SJ vs The Greenhouse
Brief break from the usual TTRPG write-ups, because I need to vent about the absolute nightmare of trying to buy a greenhouse online. Consider this a real-life side quest.
It started in mid-November, right in the thick of Black Friday Month, that magical time of year where you go online for a bit of inspiration.
I was browsing Amazon for Christmas present ideas for my fiancée when I spotted it: a 6x8ft aluminium-frame greenhouse with polycarbonate panels, sitting there at 30% off like it was personally calling to me. Practical. Exciting. The sort of gift that says “I love you, and I also love the idea of you having cucumbers,” or maybe chillis if we’re feeling ambitious. Into the basket it went, payment plan set up, job done, Christmas: Sorted.
The plan was set, I get the greenhouse delivered, I recruit my dad to help me build it down at our allotment, I take a picture of it, put it in a nice frame, wrap it and present it to the missus on Christmas morn.
A few days later, I got an email from ArrowXL saying they’d deliver on 4th December, complete with a helpful little link offering the option to change the delivery date. The 4th was fine, but I clicked the link anyway just to see what other slots were available.
That click cancelled the delivery. Instantly. No confirmation, no “are you sure?”, no warning, just gone. The system spat out a new booking link, and the next available slot that worked for me was Saturday 13th December. Not ideal, I just lost nine days to a single mouse click, and I had a wedding reception to go to in the evening, but fine. I picked it, because at that point what else do you do?
Saturday morning arrived and I was waiting in, sitting in my suit, ready to finally get the thing through the door, while my partner got ready for the reception. Then a text came through: there’d been an “error at the depot” and they would instead deliver on Monday 15th, followed by the single most infuriating phrase I’ve ever read in customer service language:
“No need to call to re-arrange.”
Monday is a workday. I can’t exactly magic myself home from twenty miles away because a depot had a wobble. So I tried to contact them. The web portal went unanswered and the phone line told me there were 108 people ahead of me in the queue, I like to imagine all of them were also told they didn’t have to call to re-arrange. We opted for a callback and tried to carry on with our weekend.
Seven hours later, at the wedding reception, I checked my phone and saw I’d missed their callback by ten minutes. That was it. That was my entire opportunity to speak to a human being, and I had missed it because I was enjoying a lovely plate of lamb dal and garlic naan. I tried again the next day through web chat and got nowhere.
Monday arrived. I was at work. A text landed saying delivery would be between 1 and 3pm, which was about as useful to me as a chocolate teapot. At 12:45, the driver rang to say he’d be there in fifteen minutes. I apologised and explained I’d been trying all weekend to reschedule and couldn’t get through. He was, genuinely, the most helpful person I actually spoke to in the entire saga: he understood, noted on the manifest that I’d requested a new date, and drove off with my greenhouse dreams still intact.
The next day an email arrived asking what date I wanted instead. The only option available was Christmas Eve.
Fine. I was off work that day. We could do it. Christmas Eve rolls around and… nothing. Then at 10pm, long after I had already assumed disappointment, I got a text saying they wouldn’t be delivering and I’d need to reschedule. The next available date was 31st December.
At that point, I had to tell my fiancée that her main Christmas present simply wasn’t happening. I had smaller things, little bits and pieces, but the big gift, the one I’d been so pleased with, would be spending Christmas Day, Boxing Day and every day up till New Years Eve stuck in a warehouse. She was, because she’s annoyingly wonderful, completely understanding about it.
Then came the moment that genuinely made me sit and stare at my phone like it had just insulted my family.
On 30th December, ArrowXL called. I accidentally cancelled the call, but immediately rang back and got a recorded message saying they were only calling to confirm delivery and there was no need to call back. Fair enough. I opened the tracking page to check the details.
It said: “Delivery cancelled, returning to sender.”
I phoned customer service. The queue was mercifully short this time. They told me they’d tried to phone me four times to confirm the delivery and, per policy, because they couldn’t reach me, they had to cancel the order. I pointed out I only had one missed call. They then read out the numbers they’d called: my number once… and another number three times. A number I didn’t recognise.
