No exactly left out whilst taking photos, but in a similar vein. This is a long story, but it is exactly what I wrote to my insurers back in May 2011 after the incident (with just the customers' names redacted).
Spoiler alert: My insurers enjoyed reading it so much that they agreed to pay out, even though technically I shouldn't have been covered!
Anyway, here goes....
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Last Friday I lost a lens. I'm writing to you to describe the circumstances and to enquire as to whether I might be covered by my insurance. To be honest I expect that I'm probably not covered, but I feel I have to write this anyway, as it will be cathartic for me and it might give you a good laugh.
The story really starts in the middle of last week. Monday and Tuesday had been fairly quiet, but Wednesday was busy, and then things really took off. We had our busiest ever Thursday (60 lenses dispatched); our busiest ever midweek peak (112 lenses dispatched on Wednesday and Thursday); our busiest ever Friday (31 lenses); and by the end of the week we'd equalled our all-time weekly record of 177 lenses despite a slow start. By Friday afternoon we were all looking forward to the weekend.
On Friday afternoon I had to make an emergency trip to Newbury. Our couriers had dropped the ball and the only way to get a Canon 500mm lens to a customer was for me to take it myself. That was an 80-mile round trip, in fairly heavy traffic as the Bank Holiday weekend exodus had already started on the M4. It took me 2 hours and I got back to the office around 17:30. Really looking forward to the weekend by now.
I got home around 18:15 and my mobile phone rang. We give out this number to customers in case of emergencies, so I felt I had to answer it, and sure enough it was a customer with an emergency. [A] in Plaistow, London E13 had just opened the box he'd received from us, and it contained the wrong lens. He'd ordered a Canon 24-105mm f/4 L but this was a Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 L. The number on the box said 0248, which is a Canon 24-105 (we number all the boxes so that we can pull lenses off the shelf and dispatch them with the minimum of fuss), but the documentation inside stated that the lens was number 0334, a Canon 16-35. Oops.
I fired up the PC, logged on to the office system, and established quite quickly that lenses 0248 and 0334 had previously been hired by the same customer. So what had probably happened was that he had accidentally returned the lenses in the wrong boxes, and my technician hadn't spotted this when he examined and tested them. It shouldn't happen, but it's an easy mistake to make. I did it myself once.
If my diagnosis was correct, that meant we had a customer who was expecting to receive a 16-35 and had actually received a 24-105. I checked the database and said customer was in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. So I rang her. She hadn't actually unpacked her lens yet - it had been delivered to her workplace in London that afternoon - but she did so and confirmed that it was indeed a 24-105.
As soon as I realised the nature of the problem and where these two customers were, I saw that it would be possible to rectify the situation. We had a spare 24-105 in stock, so I could get that from the office, take it to A in Plaistow, collect the 16-35 from him, take that to B in Waltham Cross, collect the 24-105 from her, and return it to the office. If these customers had been in, say, Dundee and Plymouth, then it wouldn't have been possible. But they were close enough that it was possible, and it was our error that risked messing up their Bank Holiday weekends, so I thought I had to do it. I really didn't fancy another 3 hours behind the wheel, but the route planning software said I had a sporting chance of getting home by 22:00 or thereabouts, so I had to do it. I was supposed to be taking the train down to Swansea on Friday evening, to stay with my wife's family - she had gone down the previous night to attend a family funeral - but I could just as easily go Saturday morning. I could sleep on the train if need be.
So I established that both A and B would be in that evening and advised them of my estimated arrival times. I went to the office, picked up Canon 24-105 number 0346, checked that it really was a Canon 24-105 inside the box labelled 0346, and hit the road around 19:05. The sat nav said I should be at A's house in Plaistow around 20:30.
The journey in on the M4 was quick and by the time I reached Chiswick my ETA had improved to 20:20. I hadn't been sure whether to go through Central London, as the sat nav advised, or to take the North Circular. The former was theoretically about 5-10 minutes quicker, but I thought the latter would probably be more reliable. However the traffic news on the radio said there was a major hold-up at Hangar Lane on the North Circular, so I decided to go via Central London. The fact that my ETA had been coming down was a good sign too: I reckoned it was because traffic in London was getting lighter as the evening progressed and the sat nav's calculations were reflecting this.
