A tale of holiday woe for your enjoyment. I just logged into my BestBuy.com account to make sure that the gift I ordered for someone on my list would indeed arrive by Christmas. It will not. Could be Best Buy’s fault, could be UPS’ fault – either way, the train went off the tracks.

My predicament, in pictures:

BestBuy.com’s holiday ordering deadlines (see here). I needed to have ordered an item before yesterday at 11AM Eastern that says “Usually leaves our warehouse in 1 business day” in order to receive it by Christmas.

I order the above item. It says “Usually leaves our warehouse in 1 business day.”

But wait! There’s more!

I ordered the item last Thursday, December 17th – four full days before the deadline.

And when checking the tracking number via UPS.com last night, here’s what I got:

Shipment sent out on Friday, December 18th – fair enough – with a scheduled delivery date of December 29th, a full four days after Christmas. Santa will be long gone by then!

To its credit, Best Buy is offering people who don’t get their stuff by Christmas the following:

So that’s $20 plus $6.95 in reimbursed shipping charges. Fine, I guess. I just reordered everything via in-store pickup instead but let this be a lesson to everyone to DOUBLE CHECK THE SHIPPING INFORMATION FOR YOUR ONLINE ORDERS. The person who’s receiving this gift would have understood if it didn’t show up until the 29th, your small child may not.