After a long struggle - going through all hopes and despair IPHONE finally reached me - thanks to all the people involved in the transaction and transport.
The story goes like this :
During my stay at Sweden, I was going through the Ebay site and came across a 16GB Iphone which was priced at 100$. I made a bid for it and by the time the bid was over, the price had risen to 400$. It was the first bid of my life so I didn't want to loose it (stupid argument though but works since I was thousands of mile away from US and was not bound to pay) so I kept increasing my stake till I finally won it. Within a day I started getting mail from the seller forcing me to buy it. I consulted Praneeth and we decided not to buy it. I tried to avoid it but Ebay started forcing me (that they would discontinue my account bla bla) so I had to convince the seller that I was running low on money and apologized for it.
Within a week I bade again for another 8GB Iphone. This time I was strategic. I went through all the available ones on Ebay. All of them were priced high. But there was one which had a title PDA phone and was priced 50$; 5 hours left for the bid to get over - with no other bidder. I kept following it and finally won it at 248$. That was a cool deal but I was confused. I told my parents - my dad got very excited about it so I made my mind for it.
Next day itself I got a mail and a person named Jason (from California) added me onto his gtalk list. I talked to him about the condition of the phone and was satisfied. He was selling it as he wanted to buy the 3G one releasing that day (11th July) in US. I asked Ashish Bhatia who was then doing his intern in California for his address and gave it to him. Jason said that Bhatia's house is a few kms away from his so I was pretty satisfied and paid him on Paypal immediately. He said he would personally give it to him. He even called him up. Three days later, there was no news about the phone and Jason was unreachable on his phone. I was little scared. Then he told me on gtalk that Paypal has suspended his account as he had not submitted the postal tracking number with them so he had parceled the phone to Bhatia. I waited for two days. Then Bhatia told me that the address he had given was of his friend. The package did arrive there but they needed his signature so it could not be delivered. I asked him to leave a message on the door but it didn't work. Tried asking Jason to advise the Fedex people to not ask for signature. By the time it could be managed, 3 delivery attempts were done by fedex and now the only way was to go and collect it from the fedex office which according to Bhatia was 20 miles away. He said he would go on weekend. It was hardly 10 days left before he had to leave US. But he didn't get time. On the last day I even told him to take a taxi to the place I will pay for it. He said "You should have given me this idea before .There's hardly any time. Please samjha kar yaar" and he came to India without it. :|
That was just the beginning of a long journey. I was pretty hopeless and disheartened by then. It was 8 am here. I went to mess with Lord and cursed Ashish like hell. Then I started thinking "what next". I asked Jason to collect the phone and parcel to India for 100$. But he went off the town for a few days and fedex made 3 delivery attempts to him and failed. He said he would collect it and parcel it. Suddenly one day I came to know that Vibhor Jain was in California itself. I asked him and he agreed. I once again continued with the broken dream.It was already 25th July and he was coming on 13th August. On 9th I wanted to confirm about the status when I came to know that Vibhor was leaving US on 11th. I asked Jason. He said he had planned to dispatch it the day after and it wouldn't be possible for it to be delivered so fast. So here was the second bump.
In the meanwhile Anshu bhaiya came home and Papa discussed the issue. He said many of his friends were in US and I could get it shipped to them. He even gave me the addresses. I kept pursuing Jason and he kept saying that the fedex people were not replying properly - its lunch time etc etc. One day he finally told me that they are saying that the package had reached their warehouse in Utah and someone needs to file a claim. Then he again became dormant for quite a few days until he told me "Is there anyway you can manage it yourself". He gave me their phone no which was not accessible from here. I started pursuing them through mails. First I gave Anshu bhaiya's friends address but the matter required regular touch with the recipient. I called Fedex India. They said that Indian service is not related to the US one. "But Vibhor Jain would have reached back by now and will definitely come to India sometime", thought I. The situation was strange. The sender(Jason) was not very active - the recipient(Bhatia) of the package had left US and a third person (me) was claiming it from India to be delivered to a fourth person in US. This was the very question Fedex asked me. I tried convincing them and finally they asked me to file an online claim. I went to the page and filed a claim in the name of Vibhor. It asked for 3 documents - print of the claim page, airbill and the payment bill. I managed to find the pament bill from Paypal but airbill must be with Jason. He said that he might have it in his car and would scan fax me. After so many requests he never sent it.
Alas ...what a bad deal. Vibhor told me that he got a call from them and he asked them to deliver it to him. Ok! some hope again and again before I could imagine the phone in my hand I got a mail "We shall not process the claim without the 2 documents". One more request to Jason but no response. Then one day I return from lab and the gtalk flashed a new mail message with subject "Got the iphone :)" from Vibhor. I literally didn't believe it. I was surprised because the documents were not yet submitted. That was an offline message. I buzzed him next time he was online and no reply. No reply next time as well. Now what mystery was that..... for God's sake......!!
Finally he replied after 3 days saying that when he reached home it was lying outside. I took a great sigh of relief. I asked him if he was coming to India. He said there are many people coming to India in December so it wont be a problem. He handed over to Vaibhav. I sent him a mail with my phone number but he didnt contact me for next 5 days - Vibhor said it was exam time there. Around 20th I asked Vibhor again and he said he was in India for 3 days. I was leaving for home. I mailed him again and got a call from him saying that he would be in Kanpur the next day.
By the time I could reach here he had to leave. I was on the bus so I asked Surya to call him up and take it from him but he had no balance. Lord was also not here then. After hour i got a call from Lord that he was in campus. And he did the honours. I reached here around 7 pm and he was busy finding cracks for it. The entire journey was 10000 km and 5 months long....!!
The next post describes how it was cracked and what happened next.
