We’d like to share a personal story: it involves Amazon, Christmas presents, and three broken pizza stones.

We and our sister both asked for, and received, this lovely Old Stone Oven pizza stone for Christmas. They were bought through Amazon. Ours arrived on the the twenty-third, in several pieces, as the above picture shows. Probably because Amazon took the box that contained the stone, which was marked “FRAGILE,” and stuck it in another box not marked “FRAGILE,” and used a piece of paper as padding. Like this:

Putting a fragile package in another box in such a way that it isn’t surrounded by padding probably means that it will break, which it did. Whatever, we called Amazon as soon as we unpacked it, told them what happened, and they assured us that a new one would arrive the next day, Christmas Eve.

It never came.

When we spoke to our sister, we found out Amazon sent her the same stone, packaged the same way, and it broke. We’re currently on the phone with Amazon, asking where our replacement stone is, and they’ve told us that UPS has returned it to them because it broke. That’s the third broken pizza stone, and we’re sure they packaged it in the same careless, ineffective way that they packaged the first two. Amazon is now out of stock on pizza stones for at least a month, and although we suggested they overnight us one from a Marketplace seller, they’ve demurred, instead offering to mail us a gift card for the amount sometime next week. No thanks.

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