Customer Service

Yes, I swore I would never blog about my gloriously average Midwestern life. I also swore I'd never wear capri pants or 3/4 length shirts, eat anything made with mayonnaise, or have children. And we all know how well I stuck with those promises. Get over it.

The name of this blog isn't supposed to connote some sort of pessimism about taking on adult responsibilities; it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Growing old is relatively fabulous, and taking on adult responsibilities has afforded me experiences I'd never otherwise dream of, such as globe-trotting with the man of my dreams, hosting flip-cup parties into the wee hours of the night in the basement of our dream home, and raising my mini-me. Life is good. Grand. Wonderful.

And yet lately, my husband and I have been having a few minor blips on the radar of Wonderfulland. REALLY minor blips. I'm talking about the fact that suddenly EVERYONE with whom we deal seems to be terrible at their jobs.

This would have come as a surprise to 22-year-old us, since we were petrified to enter the job market. "How do people know what to DO all day," we asked? It seemed like it must be so hard to make business decisions and make a company go. Now we see that there are plenty of people who don't know what they're doing, and while that would have been reassuring to 22-year old me, it's kind of frustrating to 28-year old me.

THE TOILET

It all began with "the incident in the basement." We had a sewage back-up, so there was (quite literally) crap all over our basement. Upon reading several glowing reviews for our local Roto-Rooter, my dear husband called them to come and clean up the mess, fix the basement toilet, do whatever was necessary to keep our house from smelling like the big building we affectionately called "The Poop Plant" when we were little.

10am: The first technician cleared the clog, but told us that he couldn't legally clean up anything that came OUT of the toilet. That seemed strange, because we thought we were paying him $400 so we wouldn't have to be the ones to wash the raw sewage off the floor! However, we paid him and he left, but not without telling us that he was sending out a free camera technician to see if he could find any other faults in our line!!

3pm: Camera man came out and took our toilet out of the basement bathroom, randomly placed it in the middle of the basement, told us it was broken and that he couldn't fix it without another $200 and told us he couldn't do our "free" camera search without $2,400, a jackhammer, and 6 hours of drilling the cement floor out of our basement. We asked him to leave. However, we now had a toilet in several pieces strewn about on the basement floor, still covered in sewage.

5pm: My husband called Roto-Rooter corporate, and told them our house was now in significantly worse shape than before we called them. They promised to send someone out to clean up the mess within 2 hours.

8pm: Still no sign of our clean-up guy. Husband calls Roto-Rooter again. They say "Oh, we didn't know you wanted someone TONIGHT!" We tell them that even our 3rd floor bedrooms reek of sewage now. They say a technician is on his way.

9pm: Said technician arrives, and cleans up the mess reasonably well. He then charges us another $200. We pay it, too exhausted to continue to argue.

Next day: Basement still smells. We buy lots of bleach and chemical products we normally wouldn't approve us and toss them on the floor. We also discover the toilet isn't broken after all.

In retrospect, this is funny. But it occurred simultaneously with terrible customer service incident #2:

THE TV

My poor Dad. All he wants to do is get Chad and me the ultimate birthday presents. Since both of our birthdays fall within a month of Christmas, and since he goes a little overboard on Christmas, it's hard for him to spend 3 straight months coming up with ideas for us. So this year, for BOTH of our birthdays and a Christmas present, he decided to usher us into the 21st century (about 10 years late on our part) by buying us a nice, flat-screen LCD TV. So a few days before Thanksgiving, we logged into Samsclub.com with his membership number and ordered one. The friendly email confirmation assured us it would arrive before my birthday.

One week later, our TV hadn't shipped. 2 weeks, no word. My Dad began frantically trying to call and email Sam's Club customer service. They're extraordinarily difficult to reach, but finally he got someone on the line who told him it had shipped that day. The next day he got a call from another rep, saying it had NOT shipped. The first rep had told him it had because she was afraid he'd get mad if she told the truth.

This back and forth went on for a few days until my Dad remembered we had a family friend who had called on Wal-Mart/Sam's Club corporate in Bentonville, Arkansas during his tenure with Graco. We were able to get a phone number for the Vice President of Supply Chain Management. He was apologetic, issued us a Fed-Ex tracking number at once, and told us the TV would ship immediately.

The tracking number said it would arrive on Tuesday; we were ecstatic. Tuesday, however, came and went, and there was no TV. The tracking number said it had been delivered...to Sacramento.

Back on the phone with Mr. VP, he tells us that Fed-Ex issued the same tracking number to 2 items. The first had been successfully delivered to Sacramento. Our TV had been "lost on the road." Oh, and there were no more of this particular model to be had, so he couldn't get us another one.

At VP's urging, we ordered another model, this one bigger and with more bells and whistles (he covered the additional cost). He assured us it shipped yesterday. Today, however, when I checked the tracking number, it said that item was going to Grand Rapids, Michigan!

Back on the phone with Mr. VP. He tells me they are still having trouble with Fed-Ex, but assures me this TV actually shipped.

I'm still waiting! Any bets on whether we'll see it before 2011?

Such a minor issue. My husband and I are so fortunate to have each other. A beautiful daughter. Delicious, well-prepared, food on the table each night. A warm house to block out the cold Midwestern weather. Make that a warm house that is a mere 3 blocks from Graeter's ice cream and the rest of the delicies on Hyde Park Square. A deli across the street we can run to on days I'm too tired to make lunch.

And I'm not so perfect myself. Today I discovered I had bounced a check...to the President of my company. How embarrassing! I would love to have a really good, technical excuse, but as much as I love my Fidelity checking account, it turns out I just plain didn't know how to use it and all its fancy features.

On that note, I'm off to continue my tireless work to rebuild the American economy in this slump. It's time to go shopping.

Merry Christmas season to all!