On Wednesday, we received the chicken coop that we purchased from an eBay store. We were so excited, and I think most of the people close to us were excited too. A dear friend of ours offered to come down and help Fred assemble the coop, and although we’re getting more daylight each day, we figured Saturday would be an ideal project day.
Our kids couldn’t contain their enthusiasm. Our 6-year-old wanted to use his tools to help his daddy. I think our 9-year-old thought she was big enough to single-handedly assemble the entire coop. And our 4-year-old just wanted to do what everyone else was doing. They all woke up early, and it was almost like Christmas. “Can we set up the chicken coop now?” “Is it time to set up the chicken coop now?” “Can we please start on the chicken coop now?”
After the usual Saturday morning chores, my husband wrestled the two massive boxes that contained the coop parts into the driveway. He’d planned to use that area as the work space. He opened the two boxes and went digging for the instructions. He found a single sheet of paper that our 9-year-old thought looked like LEGO City instructions. After some inspection, it turned out that we had the wrong chicken coop!
At first, I was thinking that we could make it work (if it had the same capacity as the one we’d ordered.) It turns out though that the coop we received can only accommodate two to four hens, and it retailed for $140 less than we paid for the larger coop. Obviously, that’s not acceptable.
I contacted the eBay seller immediately. I have yet to receive a response. I gave the seller the benefit of the doubt, assuming that it was an accident that resulted in us getting the wrong coop. The bottom line though is that the coop we received is essentially useless to us, and I don’t want to have to eat a shipping bill for a 125-pound package that’s destined for California!
So I called this blog post “Part 0.1” because “Part 1” will come when we assemble the coop that we actually bought. We won’t lose any money in the end; our purchase is protected through PayPal. It’s not the money that we’re worried about though. We just want to assemble our chicken coop!
More updates to come, I’m sure!