There was a brief pause while the situation caught up with itself. Then I asked if they could reinstate the delivery, because, obviously, they’d been phoning the wrong person.
They couldn’t. Policy. Cancelled meant cancelled. Their solution was for me to “call the seller and see if they’ll send a new one.”
So that was that. The greenhouse was dead. Or at least, I thought it was, until Amazon charged me the second payment anyway a few days later on 2nd January. Thankfully, Amazon customer service sorted that part out quickly. Refunds processed, apologies given, and I was back to square one.
Except I was stubborn, and at this point it had become personal, I also had Gentleman’s Influenza (more commonly known as “Man Flu”), so thinking straight wasn’t really on the cards.
I went back online determined to find another one, and a google search hands me a link to Costco, offering a wooden greenhouse for £82. I was a breath away from entering my card details before I checked the URL and realised it was basically a random selection of letters and numbers, a scam site. A sarcastic slow clap to Google Shopping for trying to lead me into a digital alleyway.
The next day I found that TJ Hughes were running January sales. They had an upgraded version of the same greenhouse for only £50 more than the Amazon one. I bought it immediately (after verifying the URL was legit) and tried very hard not to emotionally attach myself to the idea of “delivery dates” ever again.
Two days later, I got a message from DHL: they had my shipment and would deliver on the 9th.
On the 9th, my partner rang me to say a 1.9m tall box had arrived and she couldn’t move it (she is, in her words and mine, “smol”). I suggested it would probably be fine in the hallway until I got home. She sent a photo. It was, indeed, tall.
But the moment I saw it, a cold little bit of maths kicked in. The box was just long and narrow. I zoomed in on the label in the photo and read the dimensions: 240 × 270mm. Now, I was expecting them to be at least 600mm wide, so unless someone at the factory has invented foldable polycarbonate, there’s no universe where the panels are in that. The only conclusion was: this was the frame and fittings, and the panels should be in a second box which isn’t there. I checked the tracking, and sure enough, there was a second parcel due on the 14th.
On the 13th, the tracking for the second parcel updated to: “Returned to sender.”
At this point, I started feeling like the universe was actively messing with me.
I emailed TJ Hughes. They replied that DHL had it and it would be delivered within two business days. By the 19th, nothing had happened, so I contacted DHL directly. On the 20th (23 hours later), they replied with a single message that boiled down to: “We’ve sent it back. Call your supplier. Thanks 😀” I pointed out that the tracking still showed it sitting at their delivery hub. No response.
So I went back to TJ Hughes again and basically said: please don’t chase that parcel through the void. Just send new panels. A day later I got the classic “I’ve forwarded this to the team” response, which is customer service for “I’ve had enough of your whining, and I’m going to make it someone else’s problem.”
Then, to their credit, they came back and confirmed they were sending out replacement panels and would provide tracking.
Before they even got a chance to send me the tracking, my Evri app updated with the details automatically. Evri estimated 2–5 business days.
Today is 26th January, and in the single most shocking twist of this entire saga, Evri delivered the panels first time with no drama. Which is extra funny because Evri have the sort of reputation where some people swear they’ve cancelled orders the moment they see that name pop up as the courier. Not me, though, in fairness they’ve mostly been fine for me… aside from that one time I was selling my dad’s Queen cassette tape collection and it arrived at the customer’s doorstep as a magnetic curtain instead. But I digress. No mysterious cancellations, no wrong phone numbers, no late-night texts, just the panels, delivered, first attempt, like a completely normal delivery company.
So now everything is finally here: frame, fittings, panels, the whole lot, piled up in my living room. Not as a sleek, secret build with my dad and a framed photo reveal on Christmas morning, but as a polycarbonate-and-cardboard assault course that my cat is treating like a playground. I’m stepping over boxes to make a cup of tea like I live in a warehouse, waiting for the weather to offer me a single dry weekend so I can build the damn thing.
Still… it’s here. After all the reschedules, cancellations, wrong numbers, and one very near miss with a too-good-to-be-true scam site, I’ve learned two things:
1. Buying a greenhouse online is apparently a test from the Gods, and
2. Next Christmas, I’m getting her something that fits in a carrier bag.
(I’ll update this post with a picture once it’s built)
