Not The Amazon just a sunny Yorkshire evening. A chilly evening. Autumn is definitely here.

Amazon. Oh what a fun shopping experience. Ok the buying bit isn’t that bad now. Usually they have what I need and it arrives in one piece. All except vinyl that seems to have been sat on by an elephant. Occasionally you get the delights of tracking a next day delivery as it slowly wander in and out of the country. On its very own magical mystery tour. Sometimes the wrong item arrives. Sometimes it’s delivered but not here…… But it’s generally ok.

Returns are another matter. Talk about pulling what’s left of my hair out. So last night with some trepidation I tried the Amazon Paperless Return process. An email was sent with a random ink stain image which was apparently all I needed. So with that image on my phone, the elephant warped LP in hand I headed to the nearest drop off location. A petrol station 5 miles away. A really really helpful young till assistant decided I had the face of someone who can’t even work a toaster never mind an online system. I should have whispered that I have a degree in computing….. Never really got the chance as she quickly took over with a smile. She was probably bored out of her mind and this at least broke the monotony of the evening shift. Ominously she warned that the easy and seamless return system was a ‘pigging nightmare’. The all knowing ink stain image was scanned after about 10 minutes of increasingly comical arm movements. Then the paperless system needed to print off a paper label……. It jammed. Then jammed again. Kept jamming and eating labels. An increasing pile of useless labels took over the floor. 30 minutes later we abandoned as we had used up the last label. The next batch of labels wouldn’t apparently arrive until next Thursday.

So today I will return to the petrol station with a label which I have printed out and will have another go at using this paperless Amazon system…..

That’s progress for you.