Episode 1199: Are You Kidding?

Dear Library of the University of Warwick, you have to be joking. How can you have a staff member reply to my e-mail one day, incidentally not acknowledging the issue I've consistently raised in my repeated correspondence, which is that I'm not even in the country so it's logistically impossible to return the overdue book, and then allow an automated notice to be sent the next threatening to send me an invoice for a replacement copy? An appropriately snarky e-mail has been sent in reply, in which I politely request acknowledgement of this reply and state in advance that I will dispute any attempt to charge me for a replacement. It would be pretty remarkable if they tried to do that, since the notice says that they will do so if I don't contact the Library within seven days of the notice's date, but the book will have been returned before a week has gone by. I wouldn't put it past them though, to somehow fail to stop the invoice from going out. After all, apparently e-mails to and from multiple staff members aren't enough to qualify as having been in contact with the Library in order to prevent the pre-invoice from being sent out, so why would a little thing like the book in question already having been returned stop them from extracting money from me to buy another copy? The ultimate irony, of course, is that this copy of the book is only in the Library system because I requested it to be bought, thinking it curious that the Library had failed to stock a copy of a book written by a member of staff that had already been out for a couple of months.