Hi there, Dear Reader. It is late morning here in Lithia, Florida, on Tuesday, March 15, 2022. It is a cool (but gradually warming) spring day in the Tampa Bay area. The current temperature is 72˚F (22˚C) under mostly cloudy skies. With humidity at 80% and the wind blowing from the east at 10 MPH (16 KM/H), the feels-like temperature is 70˚F (21˚C). Today’s forecast calls for thunderstorms that will pass through our area. The high will be 82˚F (28˚C). Tonight, we can expect scattered showers. The low will be 67˚F (19˚C).
As you know, today is the day that my Best Buy order of West Side Story (2021) in an exclusive-to-Best Buy steelbook package is due to arrive. According to an email UPS sent yesterday, the shipper used by Best Buy, my delivery is scheduled to get here between 12:30 and 4:30 PM. Before I went to bed last night, I checked on the order’s status on Best Buy’s website; it says Ready for Shipment and has an estimated time of arrival (ETA) of Today.
And yet, when I look at the tracking information on the UPS My Choice website, I see that while a label was created, there is no movement on my order whatsoever from Dublin, Georgia. None. Only a bland “The delivery date will be provided as soon as possible” message.
As so many characters in the Star Wars franchise say: I have a bad feeling about this.
Or, as Yogi Berra once said, ”It’s déjà vu all over again.”
For readers who may be new to A Certain Point of View, Too. I had a similarly harrowing experience with another online purchase from Best Buy last year.
In that misadventure, I ordered a Lenovo laptop to replace the Compaq/Hewlett Packard laptop I’d owned since 2009. That computer was on its last legs around this time in 2021; it was 12 years old and ran on the Windows Vista Home OS, so I had to replace it. I found an affordable one by Lenovo in the Best Buy website, so I ordered it.
You can read about the Case of the Wayward Laptop here and here,but the short version of that is that the first time Best Buy tried to ship the Lenovo IdeaPad to Lithia via UPS, the shipper never got the package with my computer, even though the store said it was Shipped. So I had to go chat online with an agent. The guy looked into it, discovered that UPS had never received the laptop, and arranged for a free replacement computer to be shipped here.
I just finished a similar chat with an online agent – Christian V. – who reassured me that yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, I will be getting my West Side Story steelbook this afternoon. If it does not arrive, Christian suggests, I should contact Customer Service tomorrow and see what Best Buy can do.
In the meantime, Target – which has a firmer grasp on its shipment information – says my order shipped and has been accepted by the United States Postal Service. As a result, my West Side Story – Art Edition set – is scheduled to arrive on Friday, March 18.
As for Amazon’s conventionally packaged Collector’s Edition set, it has not shipped but has an ETA of Thursday, March 17, 2022.
If Best Buy’s order – which was the first one I made – gets here on time, it will arrive first. It’s not today, maybe tomorrow.
However, if I have the same “missing package” issue I had last year with the more expensive laptop, Amazon – the last retailer to have a pre-order option – will be the first seller to get the product to me.
Stay tuned! I might have an update on this later today.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
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