For the THIRD time I had to call the company

that made my ABS tonneau cover to get an extra set of keys.

They were pretty slick when they decided to key their locks, as they chose some wierd foriegn off brand one of a kind key blanks to use. This insures that they will have a monopoly on spare keys.

The cover came with the usual 2 keys, which is about 4 too few because if you have a wife she wants one, and you should always one for the kids along with a spare or 2 for when you misplace your regular key ring.

Anyway, back to the original subject.

A couple months ago I called the company and some customer rep offered to send me 4 keys for free. Cool!

They never arrived, and after a month I called and got another customer service guy. He told me they were $2.50 a set so I ordered 4 sets for ten bucks. I gave him my Visa and waited.

Another month passed and no keys, so I called yesterday and got another customer service guy who tole me there was no record of the sale. He did, however, offer to send me a set for free.

I wonder if I'll see them or this is just more hot air.

And now I have to check the VISA statement when it comes in later in the week to make sure they didn't charge me for something I didn't get.

It's just been one big hassle.

I mentioned this to Mrs Pic and she commented that everything these days seems to be fragmented, and I suppose in many small businesses she's probably right. Nobody seems to know what the oher person is doing. It gets stupid at times.

On the other hand, we have a couple giants like UPS and FedEx that are amazing. They can tell you exaxtly where your package is and when it will arrive with ashonishingly few losses.

Sometimes people gripe about them, but when you look at ahat they do and think of the millions and millions of packages that they handle it's astonishing they are as good as they are.

It's a shame the government isn't as efficient.