kebechet

When I went to the post office today, my new friend there warned me that the USPS and most international postal services are on high terrorist alert since the Madrid bombing and postal inspectors all over the world are running fine-toothed combs through every shipment. We should expect delays. Love it. LOVE IT!!!

Rosie, it just so happens that I have a Wiccy that I haven't even opened yet. =) Thanks for the suggestion! I just got back from the doctor's. This hurts like a MOTHERFUCKER so I'm going to lie down for a bit til I get back to work. 6 Tylenols should do the trick. =P

Just for the record... Miserable CcNow charges us $9.95 per month, plus 9% of all transactions including the shipping charge. If someone uses a bunk credit card, they charge *us* $30 on top of the money we lose on the order, the product and shipping. Packing materials [bubble wrap in particular] costs us about $70.00 per month. The USPS provides free boxes. We mark up the oils by only an average of $2.00 each over what it costs to manufacture the oils, and the bulk of that is now going to paying employees. I didn't realize until recently that we were losing $1.00 on every Canadian order, but I haven't had a moment to adjust it in the system.

Quick note... Five orders came back today. Steph, one of them was yours. I'm going to try and get this sorted out on the way home from the doctor's tomorrow.

But I **LOVE** my Canadians. Did I ever tell you... Don Cherry is my hero? Seriously.

Ok, guys, I'm offline for the day. I've still got 300 or so Bowie tickets and five more hours in the office ahead of me and I am in a foul, horrible, snappy mood. When I get in tonight I'm going to try and get to some of the emails, and when I get back from the doctor's tomorrow more orders should go out.

I insure all the packages that I can out of my pocket, as when I offered insurance in the past, no one wanted to pay for it, so I ended up having to repack and reship at my cost anyway. The shipping situation domestically seems settled for the most part ever since I started going to a different post office. The delay at this point stems from being backed up from having had to reship over a hundred goddamn orders and still getting notices that I either missed one, or another one slipped through the cracks. My concern regarding the initial post in this thread is over international orders. In the past customs has slapped me rarely, but it seems I have to be more cautious and leave some leeway room for delays in any case. Edited because I'm in a really, really bad mood and blurted some stupid shit out.

I have to assign 900 tickets to David Bowie today, so I had to go in. =P Sucks here, but y'all could have guessed that. Heh! Pain is making me vulgar, and when my boss asked me why I'm going so slowly today and seem distracted, I said, "Because my vagina is dialating." *grunt* Only 700 more tickets to go...

Ok, at the risk of being way too graphic -- especially for the menfolk here -- this is what's up: Out of nowhere, I had a very severe, violent reaction to my birth control pills. It got steadily worse until it became something I couldn't stand anymore. I don't know when my body changed, but when it did... jeebus. My ob/gyn is switching me to an IUD, but since I've never given birth I have to use Cytotec in order to dialate prior to the proceedure tomorrow. It's 24 hours of extreme discomfort, bordering on completely incapacitating. I'm on Hour One right now, and it's damn near unbearable. The great thing is that I have to go in to the amphitheatre from 10am til 9.30pm. I laugh at my misfortune and bad planning skills. HA! - - - I love you guys so much. Thank you all for always being there for stupid ol' me.

I'll be ok, guys.... I'd tell you what's up, but it seriously might be TMI in a big way. Thanks for all the kind words. I'm going to do my best to finish up some emails tonight before I crash...

Hey guys -- quick note... I had to go in to the office today and yesterday -- the other office, unfortunately, as I still work for the theatre. Blech. I had to do a 10 hour day there yesterday, and 10-10 today, so I might be a little slow in getting back to everyone that resent their emails. I'm going to get through as many as I can when I get back tonight, and more when I get back tomorrow around 7pm.

We will be opening up international ordering through the web site later today for most of western Europe, Australia and New Zealand. Clephan, if you see this, I'm going to PM you when I get back from hockey practise. My sent mail is all out of whack, so I'm starting from scratch. =/

All the blackphoenixalchemylab.com ones. I think the mail is working now, it's just my computer that's blown a gasket.

