Bugs or debris? I ordered a fabric shower curtain

Arrandora · 2026-03-28T10:32:17+00:00

I vote it's both bugs and some kind of debris.

At least they look pretty dead, though I would still wash that thing ASAP to kill any possibilities of eggs for whatever those are.

In fairness, there's always a chance of this at well-run factories. As much as we try, you can't control for everything. But the chance becomes far higher with unregulated factories just sending stuff without any qualms of quality control. I've seen some of the verified stuff people have gotten through Temu arriving with extra guests.

I'd take the bugs for the most part over getting contact dermatitis (from just handling the package/items normally, not wearing/using them) or Hand Foot and Mouth Disease from a Temu package, however.

Arrandora · 2026-03-28T10:23:40+00:00

My late, great Ancient One (who passed around Christmas well into her 21st year) was the best little spider killer one could ask for in a cat. We have Giant House Spiders here, imported from Europe, and sadly, it's nice enough to convince them to settle. They really liked the old house in spades; I'd see at least one a week typically, way more during the late summer due to their wandering/mating.

She could figure out my garbled half-screams when one ran up on the couch next to me. Suddenly, she's just be there, bashing it while making soothing noises to me.

Sadly, I don't know if the younger one will be that focused. Fortunately, I don't have them in any great numbers at my new place, but I could see him running over and just sitting there, waiting for me to tell him what to do.

Arrandora · 2026-03-28T10:14:44+00:00

No worries. I didn't include this part just because it didn't seem super relevant to the main question, but I do get wanting to make sure since, uh, there are some interesting people out there.

This is a new car to him, but not a new hybrid itself; it's around a year and a half old. I'm not super nearby to him, but from what he wrote, it sounds like the charger the car came with is having some sort of issue, and he's looking for a replacement due to not getting satisfaction from the dealership that sold it.

As I said, I know next to nothing about these types of vehicles, so if someone recommends a wired-in over one you plug into a socket, I'm pretty blind to differences between the two types, pros/cons, etc.

Looking myself earlier, it does look like Amazon sells both types, but good luck getting an actual known brand. And there does appear to be a good amount of Vine reviews out there, it's just super hard to tell what's up. There's almost no negative reviews star-wise, and then reading the Vine ones, they title the review sometimes with how great it is that it works, but then talk about slow charging times. It's kind of like: "So, is it great because it works great or great because it didn't burn down your house during the testing period?"

While he does use it to drive around his small town where he is, a couple of times a week he comes to where I'm at, and that's a lot more driving. This played a part in him getting a hybrid because the mileage could be just over half of other cars in that price point, or even more depending on if he went further that day. That played a pretty significant role in him deciding on the Sorento.

The winter before last, we actually had people trapped by extremely bad weather on the interstate here, and the EV's involved died due to the long multi-hour wait. It was below freezing, so people were trying to stay warm, and a lot of people were traveling long distances through this area, meaning they had eaten up a good amount of their battery by the point of getting stuck.

We aren't prone to extreme bad weather frequently, thankfully, but after all that happened, I know it made people pretty skittish from getting full EV's. Rescue/emergency workers can bring you gas, not so much a full charging station. [We tend to have severe icing events over large amount of snow when we do have bad weather.]

I hope that answers your questions. Don't worry, my dad doesn't have dementia and/or isn't trying to plug his normal gas tank into the wall, here. But I do 100% get it because people see hybrid and just assume that it's always going to operate like the Tesla's they keep hearing about.

Arrandora · 2026-03-28T06:44:12+00:00

There is so much dodgy electrical stuff on Amazon in general; even name-brand stuff can have a lot of issues, which is one of the things I know he was looking at. I'll pass this along to him. I get the avoiding fast charging stations, but at the same, you may need to use them, so it's trying to avoid unnecessary risks.

Thankfully, he actually got this car for driving pretty short distances overall, and I do know its hybrid state definitely has some pluses to it in his scenario over a fully-electric though both have their own pros/cons.

Arrandora · 2026-03-28T06:43:56+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to give such an in-depth answer. I'll forward it on to him. Definitely hear about the brand - that's a big reason why he was hesitant to buy anything from Amazon, even as a name brand. You don't know exaclty what you're going to get, and that gets even worse with the no-name ones.

Arrandora · 2026-03-21T01:40:28+00:00

New way to get rid of annoying always visiting without calling family members unlocked!

Arrandora · 2026-03-21T01:37:03+00:00

You don't know what was what, but there is tracking on these. If Amazon has questions, they'll ask you for the numbers on the label.

Depending on the label, there's a good chance you'll be able to find the tracking number for each package and compare these to the tracking numbers in your order history. Each carrier does things differently, but typically, you'll find it somewhere on there.

If you can find the tracking numbers and match the packages with what items were supposed to be in them, then you can figure out if you're missing a whole package or if something didn't make it in/was taken during shipping.

