Feel free to ignore this boorish account of why I don't have my Sidekick II yet. The photos of flowers and babies will return tomorrow.

So I ordered my Sidekick II on September 24th after the call-in sweepstakes debacle for a fair $299 without contract. I went on with my busy life, and seven business days later, I checked my tracking number at DHL.com to discover that my package was handed off to the U.S. Postal Service as per the DHL/USPS Alliance that T-Mobile has contracted. I gave it a few more days thinking USPS probably had to go through extra homeland security steps. The package sat in a facility in Rockville, Maryland for another week. When I called DHL to see what was going on, the phone rep passed the buck and said I should check USPS.com. After an unsuccessful try there, DHL tells me "oh, you need to add H to the beginning of the tracking number." Then I call USPS and they have no record of the package. During this time the package ends up back in Georgia, the point of origin, with both DHL and USPS seeing a comment in their shipment history saying "Final Delivery Confirmed." So while DHL and USPS assume no responsibility--both telling me that the activity note about final delivery to Georgia was incorrect--a T-Mobile rep acknowledged today that the package was indeed returned to Georgia, but of course T-Mobile saw fit to bill me for the phone at time of shipment. USPS claims the tag was damaged or fell off. Hmmm, well how did they track it back to Georgia? And why does DHL list a package as arriving at a final destination when it has actually been returned? Now T-Mobile has started a "handset research form" to begin a process to credit me the amount of the first phone, and express ship me another one for delivery by the end of next week. The rep assured me the SKIIs were in stock. We'll see. If this shipment is botched again, my nightmare will be being billed for two phones with nothing in hand. What irritates me most about situations like this is not the inefficiences of companies that don't interoperate well together, I see that all the time in my work, it's that the customer is almost always left with the burden of resolving delivery of their product while all the companies involved happily complete their profit-making activities. In my mind, T-Mobile takes the blame on this one again for contracting the wacky and undoubtedly low bid DHL/USPS alliance.

But, aside from some hassles around this new cell phone, my life is really good.

- mike lee - baltimore