Partly in honor of our Wii’s homecoming, partly out of wanting to “pound” UPS for there bumbling ways, but mostly out of a selfish need to relive my childhood… I bought Punch-Out for the Wii. I can’t even imagine how many hours I wasted on this game as a child. Now, completely revisited for modern times, my son can get as frustrated as I was while trying to find the “secret tricks” to defeating these characters.

We put this game into our freshly repaired and returned Wii together and it was like I was a kid again. Yes, all of my old adversaries were there! Glass Joe, King Hippo, Soda Popinski, Bald Bull, and more were on hand to challenge my child as they had challenged me. Between each bout, Doc had his cryptic “words of wisdom” on how to beat each opponent. Of course they were faithfully mixed in amongst his announcing his love of chocolate and begging us to join the “Nintendo Fun… er, um… Club Nintendo”.

It is fun to watch Bret get so exasperated trying to figure out the “special trick” needed to beat each new contender. Just like Dad. Then I get to come in and finally show him a thing or two about how its done… Old school. Punch-Out is a welcome addition to our game library. It really is like an old friend coming to visit after many years. And best of all, after game after game of Bret humiliating me in Mario Super Sluggers, I can throw this game in and get some small measure of revenge.

After two days of attempting to find a customer support number on their website, thirty minutes of answering automated questions that each sent me spiraling to wrong extensions, and three disconnects, I finally reached a live support person. She was a charming lady that reassured me that the process of sending my Wii off for repair was in fact an easy one. I explained to her my distrust of UPS, but she held firm to her conviction that nothing would go wrong. She assured me that in any event I would have a working Wii in between 11–16 days. I paid an $85 flat repair fee that also covered shipping with UPS both ways and began preparing my Wii for what would be a most confounding journey.

My Wii with UPS.

After carefully packing my Wii for its travels, I was informed that I would have to drive 25 miles to a specific UPS drop off location. Wow… What?! So Bret and I drove it down to Anderson, SC and bid our Wii farewell. On July 3, I noticed the brown UPS truck out at the end of my driveway. I thought to myself that it couldn’t be our Wii because we had received no word from Nintendo of its repair completion or imminent arrival. I walked out through my garage and stood in the driveway as I listened to the driver rummaging through his truck. This went on for around five minutes as I waited patiently to ask him if there was a package for me. In a flash, he darted from the back of the truck towards his seat. I took a step forward with hand up and mouth open to speak. Our eyes met but his shifted hurriedly away as his foot hammered down on the gas. Hmmmm.… Interesting I thought.

I went inside and searched the Nintendo website for a way of getting an update since I had received none. I put in my repair number and it informed me that the repair had been made and UPS should be delivering it this very day. Cool! But that doesn’t explain the odd behavior of the UPS driver. Armed now with a tracking number, I visited “big brown” online. Ahh! It had indeed shipped. But, wait! The driver reported that I was, and I quote, “Closed for Holiday”. What??

I called UPS and after giving me the runaround, they told me that my local shipping center would be calling me to discuss it further. I asked for the number so that I could call them myself, but was told that he couldn’t do that as my local shipping center wasn’t equipped to take calls. He assured me that they would be calling me within the hour. Sure enough, the one thing UPS delivered on time was the promised phone call.

An illegal alien and guard dogs. Really?!

The representative informed me that UPS had “misplaced” my Wii. It seems that someone, I am assuming it was Moe, Larry, or Curly, had scanned it as residential, but placed it on the wrong belt. The belt my wii was condemned to was for business packages that could not be delivered on a holiday weekend. It gets better. I offered to drive to their location to pick it up myself. Why not? After all, I had to drive 25 miles to personally hand deliver it in the first place. I was then informed that that would be impossible because it was being stored with “hundreds of thousands of  business packages” and could not be located at this time.

The representative went on to assure me that they would locate it eventually. She tried to console me by letting me know that they would be vigorously searching for it among the business packages on Monday. I asked her if the team coming in was more competent then the team she had working at the time of my call, because they couldn’t find it.  She paused and just said, “It’s a different team”.

I asked her why a UPS truck showed up empty handed at my home with no explanation. She said that since it was scanned as residential, he thought it was on the truck. It was still showing up as “on the truck” in her computer. I described his behavior and how he didn’t even take the time to let me know why he was there or give me time to ask the question. She didn’t know what to say, but told me that if it doesn’t turn up I can “simply” contact the shipper and have them file a claim. I hung up frustrated. As I await to see how this situation unfolds, I have the odd feeling that somewhere over the Fourth of July weekend, Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart are enjoying a rousing game of Mario Kart on MY Wii!!