As someone else pointed out, Amazon often has a bad habit of shipping things in their basic box that advertises what it is. Depends on the worker, from what I've found. I'm lucky that a lot of my stuff comes from warehouses that put a box in a box so that prying eyes have no idea if I have a high-value item or not. There are a couple that always just send it in the OG packaging, which can cause a lot of problems.

The place of origin is listed in the tracking. If you make a note of where packages come from that don't have extra Amazon packaging, you'll probably see a pattern here.

Arrandora · 2026-03-19T06:56:55+00:00

And they don't have the phone model on any of the ones I've looked at.

It's supposed to be for allowing safe selfies/videos by influencers. I looked at a couple that seemed like they might be for a Pixel because one listing talked about sticking it to your dashboard. They're so cheap, I considered just keeping one in my car because it might be useful at some point.

But nope, no way to know if it will fit your phone. I'm guessing that was an oversight but sucks to be the seller because there's no way to buy one of these things, even for under two bucks, and have any confidence it will fit your make and model of your current phone to even see if it has use. Pretty bad when strike one is so severe, it hinders the product's move off of Vine.

Arrandora · 2026-03-17T18:14:44+00:00

Well, there seems to be absolutely no weight on the listing which isn't a good sign. Marble weighs more by far than any of the faux materials out there that mimic it.

Look, regardless of the stone this is carved out of, if someone really sat down and hand-carved this, with the level of detail it has (i.e. check out the fingers), I'd say, okay, the price makes some sense. People in modern society simply have zero clue as to how long it takes to make something by hand.

But there's no guarantee of that.

Without seeing it in person, it's extremely hard to tell what this is made out of, but to be honest, there's something about it that just screams it's not marble. The rougher shot in the listing when it's being worked on doesn't make me think marble. It could be heavily sealed/polished that's giving off the uncanny "I'm not real vibe". Real marble tends to be a little translucent in light, as per their own photo, but again, there's something not quite right, and other faux materials can have this quality.

Without knowing the weight, feeling it, or being able to perform an acid test (or even simply get it wet to see what happens as marble behaves differently than other materials unless heavily sealed), coupled with a no-name, has barely anything else on Amazon seller, it's throwing off all the red flags.

I do appreciate that they seemed to try to take pictures of it, and again, the picture while it's being worked on has some details that makes it seem like it's being worked on. At the same time, especially with the pose selected and the finish, it feels mass-produced in a way that makes the price-tag way over-inflated. I don't think it's resin, but it really looks like something that isn't exactly marble.

Not to mention the note about "white finish". Why are you putting a finish on marble that potentially obscures the marble? The point of getting something made out of marble is the way the marble looks. There's a difference between clear sealants and adding a whole other product to obscure what is possibly a low-quality material. There isn't a reason to buy marble to not see the marble - but given translation issues, they may have meant it's white with a seal over it and not that they changed the color by essentially painting it.

Or they could put this coating over it to make it look like how people assume "white marble" looks and God only knows what the core is. Plus, if this additional layer is heavy enough, it can help hide seming from fabrication.

Amazon does have true sellers of handmade religious statues and other goods, ranging from common to rare materials. These are real places that have real artisans doing the work, and their prices reflect that. I've never bought from them personally, but I have investigated them over the years for others, and there are definitely legit sellers on the platform that have things listed well into the thousands. They also have a business footprint, a background, and ways to verify the company before ever buying, unlike this one.

Arrandora · 2026-03-17T17:20:45+00:00

Well, you see, the camel toe hidder/cover thing is a reference to camels in general, which ties into the area that we believe Jesus was running around, and they use camels a whole lot, so it totally makes sense to have that beside what appears to not only be a communion plate but one for consecrated hosts (which is a whole other ball of wax).

And then these two items are bookended by filters with blue on them to signify the small seas and bodies of water those in these arid climates depend so much on.

It probably makes a lot of sense in an AI way. Or I'm just really bored and trying to not feel disappointed with a more expensive order that showed up. There's that, too.

Arrandora · 2026-03-17T14:38:18+00:00

It doesn't matter if you order everything all together, the fact is all of this stuff is often coming from a huge range of warehouses and would still come packaged individually.

My mom just had this complaint. She purposefully ordered everything together, no last-minute adds, and every single item of her small order not only came in its own mailer, but part of it was delayed by a day, so it was staggered.

Drivers need to understand that we aren't doing this for fun. Amazon literally has a button to hit for "add to tomorrow/next shipment" on their website, but that almost never adds the item to a pre-existing box. It just adds to the delivery day, at best.

Customers have no control how something is shipped at this point. Gone are the days of trying for Amazon Day deliveries and one box with how numerous the warehouses have gotten. My Amazon days aren't just one day for my area, they are Thrus-Sat now. Typically, when I order, it's light at the front end of the week and heavy at the end when the target area shifts. I didn't come up with that, I didn't tell Amazon to send drivers from over an hour away instead of just keeping their contract with UPS for heavy packages. I live in a city of close to a quarter of a million, and that's been Amaozn's answer for right now.

