There is a well-known saying that there’s ‘no such thing as a free lunch’. That may be true, but it is possible to get the thing you eat the lunch out of totally gratis.

Claire and I were lucky enough to receive a kind gift of an Amazon gift card. We decided to spend part of our pressie on a beautiful set of Peter Rabbit egg cups. We’ve been after a new set of egg cups for a while, and considering we have an ever-growing collection of bunny bric-a-brac, these were perfect.

A day later, the egg cups arrived. Despite what we believed we had ordered, there was not a bunny in sight!

Shock! Horror!

Amazon have an excellent returns service, and in any normal circumstance we would happily pop down to the local post office and send the unwanted egg cups back, in return for a full refund.

For various reasons, it was not possible to get to a post office this time. Considering this innocent mistake wasn’t my fault, I wanted to ask Mr Bezos if he could arrange for a courier to come to my house. He could turn up personally in his Vauxhall Corsa and as long as he had adequate identification, I would happily hand over these now infamous cups.

This was impossible to arrange. Not getting Jeff to pop over, but to get any of the corporation’s one million worldwide employees to drop by and collect the cups.

The biggest obstacle was trying to explain to some computer bot what the problem was. The computer bot forms part of Amazon’s customer service chat system. It is clearly there to screen as many nuisance customers as possible – preventing them from chatting to a human being and instead directly them to an FAQ page.

Therefore, whenever I typed in the egg cup problem, as soon as the pesky robot thought I was on about returning anything, I was redirected to the familiar, yet ever frustrating, Returns FAQ Page.

I suppose I could have tricked the bot into putting me through to someone with a central nervous system by not telling the truth. I’m not suggesting I tell an out and out lie, maybe just a little fib. There’s no harm in that – is there, Mr Prime Minister?

I’m thinking… “that electric toothbrush you sold me the other month… well it burst into flames and is now burning my house down… what do I do?”

DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME: Although if you’re stupid enough to even consider doing this, you’re clearly not responsible enough to own a home… or even a toothbrush.

I didn’t do this.

After many boring hours of negotiation, I was finally able to chat to a real person. It all dragged on far longer than it should have done. I am sure wars have been settled in less time.

Anyway… good news. Although I don’t have any Peter Rabbit egg cups (and don’t think I ever will), I remain in possession of the original ones sent in error, as well as a full refund.

Free egg cups! I am still yet to discover if they come with a Lord and Lady title.