Ripped Off by Walmart Crooks

 I'm an idiot, and I'll tell you why.  Because I needed groceries and just like in the USA I just ordered them from Walmart.  They said everything was in stock.  A delivery man came early the next day.  I was half asleep.  I asked if this was everything.  He said yes.  I tipped him $100 pesos and went back to bed.

More than half the order was missing.  I naively thought it was a mistake.  I contacted support and said to get all the missing items to me.  They said they'd contact me in 90 minutes with a resolution.

They never contacted me.  I tried to reach them again.  Someone asks me what the problem is in chat then never replies.  I try Whatsapp.  Same thing.  I tried to call them.  I get a message in Spanish saying the number has changed call this new number.  I can't understand what they said. I get my Spanish friend to try to listen to the number.  She can't understand what they said.

So, I figure maybe someone will contact me tomorrow.  They don't.  My neighbor is downstairs talking to my mother.

"Don't order from Walmart.  They steal items from delivery orders and put them all together to share every week.  They especially like stealing from gringos."

Oh.  Great.  So I basically set myself up for being ripped off by being half asleep and not checking shit like an idiot.  

I used AI to find the fucking new phone number to call.  And my mom helps me.  For some reason, my chat request starts lighting up as soon as I get through to someone on the call.  This happened twice during my struggle to get my money back (which I still haven't).  It's like the chat people know when I've called or something.

Both of them said the store would call me to arrange a refund.  They have until tomorrow and then I'm doing a force chargeback.  I don't care if I can never shop at Walmart for the rest of my life.  Fuck these crooks.  I'm fighting this.

And, let me say, I've had stuff stolen before.  My shrimp never arrived last time and I suspected that the delivery man had helped himself to my expensive shrimp.  But I wasn't sure.  

Now I'm sure.

People are so nice in Mexico you forget to watch your shit.  And in my defense, this only happened once in the USA when the delivery person distracted me to steal soda he had already taken a photo of as delivered.  

I'm busy.  I'm new here.  I didn't know I had to be on my fucking guard.  But yeah, obviously I know not to order groceries again, unless it's one of the Didi food bikes for a few odd things. 

Real Neighbors

We got a package delivery today, which was odd, because we weren't expecting anything.  The delivery man said it's for our neighbor and when he called them they said to leave it with us.

1. Yes, delivery men, like FedEx, will call you if you're not home.

2.  No number 2.  Just wanted to make a list here.

We were happy to accept the package.  We thought it was for our right side neighbor who is our close friend now.  That's the one we went to Sams Club with in the last post.  She brought us her pozole and brings strawberries and oranges for us a lot.  In turn, I gave her 20 bottles of sugary soda I accidentally bought because I thought it was seltzer.  @-@

But no.  It's the neighbor on our other side, which is the last house on the street, so we're their closest neighbor.

They don't know us except for us saying hi/bye.  But that's enough.  And we gave them their package later that night.  

I mean...that's how things are here.  And I think it's great.  I think it's great that the delivery men call and really care about getting your stuff to you.  I think it's great that the default is just to trust your neighbor.  

People talk about 'the good old days' in the USA.  I'm living those 'good old days' here in Mexico.  You know, 'the good old days' where people put their hearts into their jobs, and neighbors trusted each other.

Anyway, I went to Sams Club because I needed protein powder and didn't want to wait to order some.  I figured Sams Club was a gringo enough store to have it in stock.  It did.  And it was 2x the price in the USA.  Fricking $75 for a tub of Musclemilk.  Like seriously?  It's like $45 in the USA.  I guess it was all the cost to import it.

Protein powder is definitely an American thing.  The friends with me didn't know what it was.  They asked my mom why I needed it.  My mother told them I'm missing half my guts and poop myself and need to drinks special powder.  Or I assume that's what she said.  My Spanish isn't that good yet.

The truth is I was dieting and doing really good.  So I added wrist weights.  The only weights I could get were 2.5 kilos per wrist.  This is compared to the 2.5 pound weights I used to have.  I figured it's fine because it only takes a few weeks for the weights to feel to light anyway.  So I started with these and my body said:  You apparently want muscles!  Give me protein!

