Wednesday, January 20, 2021

 January 20, 2021


On June 6, 2020, my husband and my daughter went to a local big box furniture/appliance store and purchased a new freezer. The one we had at the time was only about 5 cubic foot, and we’d had it more than ten years. It was beginning to rust badly, and we were concerned that it might quit on us.

At the time of the purchase, the salesperson warned that delivery would likely be end of August, early September. With the onset of the virus, manufacturing, which happened in the U.S., had been slowed.

That wasn’t a surprise, of course. Pretty much anything you want to order, when it comes to furniture and some appliances has to be made. No one keeps a large stockpile of anything anymore.

This new freezer is a larger one, a thirteen cubic foot freezer. I was glad they’d chosen a larger model because I was hoping to stock up on frozen veggies and meats and other things. We’d already faced a few shortages of grocery items at our local store. My plan to ensure our own food supply by meant either purchasing frozen veggies or to go to the local markets in the fall and buy the veggies to freeze, myself.

But for any of that to happen, of course, I needed the new, larger freezer. My smaller one was in a perpetual state of “fullness”.

Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who had that plan. I guess there were a lot of people ordering freezers in response to the supply-chain threatening virus. Well, good. I was and remain delighted that people were thinking logically, and planning to ensure their family’s ability to keep themselves fed.

I thought that was remarkable as we’re not used to even considering that there might be a shortage of food. Oh, from time to time, there have been items here or there at the grocery store that have been temporarily unavailable. The most usual reason, in my experience, was when a company would be changing their packaging. That, of course, usually signaled an impending smaller size.

Does anyone remember when a pound of bacon was a pound of bacon? Here in Canada, it used to be 500 grams (a bit more than a pound); then, it went to 375 grams(.82 of a pound), but for the same price as the 500.

I hope those manufacturers didn’t think we weren’t wise to their shenanigans. I regularly purchase a powdered, non-dairy whitener for our coffee. It was a practice we began years ago, so that all the milk in the house would be for the children. We’re both at the point that we prefer the powdered whitener to anything else in our coffee, as does our daughter.

You can purchase the large size which is 1 kilogram; or you could buy the product in the smaller size, that used to be 500 grams each but lately is about 450 grams. How anal am I? I use my cell phone’s calculator to determine which is the least expensive per gram to purchase, two small containers or 1 large one. Unless the whitener is on sale, I usually get the big one.

But I digress.

I wasn’t surprised, particularly, when September arrived, but our new freezer did not. I called, and they informed me that it would be here by October.

In November, David and Jennifer returned to the store. David was not happy one bit that they’d had our money all this time, and we had no freezer. He was going to tell them to give us the freezer or cancel the order.

I was grateful indeed for my daughter. She suggested they have a look around at the handful of other suppliers of appliances in our area and see if there were any deals to be had before going to the store that had received our business in June and canceling the order.

Wise move. They learned that no one had any freezers at all. Period. It made no sense to cancel the order.

Later that day, November 30th, after David had let the store staff know how unhappy he was not to have our new freezer, the store called me and said that they’d received word from the manufacturer, and the store would receive delivery of their shipment of freezers on January 16, 2021.

Today, as you know, is January 20th. Now, the 16th was a Saturday, and I gave them two full days that weren’t a weekend to contact me. Finally, this morning, I called them.

I am awaiting a return phone call. I’ll be certain to let you know how it goes. The only thing I know for certain is this.

The new freezer will get here when it gets here, and I don’t think there’s anything we can do to influence the date of shipment.

In the meantime, I remain very grateful that the freezer we’ve had all this time has kept working, small though it may be.

And yes, I also “knocked on wood” as I wrote that.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

 


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