The waiting game

So, I felt a little behind in buying Christmas gifts for all my loved ones, but I succeeded in finding things pretty quickly and did most of my ordering online. That was 13 days ago. Everything was promised to arrive by the 16th. If they couldn't promise that, I wasn't ordering it. Well, lo and behold... we're getting emails on a DAILY basis now from Amazon: "due to unforeseen circumstances.... your order is delayed... will not arrive until Dec. 23" GAH. Well, that date doesn't work for me, because once they arrive, I need to wrap, package, and then ship them all around the country. *sigh* So I think I can go online (this is Amazon we're talking about) and change the shipping addresses -- just get them directly to the recipient, even if I can't get it wrapped, which would be sad. Well, I can't. They have a message on my order page that explains that my order is "in the packaging and shipping process" and therefore NO CHANGES can be made to the order. And there's a link to their returns policy. Yeah, so I can deal with that in freaking January.

So, after daily messages that seem to basically be laughing at our stupidity for ordering from them in the first place and expecting to get our gifts within 2 freaking weeks... we get an email this morning (at 2:00 AM) to announce that the order has shipped! But it's UPS ground, and still may not arrive until Dec. 23. GAH. Merry Christmas to everyone who might not get a gift from us until January...