By Mary Odden

Ah, I am a curmudgeon. I could have just put the mattress on the sale cycle, the mattress of the wrong size and wrong brand that Amazon sent me. It came here the size and weight of a bale of hay. There was no indication it was the wrong item until we took it out of the box. Allowed to inhale over the course of several hours, it grew to a full-size queen, 9” thick. This was 5” too thick and 5” too long to go in our camper – its intended use. 

Not happy, I considered the various scenarios surrounding the returning of the thing. An item that arrives the size of a pony but exits the size of an elephant should present unreasonable difficulty to the universe, so I did the right thing. I called Amazon to tell them it was their problem. 

Unable to find a phone number on the Amazon website, I consulted Google, who obliged with a direct number to a real person at Amazon. That person said it would not be a problem to return a wrong item, no matter how large it was. I said, “Really? I’m 40 miles from a gallon of milk and the post office, and I live in Alaska, which is separated from the Lower 48 by a large chunk of Canada. ‘Will not ship to Alaska’ is a part of my life. I am so surprised that you agreed to send me a mattress in the first place, even the size of a bale of hay. It is now half the size of a pickup truck. Can I really return it?” 

She listened with apparent sympathy. She offered to connect me with the Amazon Department for Large and Bulky Items, who would make everything right.  

He was in Cape Town, South Africa. If you know me, you know that I am now more interested in where this phone call is going than what happens to the mattress. Xolile of Cape Town assured me that Amazon would investigate why such an inconvenient substitution of my item had occurred without any notice to me, a notice which would have caused my cancellation of the item and saved a good deal of trouble. 

I really love to hear someone use the English language from a place far away. Such a person usually lights up parts of the dictionary not often heard aloud. That’s how I learned I was speaking with Cape Town – I asked him.

This is a wonder of the world, isn’t it? 

Xolile asked me if I wanted to learn to pronounce his name. I did.

He said, “Do you ever speak to horses?”

“Not lately,” I said, “but I have, in the past.” 

“Do you know that ‘click’ you make at the back of your tongue when you want a horse to go faster?” 

I did, and demonstrated. 

“That is good,” he said. “Now combine that click with a long ‘Oh’ and then say ‘Lilly.’” 

I tried. 

Xolile praised me for my effort. Xolile from Cape Town, who has talked to horses, and is a good person, also knows about shipping and returning large and inconvenient items. He issued me a return ticket for the mattress, valid for any shipper, and assured me that some warm-blooded human will read the note he has written on my behalf to Amazon, asking them to never again send me something other than the exact thing I have ordered. 

The footnote is, of course, that I found no shipper willing to pick up for return an 80” by 60” by 9” mattress under their contract, which only pays them for the sizes of bales of hay they have delivered. I had to call Amazon again, who connected me with South Africa again, where I talked to Phillip, easy to pronounce. He had to investigate whether or not I am a person who runs a scam of ordering mattresses that cannot be returned, a dishonest person counting on being paid back each time, though not having to return the mattresses. Assured that I was not such a person, Amazon will refund my credit card and I do not have to return the mattress. Which I assure you I am giving away. 

Overall, because of the delightful name thing, I’m calling the transaction “even.”  

Read more by Mary Odden here.