, its not just good-its just good enough