I found myself scarfing 2 porkchops before bed and my diet was ruined.  I gained back several kilos.  I can't do this.  I figured If I drank protein powder before my workout I'd have it covered.

After eating 2 hamburger patties tonight I can say it didn't work.  So, no weights for a while.  It's too soon for them anyway.  

In other Mexico news, I don't think there's mail here.  I really don't.  I don't think the Mexico government sponsors a national mail service.  We have a mailbox, but there's never been anything put in it.  And we've never seen mail carriers, vehicles, or postal workers.  

Documents get delivered, but by private courier services.  There's lots of them.  

I've always said my little brother could never adapt to live in Mexico because there are some hassles I don't think he'd deal well with.

1. You can't flush toilet paper. He'd die.
2. You have to go to a gas station to pay your cell bill. And you never know when it's due because the app is not only in Spanish, but it's screwy.  
3. You can't get a monthly phone plan.  All the phones are pay as you go.
4. You have to buy the screen protector at a different store than you bought the cell phone.
5. Most stores don't have iPhones, but they do have nice Huawei phones?
6. You have to go to a gas station to pay your internet bill.  Actually I managed to do this online.  I don't know why I can't just pay my phone online.  It's the same fricking company.
7. If they say a package will be coming tomorrow it may be tomorrow, or it may be in 4 days.  So you better not absolutely positively need to get something that day.
8. Nothing is universal.  
1. Toilet sizes are different here, they have their own standards. 
2. Addresses are written differently. They have postal codes here but you put it before the name of the city, and the street number is put AFTER the name of the street, and you have to specify which 'Colony' you live in. The state abbreviations are 3 letters.
3. You need the equivalent of two social security numbers as a citizen here.  An RFC for taxes, and a CURP for banking and invoicing?  I don't know what this whole invoicing thing is about here but they're constantly asking me for my CURP to give me an invoice.  And I say I don't need one, which they think is weird.  But what do I need the invoice for?  Maybe Mexican taxes.
4. What was I listing again?  Oh well, nevermind.

When we're driving around La Paz we notice a lot of cars that don't have license plates.  I thought it odd.  They definitely have license plates here.  I see them on most cars.  But many are without them.  I saw my neighbor didn't have one and she said the car wasn't registered.  ??  'I know someone who works for the police so it's fine.'  Okay then.

I Have Friends

 Even with bad Spanish I have friends in Mexico.  Friends who don't speak English, but we make it work.  I just went to Sams Club with my neighbor and her daughters.  It was fun.  

My mom asked when the last time was we had friends where we lived?  In the mobile home park we lived in in Las Vegas.  And that's because everyone was a transplant like us.  We knew everyone who lived around us and even went to a two funerals.

But that was 15 years ago.  I knew one neighbor in Arizona and she died.  The other who gave me her grapefruit from her tree moved.  And the new owner put a Trump sign in their yard.  (But there was a lot of Kamala signs).

I did try to make friends in Tucson.  I went to bingo.  I went to poker.  I couldn't connect to anyone.

The USA is lonely.  In Mexico the people are so kind.  They just seem to proceed with the idea, 'Oh, you live here now?  Let's be friends.'  

It's a beautiful thing.

Mexico Musings

I was thinking the other day that my mom and I should go out for lunch.  And in my head was all the places we used to eat at in the USA.  Then I snapped out of it, and remembered I'm in Mexico now.

No more Red Lobster.  Er...actually, we already said we'd never eat there again after the menu turned to shit and got stupidly expensive.  

No more Texas Roadhouse.  Um...there was always a line to get in there.  They were always crowded.  And yeah the steaks were good, but $150 for two people?

I tried to think of a place we actually liked to eat at in Tucson and came up empty.  The Chinese food there was terrible.  My mom can't eat much of the American version of Mexican food because she can't handle anything spicey.  (In actual Mexico, it's really not like this that often.)

Oh wait, there was one go-to mainstay:

No more Churches Chicken.  Okay, well, I like fried chicken of this sort and they don't really have that here.  It more the El Pollo Loco style baked chicken everywhere.  If I want to get American style fried chicken there is one single solitary KFC in the gringo area of La Paz.  We've eaten there twice.  

