Red tape

You may remember me writing about choosing which saucepans to order, well that was back in November. I chose a set with a few additions from an English company called Samuel Groves, I thought I was hopeful at the time, thinking I’d get them before Christmas - well they have made it before Easter - today they finally arrived. I have to say though Samuel Groves, who we bought them from, have been amazing. They had a slight delay before Christmas on production, which they apologised for, but kept me updated and advised once they had been shipped. That was when the real delay started to happen. I’m not sure if they got caught in the delays at Dover over Christmas or just caught up in post Brexit red tape, I think the latter, but they have spent a good few months in customs. All the time Katie and Dharma at Samuel Groves have been emailing me updating me on what action they had been taking, chasing the courier company and following up where the pans actually were. We had a slight clue the delivery was moving closer as Brian had received a text this week asking us to pay some import duty. Which he did immediately, we didn’t want the courier company to have any excuses to return them.

Then, typically, we missed a delivery by Chronopost today when we’d just nipped out to get some bread. Soon after Brian received another text from them saying they had failed to deliver them. He immediately checked the website and found that they were being held at a delicatessen in Essoyes. They were open until 6.30 pm, so off we went to collect them and picked up a piece of pie whilst we were there.

The wait was definitely worth it.