The End? Again?

Well, Keyspan actually did write back within two days. Within one day, as a matter of fact, and with the answer to the question that I asked. Right there in their email: name, rank and serial number of the machine they sold me. Thank you, and let us know if we can be of any further assistance.

Is that some kind of miracle, or what?

So I filled in the appropriate blanks – this was last Friday – and then forgot it for a few more days. I remembered it on Sunday, but of course by then it was Sunday, so there was no rush to drop it in the mail.

On Monday, on my way out the door, I pulled the card from my shoulder bag and stuck it in the mailbox for the letter carrier to grab. But as I did, I noticed that I hadn’t written on it my return address.

Maybe it wouldn’t matter, just this one time?

No. We’ve met, right?

This one time would be the time the entire front of it would get dropped in a puddle and it wouldn’t get delivered and couldn’t come back to me so I would think that it was warrantied, until of course the thing broke down and they would tell me that I never sent the card and I would say I did, and then you good people would have to hear about that whole ordeal. Kind of like the time I fought with the mortgage company about the payment I sent in but they wouldn’t cover the stop-payment charges on the check even though they lost it – and then six months later when we had the floors done I found the envelope on the floor behind the shelf where we kept the cookbooks.

I hadn’t met you people yet when that happened. It’s not one of my proudest moments. But at least the mortgage payment was on time. Otherwise I might have lost the house. And lord knows I would not want that to happen.

Anyway, so I pulled the card out of the mailbox and slipped it under the door to finish dealing with when I got home (good thing we never put that weather-stripping on!).Wrote the address when I got home and dropped it in an actual, big blue mailbox that very afternoon. Phew. Finished.

Well, and wasn’t I surprised to see the damn thing back in the little black box on my door on Tuesday?

Stamps? Since when do you need to put stamps on pre-printed, self-addressed, product warranty cards?

Apparently, um, always. And apparently I would, um, know that if I ever sent them in. I thought it was like a magazine subscription: you know, they pay the postage in humble appreciation of your patronage? Apparently, um, it’s not. And boy, howdy, does that post office work fast!

So yesterday I put a stamp on it and sent the thing again. I hope it sticks. The stamp, I mean, as well as the warranty.

Then, also yesterday, my sister sent me a website she’d read about in Sunday’s Globe. Where, with the appropriate proof-of-purchase paperwork, I could get a $200 rebate on the furnace I just bought.

I printed out the form, but I’m not sure I should risk it. With my luck, and with my well-proven skill-set, the good people at national Gridspan will take one look at my form and go: “Oh, Erin? Actually, she owes us $200.

“Send a bill.”


PS Apropos of all the NyQuil talk on the comments yesterday: I watched a rerun of Two and Half Men yesterday evening, where they went to a bad section of town. There was a joke about the pile of cold medicine bottles in the lawn. Somebody says "They must have really bad allergies," and the other person says "You don't watch 60 Minutes, do you?"

Well, I don't watch 60 minutes, and when I saw this joke the first time it went straight over my head. (Something I'm not sure I ought to be admiting: that 2 1/2 Men jokes go over my head. But anyway) I got it this time. Thanks, bleaders!