An Open Letter to Ravensburger Puzzles

Hello Ravensburger Puzzles –

The day was December 30th, 2012. I gathered with friends, near and far, in a rented vacation home on the central coast of California in a quaint city known as San Luis Obispo, Spanish for St. Louis, the Bishop of Toulouse.

We filled our cups with wine and our souls with laughter. The times were jolly.

And that’s where I first saw it. My friend – the “Mander” – brought it along and it would entertain for the better part of 4 days.

I’m of course referring to – The Ravensburger Puzzle! 3000 amazing pieces or so we thought. But more to come on this later.

Day after day, night after night we poured blood, sweat, and tears into the Ravensburger. While connecting sweet piece after piece of the puzzle we reminisced on the good times of years past. We drank fine red wine and connected fine puzzle pieces. We told jokes while searching for a seemingly non-existent piece. We puzzled until 4 in the morning. We puzzled immediately upon waking up.

We puzzled and we puzzled and when someone thought we could never finish, we encouraged them to just keep puzzling.

And then slowly the Ravensburger began to take shape. The edges formed, the horses became whole, the angels began to sing as we pieced them together. With each piece we could feel the excitement as a friend yelled out in pure satisfaction “PIECE!!!” indicating to the group that he had connected 2 sweet pieces of Ravensburger’s 3000.

And yet this story does not have a happy ending.

You see, after hours and hours of puzzling we came up short. How could you quit when you were so close you ask?

We were missing a piece! The Ravensburger 3000 was not to be. It was only 2999.

Now we feel so incomplete. What can you do to make us whole again?

Truly Puzzled,
Damon

UPDATE: January 16th

I faxed this letter to Ravensburger’s customer service office since this seems like the type of letter one faxes.

UPDATE: February 5th

After receiving no response to my fax I sent this same letter via the mail. Today I received this response from Ravensburger. Apparently the solution is to send me another copy of the puzzle and have me search through that one to find the same piece. What if that same piece is missing again? I guess the number of hours we spent on this thing was completely lost. Ah well. I just hope one day we’ll have that individual puzzle piece replacement technology that this world needs!

Hello Damon,

I have received your letter regarding the missing piece, I am very sorry to hear that, I know how frustrating that is. At this time we are unable to replace individual pieces, we are working on the technology but we are not there yet. I can send out a replacement puzzle and the piece needed to complete the image can be picked out. Please note that is item is currently on backorder as soon as we receive a shipment a replacement order will be put on. I think you for your understanding and patience in this matter.

Best regards,
Erinn

UPDATE: July 15th

I received this in the mail today. The saga of the Ravensburger puzzle is now complete. I just hope this one has all 3000 pieces!