I made a $60 eBay error. I listed an item as “immediate payment required when Buy It Now is used,” not realizing that that forces the item to be “ship to U.S. only.” Be warned of this.
The local 99¢ Only store has a range of Ajax-brand liquid dishsoap in different citrus aromas. Bizarrely one of them is Ruby Red Grapefruit. Even more bizarrely, it smells great. Updates to follow on its grease-cutting ability.
I received a junk fax today advertising an undervalued stock. The disclaimer at the bottom of the fax informed me that the company sending out the faxes had received $219,965 to produce and distribute the “newsletter”. Good grief. If it’s not making the spammers rich, it’s making the telcos and the USPS some nice money.
You may have a spare key for your Kryptonite-brand bike lock (or your automobile ignition, or your vending machine) in your pocket or purse.
Pizza Hut: Helloandthankyoufuhcallingpeezahuthomeofthefourallwillthisbefordeliveryorcarryout?
Josh: Delivery.
P: Wouldyaliketohearourspecials?
J: Sure.
P: Twoonetoppingbuffalowingsnineteenninetynine.
J: What?
P: Twoonetoppingbuffalowingsnineteenninetynine.
J: One topping buffalo wings?
P: Twoonetoppingandbuffalowingsnineteenninetynine.
J: Oh.
I usually order online, but they have recently “improved” their web app to the point at which it is completely unusable.
In November 2003 I was in a traffic accident. I had to come to a quick stop, but the two people behind me didn’t react fast enough. I was hit by the car behind me, which was in turn hit by the car behind it. I ended up in physical therapy for a month. One of the cars was insured by the relatively expensive State Farm, who have been nothing but professional through the whole process. The other was car was insured by fly-by-night “specialty insurance” provider Viking, part of the Royal & Sunalliance group, where “specialty” is a euphemism, according to their website, for “mandatory coverages for customers who are less able to afford auto insurance”. Viking has had three BBB complaints in the last 12 months, which the BBB lists as “satisfactory”.
There’s one more piece of data you need to know. A while back I ran into a fault with my Audi. There’s a design flaw in which front bumpers will get caught on parking lot obstructions and tear off (I mentioned this problem here.) Audi quoted me a price of $1300 to repair it, but shortly after I received the quote I received a letter from the lawyers pursuing a class action to get this very issue resolved, so I held out. When the accident occurred, I was missing a front bumper, but this had nothing to do with this case. I wasn’t making a claim for this damage. The insurance adjuster estimated the damage to my rear bumper at $700.
I have been in communication with adjuster Dawn, who has been out of the office for long stretches of time. I got in touch with her today, and these are the highlights of the conversation, from memory. It’s surreal.
Dawn: We’re offering you $x.
Josh: That’s lower than what State Farm offered. Lower by 100%, actually.
Dawn: But this was a minor accident.
Josh: Well…
Dawn: This was a minor accident, and you had previously been in another accident that damaged your front bumper.
Josh: That wasn’t an accident, that was my bumper getting caught on a planter in a parking lot while I was backing up.
Dawn: But it did more than $1000 damage to your car.
Josh: Yes.
Dawn: It was obviously more serious. It did $1000 damage to your car, and you weren’t injured, but you were injured during this $700 accident? I don’t see how that could be.
Josh: You’re not making any sense.
Dawn: Well, that’s your opinion.
Josh: No, that’s not just my opinion. Look, if a baseball hit my car and shattered my windshield, and the windshield cost me $1000 to replace, would you consider that a more serious accident than the impact?
Dawn: You’re comparing apples and oranges.
Josh: Exactly. You’re comparing apples and oranges.
Dawn: But you did $1000 damage to your bumper.
Josh: They’re completely different. In one I was driving, in the other I was backing up in a parking lot.
Dawn: But you weren’t driving when you were hit [by our insured]. You were stopped.
Josh: The other guy sure as hell wasn’t stopped!
Dawn: Well, he was coming to a stop, and didn’t brake fast enough. At least that’s what you told us. [Switches to dramatic voice:] Or is that what happened?
Josh: No, that’s what happened. We’ve been over this, lots of times.
Dawn: OK, then.
[more bizarre exchange…]
Josh: [Starting to laugh:] Look, I know full well that you may know what you’re saying is nonsense and that you’re just trying to screw with me, and that’s fine.
Dawn: [Getting flustered:] Well, what do you want? Let’s talk about that.