We're still going through all the orders manually. It's taking some time, as they span over almost a full month. If your package has been eaten by the post office, you won't receive an email from me until the moment it ships. At this time, it's the only way I can keep things organized. If I haven't emailed you yet, it only means that I'm still repacking your order and you'll get a notice from me and, if it is a domestic order, from the USPS automated service when it goes out again. I'm truly sorry for any confusion that my previous post may have caused. I've been a little frazzled, and I seem to be typing out of sync with what I'm thinking -- if that makes any sense. We still have more than 70 orders to go through, so please be patient. I want to get all this cleared up by the week's end, so you shouldn't be waiting too much longer for a reshipment, barring another hellish incident.

There doesn't seem to be a problem with our SMTP server anymore, but there may be a problem on my side. I am going to resume replying to everyone tomorrow night after 7pm, after I do a complete reinstall on this computer. Thanks for your patience! Hopefully we can straighten this out asap. [cross-posted to the LJ Alchemylab forum]

The sample selection fields are now fixed. You should be able to list the scents once they're placed in the cart instead of waiting til checkout. Huzzah! Thank heavens for the little things.

Tomorrow being tonight, it seems. Jeebus, I didn't realize what time it was! I need to get my ass in bed... Please, don't any of you think for a moment that you're harassing me! I'm just so backed up... I'm so sorry.... =( =( =(

Hang on, guys. I think I should be able to get back to everyone by tomorrow night. Brain hurts. =(

Lizzie, I'm going to email you again in the morning when my brain is working properly. I'm all fuzzy and weird right now, and I think I may possibly stop making sense any minute now. Ugh. Ate yellow curry too late, and it's making me a little queasy...

Hey, you know... we should make a 'Jaded' scent. I mean, Ted looooooooooves Aerosmith. >

Ebony, I know this sounds silly, but... so many people I've hired haven't been able to do these simple things! I'm not going to launch into a litany of grief here [no matter how tempting!] but it's taken me over a year to find someone who could affix a label straight, fill out a customs form correctly, cut labels without butchering them, fill orders without screwing them up. No joke! Once the shipping snafu is completely behind me, I need to hire more people.

Orders placed while we were gone [all of which are tagged as 2/29 for some reason -- gotta love CcNow... I have no clue when any of the orders from that time really came in] are going out now along with more reshipments. We're about halfway through all of those orders -- we've barely scratched the new orders because of the USPS issue. So... when can I get myself an assembly line?

Er, I thought I deleted that. F*ckle. Remind me to do that tomorrow. =P

Did you know that the average human cannot handle more than 7 tasks [+/- 2] at once? I found that out the hard way. Many of you may have received USPS notices today [if you're in the US] or emails from me [for international orders]. I just wanted to clarify that those are all reshipments from people that have either notified me that there was a postal glitch or people whose USPS tracking number came up dead when I traced it. On the Good News Front, there will be a small site update soon, including Black Dahlia Blood Lotus The Dormouse Elegy And Hellfire is being reformulated completely. And in other news, the links section is being updated within the next 24 hours, the papow.com email addresses are completely dead, and we're still catching up on emails. I'm doing my best to get everyone taken care of! Time to do some filing before I suffocate under all these piles of paper. I hate filing. Edited to add: All the reshipments aren't complete yet. I won't be able to have everyone's errant order replaced immediately. Please allow 3-4 more business days if your reshipped package hasn't gone out yet. We should have everyone taken care of by the end of the week. I was only able to get out about 35 reshipments today. You all wouldn't f*ckin' BELIEVE how many orders we have to redo. It's making my head spin. Edited AGAIN because I am an IDIOT: I wrote "two" and listed four. What was I saying about not being able to do more than seven things at once? Jeebus...

The links section has been updated. Many more will be added over the next few days! As of tonight, we have finished all but five reshipments. Another batch of reshipped orders are going out tomorrow afternoon, and then one more on Saturday morning and I think we'll finally be done with that. The last of the international reshipments are going out in the Saturday batch. I should feel relieved, but I won't be able to relax until the shipments actually arrive. Starting Monday, we'll be able to get crackin' on the orders that came in while we were on vacation. At this time, I expect a maximum 10 business day day turnaround on them. Back to work!