What great joy has been brought to my heart today to have received the bundle of books I had bough from Amazon. In attempt to save myself the costs of shipping, I have found a new way by which to ship my purchases. The idea behind it is more of paying the shipping charges in installments rather than at a discounted rate; however, it still come in handy for the days you’re waiting for the paycheck, need to buy that book, and need that last $100 bill all at the same time.

The idea behind creating the “Bordelinx” account on DHL, a express mail company, is that people can purchase items in the US and store them in a DHL premises for a month for free. After a month, the items would cost $5 a day to be stored — yes, outrageous!

Here’s the funny thing that happened to me a couple of days ago. Now, I have had items shipped to me from DHL and Bordelinx before, so I wasn’t exactly new to this. When I shipped my first bundle of items, I registered in my mind that I needed to ship my next item by April 14th, since it arrived at Bordelinx at the same date in March. When the 14th arrived and I received no email reminders from DHL, I assumed that it was still early for me to ship my items. Little did I know that I was in for a shocker.

On the 16th of April, I received an email reminding me with Bordelinx rule of charging customers for storage beyond 30 day mark. I logged in to my account thinking that I was on time or two days late tops. What took be by surprise was not only the fact that I was considerably late, but also that I was charged on multiple products. See, at Bordelinx they don’t charge you per account, like if you have items in your storage box they charge you for the whole box regardless of the number of items in it. Instead, DHL charges per object, so I had four object stored beyond 30 days, one of which was being charged the storage fee for 11 days, others arrived later and were being charged for a lesser time. By the time I checked my account, I owed DHL $160 in storage fees.

Naturally I went into panic mode. I shipped all my items and commenced writing a disturbed email. I told DHL that the ethical thing to do would have been to send me that reminded the day before I was going to start being charged. Ethical companies operate in this way! Without further delay, let me tell you that Bordelinx waived my storage fee for this time. I will try to post a reminder on my desk or schedule one on my phone, as the company made it clear that they only send reminder once a year. Regardless of what I still think of their policies, I’m glad that they treated me with integrity in the end.

To my doorstep today came several interesting books, one of which I started reading immediately. Of Human Bondage is a classic with an edge. I have read 50 pages so far and enjoyed them immensely. Instead of the regular review, I’m thinking of taking you on the journey of exploring the book with me while I read it. I’m planning to post a brief review and analysis of the things I read daily, followed by a review of the whole book once I finish it. Before I do that, however, I will post a review on another book I completed recently: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. Let me just say that it’s the best classic I read so far.

I’m off to bed in a bit. Have a great evening everybody and beware of unethical businesses!