Josh: $y [where y = 2 times x; that's the amount State Farm paid]
Dawn: Well, I don’t have your file right now, it was taken by an auditor. But call me back on Monday, and I’ll see what I can do.
Josh: [Laughing:] OK.
Dawn: Bye.
Josh: [Still laughing:] Bye.
For the Scotch collectors, Specialty Bottle has 50 ml glass sample bottles, with caps, for $0.28 apiece when you buy eight or more 12-bottle cases at a time. This quantity discount essentially means you’re getting 96 bottles for the 75 bottle price. The price for eight cases, including shipping to California, is lower than the price before shipping and handling if you were to buy them from Essential Supplies.
(Scotch collectors use them to trade samples with friends or take specimens home from tastings.)
Overstock.com’s prices on books are amazing! They undercut Amazon on every item I wanted to buy. I thought that there would be no way they could undercut $10.50 for Eats, Shoots & Leaves (that’s 40% off list), but Overstock just wants $7.87 for it (55% off list). Unbelievable.
I had a notable experience at Home Depot today. I had to pick up some things for work (yes, I know, I write software) and thought that as long as I was there, I should pick up some poultry staples. I didn’t actually know what they were called, approximating them as “U-shaped nails with a point on both ends that make an eye when you hammer them into wood.” Lame explanation, but I used my thumb and forefinger to help, which is a technique I use frequently at Home Depot.
(It’s also fun to describe something that you aren’t sure exists but have a need for, e.g., “I need something to plug into my power drill to turn it into a sander.”
“Oh, right over here.”
“Thanks, and, uh, I need something to plug into my power drill to let me cut things.”
“Well, that doesn’t actually exist, you’ll need a Dremel tool for that.”
“Oh, OK. Jenn, can I get a Dremel tool?”
“What would you possibly need a Dremel tool for?”
“Uh, to cut things.”
“No.”)
I was led to them (we’re back to the poultry staples) and put a 1 lb. box into my orange shopping bucket. I used the self-checkout because, let’s be honest, it’s lots of fun. First I rang up all my modeling supplies for work, and used the corporate credit card to pay for them. I then set those items aside and scanned my 1 lb. box of poultry staples.
The price came up as $0.01.
That was unexpected.
I called over the sales associate who supervised the four self-checkout stations and explained the situation.
“Perhaps you can buy them individually, and that’s a per-staple cost?” I asked. “But surely they’re not one cent per pound.”
She took the box over to her station and rang them up there.
“No, they’re ringing up as $0.01 over there, too,” I suppose suspecting it be a per-station bug, “so I’d just take it. They’re probably liquidating them or something.”
I always feel a little bit awkward in these situations, as I’m not sure her manager would agree, but hey, I had the blessing of a clerk. I was setting them down onto the scale (there is a digital balance on each station, and presumably an associated weight for each item in the store on a server, and they check to make sure the weight matches what they’re expecting) when she said “no, no, don’t put them there”, took them out of my hand, and put them on the top of the machine, above the touchscreen display. OK, that’s fine, I’ll swing with it. I take out one oxidized penny, dropped it into the coin slot, and received my receipt for $0.01.
So if you need poultry staples….
Following the TV recommendations from a few days ago, it turns out that Mythbusters was a repeat and Crossing Jordan is still as crappy (sorry) as it used to be, except now it seems to be missing perhaps its best actor, Ken Howard (how this will affect the “mythology” episodes about Jordan’s mom is unclear.) At least it’s on twice a week now, though (Sundays and Fridays), so you can at least see more of it. And it still, of course, has Jill Hennessy, the reason I watch the show, as I mentioned on the discussion page. As much as I want her to be, however, she’s still not a very good actress. Not Elisabeth Röhm-bad, mind you, but not very good.
Alias was good, though. If I felt guilty about my pleasures, this would be near the top of the list. By almost every metric I should hate this show. My brother and I have talked about this. “It should suck,” as he says, “but it just doesn’t.” I will complain about the horrible, embarassing, complete sell-out product placement in the episode, however. They’ve always had a sweetheart deal with Nokia, it seems, and I’m fine with that: the copyrighted “Nokia tune” plays every time Sydney’s phone rings. But this time was an order of magnitude worse. The agents were pursuing villains through a parking garage. The latter jumped in a Mustang to speed off, and our heroes have to nick a car to follow. They have a split second to decide, and Sydney hollers (yes, hollers) “the F150!” Not “that one!”, not “the truck!”, not even “the Ford!”, but “the F150!” Then they cut to a close-up shot of the logo on the vehicle’s side and hold that for a bit. The heroes begin to drive (no indication of whether the keys were in the car or whether they hot-wired it in approximately 0.3 seconds) but, Oh No!, the truck is boxed in. That’s fine, “the F150″ pushes the other cars out of the way, then races down the helix of the parking garage, cornering at speed, and generally looking like a car commercial. When the villains get away (not due to a failure of “the F150″, but because they tried to go out an entrance and were gracious enough not to want to push the innocent occupants of the other car into traffic), we cut to commercial. There is a still graphic on the screen and a voiceover says, as if we hadn’t gathered, “Alias is brought to you by the new F150.” And then — wait for it — there’s a commercial for “the F150″. Presumably this technique is used to combat TiVo users, and presumably we will see this more and more of this as time goes by, but let me state for the record that this sucks.
