I’ve been using Silkies mail order service for about seven years.  It’s easy, convenient and considering I’ll rip through a fair number of stockings throughout the year, makes sense. Usually I have it set on quarterly shipments.

It did not get off to an auspicious start. I’d sent away for the first few trial pair. And they showed up a day before the invoice was due–backing me into a corner. I called customer service and was rather irate. It seemed very scam like to not give people any time to evaluate before you were billing them.  The rep agreed and gave me a two week extension.*

In general, things have been pretty smooth sailing. I’ve moved five times since I started and each time been able to update my contact information to the new address.

Apparently not any more.  I had asked for an immediate shipment in early November to try and keep things from getting caught in the moving shuffle. That shipment still hasn’t arrived, though at this point I’ve had to already pay for it. After moving and since it’s cold and I’m wearing hosiery every day (and that other shipment hadn’t arrived), I tried to do it again. Immediate shipment and updating the address.

Only–the website won’t let me update where I live. It claims that the “zip code does not match the account.” This tells me absolutely nothing, because it won’t let me update the zip code anywhere else.  I use the zip code to log in

So I emailed customer service. You have to go through their web form and wait for two business days for a turn around. First email sent–no response.  So I emailed again yesterday, trying to figure out if they’d updated my address for the shipment I’d just requested and asking how on earth I was supposed to update my address online.

I got a rather conciliatory email back this morning saying that yes, the shipment had been updated to the new address and that they had updated the website. So I went to check.

Updated apparently means “shoved your new address in front of your old address” so the USPS is going to have serious issues. And I can’t correct this issue because while the new zip code is listed for my address, the only place that customers can edit their address, it’s still saying it’s the wrong zip code and won’t let me make updates.

Which means I’m going to have to call. I’m not pleased about this. It shouldn’t take 3 rounds of communication including a phone call to update an address.  This should be automated on their website. By the time I get to that person on the phone tonight, while I will try not to take it out on them (certainly not their specific fault) the challenges and difficulties and broken communication I’ve already come up against means that I’m not inclined to make it a pleasant call.  When you force people to a point of irritation…

Choose your own library lesson out of this. I expect I’ll be able to get it fixed by phone tonight. I’m just seriously disgusted that it’s taking this long.

*It probably says something about customer service in general that seven years later I can still recall those details.