Crazy Covid-19 Experiences.

[Chief Stipe]

Well I'm currently living in Northland and moved in to a new flat just before the lockdown.  Unfortunately my household stuff is still in lockdown - somewhere else!

I needed some "essentials" - frypan, pot, plate, bowl, knife and fork, spoon and towels.

So I went online and visited the big three in this department - Briscoes, K-Mart and The Warehouse.  I did the old online comparison and immediately dropped Briscoes on price even though they were still having a "Covid-19 half-price essentials sale."  I wasn't really interested in their "essential" $250 coffee maker.  That left K-Mart and The Warehouse.

K-Mart won the day mainly on ease of use of their website and finding what was allowed to be shipped and what wasn't.  Also the shipping charge of $9 was dropped if your purchases totaled over $45.  Their promised delivery time of 5 days was also quicker than The Warehouse however the delivery time has now been extended to 14 business days.

I made the order on 6 April and a parcel arrived on 9 April!  Sweet! Uh-oh - not all items were delivered due to stock issues.  Mmmm the items came from Palmerston North.  Odd - when there is a K-Mart less than 3km from my front door.  But then Palmerston North is a major distribution Centre in the North Island.

The second parcel arrived 17 April - 11 days after order.  Not a real problem as my substitute for the ordered breakfast bowl - an empty 2 litre icecream container had been working well.  K-Mart must have found the bowl and other items at St Lukes in Auckland as that is where part 2 of my order originated from.

I was starting to think now that the zero shipping charge was looking like a bargain!

Damn it......the order was still incomplete!  Not to worry - I was no longer eating with my fingers!  Was getting sick of grilling everything though as no pots had arrived yet!

The THIRD parcel arrived 22 April - 16 days after order.  Now this parcel had tripped around a bit.  It's items were picked and packed in Rosedale, Albany, North Shore.  Oh well getting closer to home I suppose.  Unfortunately the parcel first went south instead of north.  It ended up in Whakatane for a day before getting on the right transporter to head north again!

So finally I had my $45 worth of "essential" items from K-Mart delivered.  

You could say the first order was essential essentials.  I wasn't totally turned off by my K-Mart experience and decided to order some more stuff.  I was also motivated by a close friend who had agreed to come around for dinner - we weren't breaking any rules as we were both in single person bubbles.  Now she is a trained chef so I would have to be on my mettle to impress her.  But I was prepared after weeks of watching cooking programmes on freeview TV.

So I thought I would give The Warehouse a go this time.  Part of the motivation for that was they were a NZ owned company and I was getting a bit pissed off by the price gouging I was seeing at the Australian owned Supermarkets.

I placed my order 27 April and paid a $5 shipping charge.  I ordered some more cutlery (had only ordered single items in my K-Mart order), a roasting dish (OK I hadn't learnt that much from watching cooking programmes), a chopping board (not a good look to a chef chopping on the kitchen bench), a decent bathroom towel and hand cloth (ever hopeful), a puncture repair kit (the airbed had sprung a leak), a number of other items and one $2 9 inch tong (not classing serving dinner with your fingers!).

The Warehouse site had a warning that there may be a 10 business day delivery time.  That's OK it'll still be before Level-2.

Again they had to split the order and send in separate orders.  Seems neither K-Mart nor The Warehouse have ALL their "essential" items in one store.  I mistakenly assumed again that given there was a huge mega The Warehouse less than 3km from my door that that would be where they order was fulfilled from.  WRONG again!

The first parcel of my order contained one item.........the $2 9 inch tongs!  It was dispatched 1 May from Paraparaumu, Kapiti Coast!!  I've named these tongs my Seven Fifty Tongs as they have travelled 750km to get here.

The second parcel was dispatched on 4 May from Whangarei (yahoo!).

Both parcel's one and two arrived the same day by motorbike on 5 May.  Dinner was postponed as none of the items I really needed had arrived.

Now the third parcel of all the parcels (six in total) from both K-Mart and The Warehouse is the most interesting of all.  Not only the most wanted by now but also it seems the most traveled.

It was packed on 12 May 16 days after order.  It was packed in.....wait for it.....drum roll....DUNEDIN!  It made it to Tauranga 17 May 21 days after order.  It seems it wasn't supposed to go to Tauranga and its status is Delayed in Tauranga........

I know that our courier companies are under pressure - well the drivers are.  I have a huge amount of sympathy for those drivers who are largely contractors.  Only in the last week have I learnt that they earn between 20 cents and a $1 for each parcel.  But.......surely one of our largest retail outlets can do better than this?  

By the way Dinner is off indefinitely - doesn't have the same appeal now that bubbles have been burst.  I can now go down to The Warehouse and buy those items that are in transit but I don't really need five roasting dishes (there are 3 in storage).

The Roasting Dish will be name Sixteen Seventy Eight - that's 1,678 km that its travelled......although I'm tempting fate because it still hasn't arrived!

 

[Chief Stipe]

Anyone else got any crazy stories from the lockdown?