Bad decision. Between Chiswick and Charing Cross the traffic was very heavy . I lost 40 minutes against my schedule and my ETA was now 21:00, which was the time A said he had to go out. Fortunately I had a good run along the Victoria Embankment , the Limehouse Link and the A13, and I reached A's house at 20:58. Feeling pretty tired by now after another 2 hours behind the wheel (and really not looking forward to another 2 hours!) but pleased that I'd managed to sort him out.
I delivered the 24-105 to him, collected the 16-35, double checked that it really was lens 0334 in the box labelled 0248, phoned B to give her my revised ETA of 21:45, and set off. Traffic on the M11 and M25 was pretty light so I made good time and pulled up outside her house at 21:40.
I turned to pick up the lens from the seat alongside me ... but it wasn't there. It hadn't fallen down into the passenger footwell either. I was pretty sure I hadn't put it in the boot either, but I checked anyway. No lens.
So where was it? I tried to reconstruct what had happened at A's house. I had walked back to the car with the lens in its box in one hand, and my phone (which is also my sat nav) in the other. I needed a spare hand to get my car keys out of my pocket, so I put the lens down on the roof of the car. (It's a low car so this is quite convenient.) I unlocked the car, reached into plug the phone into the power socket to run the sat nav, then remembered that I had to ring B. So I did that, then programmed the sat nav to confirm my ETA, and set off.
I couldn't remember having retrieved the lens from the roof of the car.
I explained all this to B, and apologised for the fact that she wouldn't now be getting a 16-35. Even if I could go back to Plaistow and retrieve it somehow, I wouldn't be back here until 23:30 or thereabouts and that was just too late. But I had to go back to Plaistow. I thought the chances of recovering the lens were slight but definitely not zero. If it had fallen off the roof of my car, even at speed, it wouldn't be damaged because our boxes are very well packed with lots of foam. Night had been falling when was in Plaistow, and the street lights weren't terribly effective there because of the trees lining the street, so the box might have fallen off and landed in a dark area between two parked cars and not been noticed there. I definitely had to try.
So another blast down the M25 and M11 brought me back to Plaistow at 22:30. It was very dark by now. I managed to park in exactly the same spot I'd had earlier, about 4 doors down from A's house, and I started combing the road and pavement. I paid special attention to the areas under parked cars, on the reasoning that I'd be more likely to recover it if it had ended up there. I didn't find anything in the immediate vicinity of my parking space, so I walked down the route that I'd driven earlier, noting in particular the places where I would have accelerated or braked or turned a corner or gone over a traffic hump - all events likely to dislodge the box from the roof of the car.
After about 20 minutes of searching I found the box.
It was two streets away, just after a corner where I'd have turned left. Unfortunately the box was empty. Completely empty. I found all six pieces of the blue foam packaging, scattered over an area of about 30 meters, but that was all. No sign of all the documentation which was in the box and definitely no sign of the lens. In fact that was obvious as soon as I discovered that the box was empty. There's no way one of our boxes could burst open, even if it was hit by a car. This box had clearly been found by somebody who decided to help themselves to the lens and didn't care for the packaging.
So, rather downhearted, I headed for home and arrived around 00:15. On the plus side I had one happy customer. On the minus side I had five more hours behind the wheel, 129 more miles on the odometer, one not-so-happy customer, and one lens gone. Not such a good evening, all in all. And I'd postponed going down to Swansea for this. In retrospect I really should have told A and B that I was sorry, but there was nothing I could do. Except - I couldn't say that, could I? Not when there was something I could do.
Anyway, I expect that I'm not covered by the insurance. I would struggle to argue that I took all reasonable precautions to avoid the loss. In mitigation, if that counts for anything, I would point out that I was very tired when it happened, after all that had happened that day and earlier in the week, and I was clearly not thinking very well. And I definitely had the best motives at heart. But I imagine that's not really enough.
What do you think?
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