If you’re a regular visitor to this space, you doubtlessly have come across at least one of “Closely Watched Packages” posts in which I kvetch about the progress – or lack thereof – of an online shopping order I’ve made.
For obvious reasons I don’t write about every order I make on Amazon or Best Buy or Target. My blog is not dedicated to the topic of online shopping, nor should it be. It’s not a fascinating topic – at least not to me – and most of the time I don’t have issues with purchases I’ve made or the speed in which they are delivered to my little corner of Hillsborough County, Florida.
Ah, but sometimes there’s a confluence of elements – such as an inability to produce a post about another topic and my frustration with an order from an online retailer (Amazon, Target, Best Buy, or even the Disney Store) that’s either delayed (as in the case of The Fabelmans) or lost (such as the purchase of my last laptop in 2021).
Today’s post, then, is a result of a bad case of writer’s block and a bout of unnecessary impatience with my order of The Fabelmans.
First, let me share the good news regarding my order, which I made on Amazon on November 23, 2022:
Last night I finally received an email from Amazon telling me that my order had shipped and that instead of arriving on Tuesday, February 21, it will get to me on Monday, February 20.
This, of course, is a definite improvement from a previous estimate of a March (no exact date mentioned) ETA. And that, my friend, was far better than Amazon’s original delivery update of July 2023.
(I’m guessing that Universal Pictures was expecting The Fabelmans to do well at the box office and that the studio could afford to wait till summer to release the home media version. Alas, that didn’t go the way the folks at Comcast – Universal’s parent company – hoped, so the marketing folks moved the release date from July to February to recoup some of the lost revenue from the “box office bomb.”)
Now, for the bad news.
I am not privy to the inner workings of Amazon, its supply chain setup, or how the e-retailer decides which shipping option works best for certain orders. So I have no idea why Amazon didn’t have enough copies of The Fablemans on hand in its warehouses to fulfill pre-orders or, even more perplexing, why the company had to pick UPS Ground – one of Amazon’s slower delivery options – to send me my 4K UHD Blu-ray (with 2K HD Blu-ray and a Digital Copy) of The Fablemans.
What I do know – with that odd mixture of relief and mild irritation – is that my two-disc set shipped last night from the Cleveland, Ohio, area via UPS Ground, which means it is traveling to Florida in a UPS truck. It left late last night (10:05 PM EST) and it has not been scanned since, so I have no idea where it may be now.
There is, of course, a small chance that the UPS vehicle could reach Florida late tonight and that my package could, in a best-case scenario, arrive here tomorrow. But, realistically speaking, I will just go along with Amazon and UPS’s delivery estimate and content myself with a Monday delivery.
A Certain Point of View, Too 
You must be logged in to post a comment.