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I don't get angry over much.   

Sure, there's things that I say make me angry - injustice, inequity...a lot of things starting with "in-" really...but there's one thing that honestly fucking pisses me off beyond any reasonable metric of human experience:  late shirts.  

I will explain. 

About three months ago I ordered two French cuff point-collared shirts from a company that I will not name.

I ordered these about 3 months ago, and they were on serious fucking super sale  I mean, the kind of sale where it's like "Holy shit, this sale is fucking super - are you serious?" sale. 


Now - a general rule in commercial exchange goes "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" and to be fair, these shirts were sooooo cheap that my thinking went:  "meh, so what if I waste a few bucks on some bullshit, big deal, right?"

But this bullshit was twelve weeks ago. I have waited, patiently, for my shirts which, the more I think on it, probably won't even be that good when I get them.  Okay, but, at least they're cheap, right? 


"Cheap" is at present the only thing this deal has going for it.  You see, I have had two significant communiques with customer service:

1) when I emailed a customer service representative to complain (like, over a month a go), that person said, and I quote, "[they} would be more than happy to offer [me] a replacement item, if [i did] not wish to wait for the backorder date."  That sounds totally cool until you realize that for the price I paid for those two shirts I could basically order a lunch bag filled with discarded candy wrappers and old chewing gum.   No, their response was so much carefully calculated bullshit designed to facilitate a fucking bait-and-switch.  They sold me exactly what I wanted so that they could give me some old shit that I most certainly did not.

2) 1 (above) isn't actually that bad when you accept that your shirts are going to be late, and you take the long view concerning the time spent shirtless.  Oh, shit is back ordered like 2 months?  Okay, what is that in the span of a life?  Not that much.   Here's the problem: you tell me 2 months, and I am like: fine, that is not the worst thing that ever happened, plus you have 2 months to get your shit together and get me my shirts.  Sweet, that means that in 2 months, everything will be hunky-dory, right? 

No, the problem is that when I hit the expected ship-on date and the retailer says "YOUR ITEM WILL SHIP ABOUT A WEEK AFTER THAT OKAY KTHX BYE!"

After that, I was offered a refund, to which I was ready to reply "Screw your refund, give me my shirts," but the email pretty specifically said "No Reply."  Then again, if I was a crappy fly-by-night menswear retailer with no scruples, I would pretty much just make all my email addresses "No Reply" in order to avoid what must surely be an avalanche of customer complaints. 

Regardless, instead of having two nice crisp white shirts with French cuffs, I am in the middle of a giant string-along scam.  They know they can just keep me going forever on this.  I won't take the stupid opt-outs, I won't order other merchandise...I'm just going to wait, and wait, and wait for the shirts.  

Gentleman and ladies interested in gentlemen's clothes, can I make it more plain?  Don't make my mistake. Don't be lulled in by the low prices of some hackish wholesaler: go to your local men's store to buy your clothes.  Sure, there's something to be said for saving money, and there's something t be said for the convenience of online shopping, but there's also something to be said for not getting jerked around.