When I say eaten there, I mean went through the drivethru.  

Ahhh...ordering through drive-thru's.  Such an American convenience.  I pulled right into that drive thru the first time with all the confidence of a stupid American and ordered.

"Doce piezas familia bucket por favor." 😀

There!  I did it!  Amazing.

*Rapid Spanish questions that sound like gibberish to me.* 

😨AHHHH!  What did he say?!  Mom what did he say?!😨  

Mom:  I don't know.  I couldn't hear him.  Ask him to repeat.

HOW THE FUCK DO I DO THAT?

Me:  Um...extra crispy?

NO!  *Rapid Spanish Gibberish Sounding Words*

Mom:  I have no idea what he's saying.

Me meekly:  No intiendo.

A manager gets on:  😡Pull up to de weendow.

I pay and am handed a bag of food.

FUCK!  WE GOT COLESLAW!  He was asking what sides you want you idiot!

Yeah.  So.  Drivethrus are a no until my Spanish gets 10x better.

But I don't need Drive thrus!  I got Didi Food!  

Didi Food is the UberEats of my area (and maybe all of Mexico?)  It's also the Uber of my area.  It has another app called Didi Drive.

Any time we're out and about there are motorcycles with boxes attached zipping through traffic at mach speed with the Didi Food logo on the back.  I got in on that shit quick let me tell you.

And let me tell you something else:  Ordering food delivery in Mexico is FUCKING AWESOME!

USA:  We only had UberEats in my area.  I have *NEVER* had an order of literally *ANYTHING* be less than $100.  Korean food?  $150.  $70 for the food.  $80 for the fees and tip.  And it was a race against time for them to deliver before the gate to my building closed for the night.  So I always did the $3 'straight to me' fee too.

Mexico:  Literally no way for any food order to cost more than $50.  That's with EVERYTHING.  Fees.  Tip. Letting the delivery person keep the change.  Everything.

And I say there's literally no way for it to cost more than $50usd because you can only order up to $1000 pesos worth of food ($50) and pay cash for it.  Otherwise you have to pay with a credit card.  

And guess what?  They don't accept any of my credit cards.  I try.  They fail.  I'm routed to a page to get a ClaroPay account.  Which I would love, but I don't have a tax ID number for Mexico (the local Mexico one).  They didn't give me one because I'm not allowed to work here, and that's how they make sure of it.  If I can't pay taxes, I can't work.

Hence, I have to make sure every order is under $50 enough for there to be room for the fees and tip.  You'd think that's a problem, right?

I just ordered lunch for my mom and I for $250 pesos.  $13.  And that was, again, EVERYTHING.  A pizza.  A tip. The App fees.  It was actually only like $220, but the delivery people always give change in a massive pile of coins so I told him to keep it.

BUT WAIT!  It gets even better.  La Paz is a reasonably big city.  250,000 people here.  It's a decent size.  Big enough for us to have everything we need.  However, the whole city is on a very small footprint.  There is no such thing as a 'long drive' here.  Everything is within 6 kilometers of us.  

In Tucson we had to give ourselves an hour to drive anywhere.  It's a 30 minute drive to get anywhere because there was so much sprawl.  But add to that constant annoying construction and bad traffic in winter when all the snowbirds were there.

But here? THE FOOD COMES FAST.  Especially since there's a million places within 3 kilometers to order from.  

It comes faster than the Apps estimate.  The app said 30 minutes.  Yeah right, it was 17 minutes.  Basically when you get the notification that the courier is picking up your food you better start walking downstairs, Yamila, because if you think you have another 5 minutes you're crazy.  

There are some things I miss from the USA, but if I was to go back I would miss SOOOO many things about Mexico.  

Life in Mexico is good.

Just Mexico

• You hear a vehicle blasting something on a speaker. 
  
  
• You run outside, pesos in hand, thinking they're selling ice cream or strawberries
  
  
• They stop and think you're donating to their political cause--because the car was driving around blasting a political message.