The Cost of Moving: Learning That My Mattress Is Being Shipped to the Wrong Address

Photo credit: Mike Mozart, CC BY 2.0.

I cannot even believe how much time I’ve spent on this, but here goes.

When I was in Cedar Rapids last week, I bought a mattress at JCPenney. I bought the mattress in-store (instead of online) because I wanted to schedule the delivery date for after Dec 1.

Right before I swiped my credit card, I asked the salesperson “don’t you want to know my shipping address?”

“Oh no,” the salesperson said. “Your address is already in the computer.”

“No no no no no,” I said. “That’s my current address. In Seattle. I’m moving to Cedar Rapids. I need it shipped to my new apartment.”

So I gave her my new address, and she put it in the computer, and everything seemed fine until I got an email from JCPenney late Wednesday evening letting me know my mattress had shipped.

To my Seattle address.

When I looked at the email—and when I dug out the paper receipt I had received after I did the in-person transaction—I saw that the salesperson had put my Cedar Rapids address as the BILLING address, and my Seattle address as the SHIPPING address. Never mind that we’d had this whole conversation about where the mattress should be shipped, and never mind that my credit card is associated with my Seattle zip code. (Shouldn’t that have raised a flag somewhere?)

I called JCPenney customer service right away, but their offices were closed, so I called them first thing the next morning.

The first CSR I spoke with said they could get the address changed, and then she transferred me to two other people and I finally ended up talking to someone who schedules the trucks, who said they couldn’t change the address because I didn’t have a tracking number yet.

That call took nearly 40 minutes, most of which were spent on hold.

Since the first CSR had said I could get the address changed, I tried calling JCPenney again. This time I got a different CSR who said I would have to contact the JCPenney store where I had bought the mattress.

So I did, and got stuck in a phone tree that asked me to dial an extension, and then said “you have dialed an incorrect number” for every extension I tried. I couldn’t even get an operator—dialing 0 was also an incorrect extension.

At this point I’ve put more than an hour’s worth of time into this. Since I don’t know what else to do, I call JCPenney customer service again.

This time I get a CSR who says she can get the address changed, and after asking me for my order number and confirming that my billing and shipping addresses were switched, she says “Okay, I switched them back. Your mattress will be shipping to Cedar Rapids.”

“Can I get any kind of confirmation on that?” I asked. “Like… an email?”

“No, we can’t do that,” she said, “but don’t worry, it’s taken care of. You’ll be getting a call from us when it’s time to schedule your delivery.”

So I guess I have to wait two more weeks to confirm that my mattress has actually been sent to Cedar Rapids.

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