Carlos and the Lost Ninja Soup Maker

I've been occasionally know to peruse the Guardian's website (okay, occasionally as in most days, me being, according to some, a Guardian reading, tofu eating, bleeding heart liberal woke leftie) and at the beginning of this month a particular article caught my eye:

www.theguardian.com/thefilter/2026/feb/04/best-soup-maker-uk

Intrigued by the idea that there was a kitchen gadget that would make me soup, I decided I definitely needed one in my life, so hunted down the endearingly named "Ninja Foodi blender and soup maker" on Ninja Kitchen's website, and was thrilled to find that not only had they discounted it to £129.99 but that they were also offering a 10% introductory discount on the first purchase of anybody registering with them.

This was the 4th of Feb. Mindful that it would be imprudent to raid my savings account for what amounted to yet another impulse purchase, I put a note in my diary to revisit the idea on my next payday, the 10th.

The 10th rolls around, and I find myself still dreaming of soup for lunch. So, debit card gripped firmly between my teeth, I go surf the web back to the afore mentioned website, and buy myself a magic maker of soup from the Ninja people.

In short order, I receive a confirmation email and a promise of next day delivery via DPD.

Next day, an email from DPD telling me Carlos has my package, and that he'll be with me sometime between 1339 & 1439 that afternoon. I'm working from home anyway, so I note it's on its way, and duly forget about it.

And here's where it all goes wrong. Nikki, unusually, has the day off. She's looking after the twins as my daughter is still away up north (remember I had them the day before? now it's her turn). Around lunchtime, I'm getting hungry, the twins are getting noisy, and Nanny Nikki is looking a little fraught, so I suggest we take the kids out to KFC's for lunch.

Around an hour later, we get home, and I find a note from DPD in the letter box saying sorry but Carlos had missed us, but providing little other information other than a direction to go back to their website.

The tracking information on the DPD site shows the parcel arriving back at their depot at 0216 on the  morning of Thursday 12th, where it sits until 1438, when they report that they have my parcel and it's now on its way to me. Yey!

Except at 1439 the site then reports "Your DPD driver Carlos has been delayed" and that's it. Radio silence ensues.

The weekend passes, and nothing. I try to contact DPD, but they demand a package reference and delivery postcode, and then claim the package reference I give them doesn't exist.

Tuesday, and an invitation to review my new purchase on TrustPilot turns up in my inbox. So I post a one-star review observing that they evidently seem incapable of delivering the goods they sell and it's next to impossible to contact anybody for help. Within a very short while, I get an email from an endearingly titled "SharkNinja Consumer Experience Advocate" saying "Firstly, we're sorry to hear about your experience, and we'd like to make this right" and asking for some further details, which I immediately email back.

Three days of silence then follow. But the fact they reached out for me did enable Ninja to post a seeming prompt reply to my negative review to suggest they were dealing with it with all due dispatch. I guess appearance is everything in customer service these days.

By Wednesday I've found a "contact us" form in the Customer Care section of Ninja's website. I message them via this, whilst also emailing back the previously mentioned SharkNinja Consumer Experience Advocate to ask for an update. Both ghost me.

Annoyingly, the DPD warehouse where, presumably, my missing gadget is currently lodged, is behind my own office, little more than a stone's throw away, as you can see from the picture at the top of this post. Although I'm acutely conscious that if I actually start throwing stones, I might get into trouble.

So I take my frustrations onto Facebook, tagging in both Ninja Kitchen UK's page and DPD UK's and getting ignored by both, but I do get lots of sympathy from friends after I post a screenshot of the DPD tracking page, voicing my growing concerns for Carlos, who hasn't been seen since Thursday 12th. Suggestions are made that he might have eloped with my Soup Maker; one friend, Hayley, mentions they've just seen Carlos on TikTok with his new show, "Making soup with Carlos"

Then another friend, Jen, suggests the whole thing sounds like a country song.

So I ask ChatGPT to write me the lyrics to a country song called "Carlos and the Lost Ninja Soup Maker" and threaten Ninja Kitchen UK and DPD UK to find and deliver my soup maker safe and sound and unharmed within the next 24 hours, or I'm going to put a tune and some chords to those AI-fever-dream lyrics and record them a song. I observe that the world really doesn't want me to start singing Country (although singing along to Country songs is, in fact, one of my guilty pleasures in life) 

Of course, I'd overlooked the fact that if I can use AI to generate some lyrics, a cousin of mine, Matt, following the story along with some amusement, can easily use it (in this case, Suno AI) to create the full production. Which he duly produced.

This then, is the ballad of Carlos and the Lost Soup Maker, credits to Matt G (and Suno AI) for the composition, production and recording and yours truly (and ChatGPT) for the lyrics.

I found myself both amused, impressed and just a little bit frightened. And I'm seriously thinking about actually covering the song with my band.

Having been ghosted my both their Customer Care website and their "SharkNinja Consumer Experience Advocate" I finally resorted to messaging Ninja Kitchen UK's Facebook page, detailing the history of my frustrations, and sending them a link to the song we'd written for them.

This morning, to my delight (and a little trepidation) I find a message back from them saying how sad they are about this situation (I guess Country music will do that to a body) and that they've marked the original order as lost in transit and that a replacement order was on its way.

So, it looks like Soup for Monday!

Or, as they now say in Country and Western circles, "Sometimes you lose your soup, to find a better day."