A (call to) Apple a day is going to give me a fucking coronary.

In all fairness, I don't know who I should blame more, Apple or FedEx. Originally, the blame lay with FedEx and particularly this one cunty "customer service" representative who turned me into a raving maniac one night a few weeks ago. But today, and today may be the most important day of this issue thus far, the blame lies with a "customer service" (in quotes not because I don't know how to use them, but because the last thing I have gotten out of this is anything remotely resembling service) representative of Apple Computer, Inc.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning. As some of you may know (and if you don't I'm sorry to enlighten you) my ears suck. One time in college I went to Health Services because I thought I had an ear infection. Turns out that my ears are perfectly designed for keeping lifetimes worth of earwax stored in their cavities and it had to be purged. Through this process, I succeeded in making a RN completely visibly disgusted. I consider this a personal accomplishment. ANYWAY, I also happen to be partial to in-ear headphones, I can't have the big ones fucking with my 'do (curls+huge headband from headphones=I look a little more than ridiculous when I get off the subway). I currently have a pair of Sony ones that I bought two years ago, the wires of which have turned yellow with age, the sound quality continues to descends inot the depths of hell, and as a result of the aforementioned ear wax issue, are just plain disgusting to look at. SO, on black Friday, my dear and loving hero of a boyfie tells me that Apple is having a one-day sale both in their stores and online. I am no idiot, I do it online, if I know anything, I know that a trip to the apple store the day after thanksgiving is a death wish. So I purchase a new pair of headphones. Considerably more expensive, but considering that I am loathe to use my ipod because of the nastiness of the current headphones, I figure this is a logical investment.

Now, this is where I need to put in a mea culpa. When asked for the shipping address, I put in my apartment. Honestly, I didn't think it would be an issue. At that point my freelance hours were such that I figured it would come while I was home. WRONG. For 3 days, it arrived approximately 1 hour after I had to leave. After the first day, I called FedEx begging them to change the address. Apparently FedEx & Apple have some sort of cabal where customers can in NO WAY change the shipping address EVER. Therefore, despite my begging after day one to immediately have the package sent back to apple who could then change the shipping address, FedEx tried two more times and then, despite me calling on a freakishly regular basis, it sat in a warehouse in Brooklyn for two weeks, while the tracking website taunted me with "package available for customer pickup." Except the fedEx people couldn't tell me where the warehouse is, nor could the website. FINALLY, two weeks after the 3rd attempt, it gets sent back to Apple.

Now, as soon as this became an issue, I called apple and had them change the shipping address for the second shipment to my address at work, a mere 3 miles to the north of my home. I spoke to at least 3 seperate customer service representatives who assured me that the address had been changed.

This morning, when I get a confirmation email that my headphones will now be making their THIRD cross-country trip in the next 24 hours (at least I get free overnight shipping!) what does the shipping address say??? MY FUCKING APARTMENT!!!!!!!!!! Which, of course, means that this is going to happen ALL OVER AGAIN, because as we've learned, the FedEx/Apple shipping cabal states that customers can not change their shipping addresses EVERRRRRRRRR. All attempts to call Apple with the last piece of my sanity intact were brutally rebuffed because "their offices are currently closed."


I can not put into words just how fucking pissed off I am right now.

Thanks for listening, bloggy baby, Sean's still asleep and if I didn't get this out my head was going to explode and rather than an alarm clock he would have been woken up by the sound of the contents of my head hitting the walls.


POSTSCRIPT:
I got my head phones. Yesterday. 34 days after I originally ordered them and they arrived to my apartment, where no one signed for them, and they sat in my hallway all day, after FedEx swore to me 10 times they were coming to the Time Warner center. They're totally sweet, and apple gave me an extra 25 dollars off, but I'm pretty sure that that doesn't make up for the several months this took off my life while trying to get this delivered.