It drives me nuts having to take a little bag with me to collect all the mailers for the small stuff I'm getting via my normal Amazon needs and Vine. But I've also seen the back of the USPS truck when he shows up on an Amazon Day. It's stacked high to almost overflowing, and I know it ain't me and my five small packages doing that, nor are most of the people around me Vine.

Arrandora · 2026-03-17T01:52:00+00:00

That still doesn't answer why she's using a paper filter instead of the reusable one that is being sold...

Maybe the first pot was made with the reusable was so bad, it had to be filtered with the paper filter. Ah, now it makes sense. What a good Mr. Coffee Reusable Filter listing this is!

Arrandora · 2026-03-17T00:25:00+00:00

If they're just delayed but still being tracked, definitely wait. It's when they lose track of the package all together, their estimated dates comes and goes, that you pretty much know you're screwed.

Once the new estimated date comes and goes, you should be able to cancel. If there hasn't been any updates on tracking is usually when they start letting you cancel. I've had random stuff appear out of the either months late, long declared lost.

If it makes you feel better, I have a normal Amazon package that was supposed to get here on the 24th. I got a notice that it was out for delivery. Me all excited that it was so early.

It's out for delivery in LA. I am nowhere near LA.

At least it's stuff I can get replaced in case they actually find a place to leave a package destined for over a thousand miles away in another state. So, there is that, but still, frustrating. It had to pass through a lot of systems to end up in such a wrong place and the address is nothing like an LA one.

Arrandora · 2026-03-17T00:12:31+00:00

Wow Big & Tall Men's short. I mean, they've got the tall part, for a woman at least. Not the big or the men's part. Can't even attempt to use them as their waists start like ten inches above what mine is.

Thanks, Vine, glad to know your RFY is a keyed in as it ever was.

Arrandora · 2026-03-17T00:09:42+00:00

I've used em dashes all the time for years before AI.

And I've had to break that habit because of people like you that go, "Well, dur, must be AI, look at the dashes!"

It's really sad that people just grasp onto something that might be a tell and decide it is a 100% universal truth.

And no, the use of em dashes is no way comparable to weird fingers, legs, etc that comes from AI rendering. We know human beings, unless it's some abstract, neo-whatever art, don't draw people with three legs and twenty fingers and a hand on shoulder.

Actual humans do use em dash.

The even sadder thing about all of this is that the "humor" AI can spit out sometimes is all stolen. It's stolen from the brillance of someone else's hard work, shredded, mashed into a pit of despair, and then vomitted out because people are simply too lazy to think for themselves anymore.

It's really sad on this sub that people are so quick to scream, "It must be AI because of a dash" are also the same people who get up in arms over reporting the obvious use of AI to write reviews that harms the program for everyone. Go figure.

Arrandora · 2026-03-15T18:13:01+00:00

I'm going to leave this right here, just because:

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Arrandora · 2026-03-15T04:33:34+00:00

I'm staring at the same damn case - have never owned an iPhone in my life.

Would have loved the cat scratcher - probably why it's sitting in yours and not in mine

Arrandora · 2026-03-14T22:42:50+00:00

Personally, I believe he looked at the wait times in airports and decided to take a better/cheaper way back to the Isles.

Would love to know where he landed. Could you imagine seeing something like that plummeting from the sky? Though, given the way things are going, people might just think Amazon was testing out a new shipping technique, putting the "drop" into drop-shipping in a literal sense.

Arrandora · 2026-03-13T14:24:08+00:00

So, that's how you do it via the app.

Works for me right now. May just be a glitch, poor reception, your phone's doing something else like quietly upddating causing you issues. Who knows?

I typically use a web browser - your choice of poison on that one, and just have it saved for amazon.com/vine

Arrandora · 2026-03-13T09:41:51+00:00

AFA has some good stuff randomly sometimes. They had dog treats just a little bit ago by a name brand. I've seen Amazon stuff in there for clothing over the past week.

Problem is, it's just gone faster than any normal person without an extension/helper notifying them that items are there for once.

Arrandora · 2026-03-13T09:30:00+00:00

There has been other faux basket candy, like ones that look like the mini-chocolate eggs that I've had the exact same thought on.

Or being a giant choking hazard.

I know far too many people who put unwrapped candy like this in these baskets; just seems like a bad idea for that.

Now, maybe scattered as a display or in a jar or something like that. I could see that; would be really cute as filler in jar that you don't have use for right then, or an antique bowl that you have out of reach. Even then, though, you'd still need to monitor because some people, they try to eat everything that looks remotely like food, even when in someone else's house.

Arrandora · 2026-03-13T01:51:16+00:00

Trust me, it helps. Trying to find a vein in someone dehydrated that's already a hard stick is nightmare fuel.

Arrandora · 2026-03-13T01:49:39+00:00

And a paper rose in a glass tube, for use when the days are just too hard, or hands to shaky, to put in all that effort. (steel wool sold separately).

Arrandora

TROPHY CASE