I've been so excited to tell you this story but I had to wait until after Christmas Day. It's so sweet it will make you say aah!
In late November I recieved an email asking for help to locate the famous River Island panda hoodie for a guy to give his girlfriend for her Christmas present, but sadly it was sold out everywhere... here's his story:
So, after some hopefully fairly subtle enquiries ("But you like it though?" and "It is quite you, don't you think?"), I managed to do enough to confirm that she did indeed like it, but wasn't going to buy one for herself. At that point, I decided that that was what I would buy her for Christmas -- after all, I've always been of the belief that Christmas presents should always be the kind of things that someone wants, but would never buy for themselves...
Problem was, I then got completely swamped in work and forgot about it... :(
...until my girlfriend and I started talking about Christmas. "Ooooh, Christmas," I thought, "I must get her that jumper as soon as I get paid!"
Pay day came and went, and I started looking on-line at River Island's site. Sold out in almost every size. :( Bugger.
So, rang around my local branches -- sold out, sold out, sold out. Their suggestion was to e-mail customer services -- customer services, when they finally replied, told me to ring customer services.
Rang customer services, they gave me a list of branches in my area (mostly London branches) that each had 1 of the right size in stock. Rang each branch, and it turned out their inventorying system was wrong -- the item had either already been sold or had disappeared from the stock room or the shop floor, never to be seen again.
Panic set in. So I rang customer services, and widened the net -- asked them to find all the branches anywhere in England that had them. Got the list, each branch allegedly having 1 of the appropriate size in stock. Rang them all, all sold out. :(
By this point, I'd completely lost the plot -- I suddenly had NO idea at all what to buy my girlfriend for Christmas, I was completely and totally focussed on the now apparently unobtainable jumper. Another call to customer services -- all the branches in the UK. Suddenly, three branches stuck out as being good bets -- Hereford (just about doable in a day by train -- not sure why it didn't flag up before with the list of England branches) had 2, and both Belfast stores seemingly had them (one had 2, the other had 3).
I rang Hereford first. Another disaster -- the store had recently been completely gutted by fire. Gutted was how I felt at this point, too.
Belfast it is, then. Except getting to Belfast would be completely unfeasible, so the next question was did I know anyone in Belfast to even get hold of them? Who cares, I thought -- I should at least check first that they have them.
I rang the Donegall Place branch - the one that apparently had 3 of the right size. Nope, nothing. None. All gone.
By this point, I wasn't expecting anything of the Belfast Victoria Square branch. After all, nowhere else had them, even branches with allegedly 3 in stock, and besides, it was in Belfast. But still, "if you don't buy a ticket, you can't win the lottery". I rang -- they had one in stock!
...and a policy of not being able to ship it to any other branch, not being able to post it out, and not accepting payment over the phone. If I wanted it, I'd have to go into the branch and collect it. My heart sank. "Stuff it", I thought, and asked them to reserve it anyway. "It's reserved until the end of tomorrow", they said. So, now time was of the essence.
I started dredging the internet for ways to get someone to get hold of it for me from Belfast. I asked on the Facebook threads of a couple of Northern Irish bands I really liked -- appealing to the good nature of their fans and hoping someone would help me out. Nothing. A random google search -- trying to find people who appreciated the wonders of the panda hooded jumper -- offered up Lauren's blog (where you're reading this!). I e-mailed Lauren, not expecting a reply or anything, but instead Lauren tried to work miracles -- asking people to help out on Twitter, begging River Island's PR people to help make a Christmas dream come true...
...but still it came to nothing. :(
Disheartened, I let the item in Belfast go. Then Liz, one of my friends on Facebook, asked me how I was getting on with the hunt for the elusive hooded jumper. I told her about the Belfast one, seemingly the last one in existence. And she said she might have friends in Belfast, she'd see what she could do. I rang River Island Victoria Square back -- they still had it. They reserved it again. And then Ali, Liz's friend, agreed to pick it up - in spite of being a single mum and therefore having the whole worry about being out of pocket. To make sure she wasn't out of pocket, I PayPal'd her the money for the jumper AND for postage AND a little extra to say thank you. She collected it, posted it, and it's now sat in a carrier bag next to me!
Yay! Happy Christmas, Helen - I hope you like your present. :-D"
Isn't that just the sweetest story!? Merry Christmas everyone!
x
WOW I hope she really liked her present, that is a great effort :0 Merry Christmas xx
ReplyDeleteawww how sweet is that guy!!!! and it's awesome of you too to try and help! the girlfriend is so lucky! :)
ReplyDeleteBless him!! He sounds like an amazing boyfriend!xx
ReplyDeleteAha thats so sweet :)
ReplyDeleteFingers crossed she liked it :D
Lou
xx
Rainbows and Buttons
OMG that is soooo sweet! The lengths he went to get her that jumper <3 Awwww xx
ReplyDeleteAwww bless this fella! I have the jumper too! x
ReplyDeleteAwww what a sweet Christmas story! :)
ReplyDeleteThat is the sweetest story and such a tale of true love <3 xx
ReplyDeleteHi all -- just to say that I'm the "author" of the story, and my girlfriend absolutely _loved_ the jumper, doubly so when she read all of this and realised the efforts I'd gone to to get it. :)
ReplyDeleteMerry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all! :)
lovely story you really went all out to gte the present! Ali is a lovely person and I am lucky to have her as a friend:-)
ReplyDeleteHi, I am the extremely lucky girlfriend, currently sat wearing my fabulous panda hoodie... I cannot believe the lengths my lovely man went to, thank you to everyone who got involved! Hope you all had as merry a christmas as me... x
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