For my birthday, a ladyfriend of mine gave me a gift certificate to Longs Cyclery. I ended up choosing to get a jersey with it and ordered it online.



And that's when the comedy started. First, they forgot to include the certificate number that I'd need to redeem the gift certificate when they sent me an email telling me of the gift. So they had to send a second email with the certificate number.

I ordered, with the gift certificate number and my VISA to cover the difference, and a few days later, got an email saying that they were ready to ship, but they didn't know what I had ordered. So I sent them an email telling them again what I had ordered and soon after got a tracking number to follow my shipment.

After a couple of weeks nothing had arrived and I checked the tracking and apparently, the package had been delivered a week before. I then noticed that my apartment number had not been included in the address. I checked with the apartment office, it's a large complex so its not likely that the postman could have guessed at my address.

But the apartment office said that they hadn't received it. I emailed Longs asking them for confirmation on whether I had somehow forgotten to include my apartment address when I ordered, but they only said that they sent it to the address listed on the package tracking notice. I took that as an unspoken admission of error on their part.

I went to the post office and talked with the counter clerk, who gave me the number for the carriers. I phoned and talked with the supervisor of the carriers who said that there had been some turnover lately and that the carrier on the route was new. Apparently the carrier who would have been on duty then was no longer at that post office. The supervisor guessed that since the tracking slip actually said that the package had been scanned as unable to be delivered, and 30 minutes later it was scanned as delivered; that probably the tracking entry that said that it had been delivered was a mis-scan, and that actually the package went "Return to Sender"(cue Elvis Presley ) and should be on its way back to Longs Cyclery.

I know that Return to Sender items are the lowest of the low on the post office delivery priority, so it could take several weeks to get back to them. But so far, Longs says that nothing has shown up.

So the question is, what do I do now? Buy another jersey and pretend it is the original, or tell my ladyfriend that her gift just disappeared and no one knows where it went to? Or just be patient and naively trusting.