Not Crossing Jordan-sucks, mind you, but it sucks.
Diageo has backed down in the Cardhu fiasco. Now let’s all watch the “Pure Malt” become an $800 collector’s item.
Luoyang City in Henan Province, China (see map below) is where I am sending a $1 book for which the recipient is paying $9 shipping. Amazingly small world.
It is hard to believe a seller this vile, aggressive, and disingeneous is allowed to operate on eBay. Note that they write over and over that the dissatisfied buyer has accidentally left negative feedback for the wrong seller — as if that’s a daily occurrence.
(No, I didn’t buy from them. Always check feedback.)
Purchase Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash or The Diamond Age from Fictionwise by credit card, and get a 100% Micropay rebate, good for anything they sell. Offer good through September 8th.
It is, right now, only US$36 more to fly from Los Angeles to London than it is to fly from Los Angeles to Boston. Sure, that makes sense.
The most heartwarming thing just happened to me. Regular readers of mcgees.org will know of my love for tea, specifically teas from In Pursuit of Tea, and more specifically the Autumn Green that I wrote about previously. In that post, I mentioned using the last of the Autumn Green, and being intrigued by In Pursuit of Tea’s offering of Pouchong Ming Yue, which is supposed to be similar but better. I finished the post with the lines
I’m considering whether to re-order the Autumn Green, of which they still have some sealed stock left over from last year, or to just order the Ming Yue. Considering their high recommendation, and my sentimental attachment to the Autumn Green, I might just do both.
Well, I ended up not doing so. I did not re-order my cherished Autumn Green, instead ordering the Pouchong Ming Yue, the Tieguanyin Competition Monkey Picked, the Dragon Well Superior Grade Green, and re-ordering the Sencha, all of which are expensive teas.
Exactly four weeks ago I placed the order. My credit card was charged, but after two weeks the package had not shown up. I called them and they apologized profusely: my order had never been sent out. They promised to do so immediately. A week and a half later, the order still had not shown up. I called back: again they apologized, as they once again neglected to send out my order. By this point I was getting slightly annoyed, as I was highly looking forward to tasting the new teas. They promised to send the package out second day air, and it would get here by the end of the week.
Today, Thursday, I woke up to find the package on my doorstep. I took the box in to work, unopened, glad to finally have my four teas. I got to my desk and opened the package. On my receipt, the co-owner of the company had hand-written “Please enjoy the Autumn Green Oolong. Sorry again for the mixup.” He knows I love the Autumn Green, knows I did not order it this time, and sent a quarter pound of it free of charge. How wonderful is that?
It looks like I should take back some of the nasty things I wrote about UPS. Here is the tracking info for the wayward package as of today:
 | | |
| Status: | Delivered | |
| Delivered on: | Dec 23, 2000 11:02 A.M. | |
| Signed by: | [...] | |
| Location: | [...] | |
| Delivered to: | US | |
| Shipped or Billed on: | Dec 20, 2000 | |
| Tracking Number: | [...] | |
| Service Type: | 2ND DAY AIR | |
| Weight: | 1.00 Lb | |
| ||
|
| | | | | | |
| PACKAGE PROGRESS | ||||||
| Date | Time | Location | Activity | |||
| Dec 23, 2000 | 11:02 A.M. | WESTLAKE, CA, US | DELIVERY | |||
| 3:29 A.M. | ONTARIO HUB, CA, US | DEPARTURE SCAN | ||||
| 12:36 A.M. | ONTARIO HUB, CA, US | LOCATION SCAN | ||||
| Dec 22, 2000 | 5:57 P.M. | ONTARIO HUB, CA, US | LOCATION SCAN | |||
| 6:38 A.M. | VAN NUYS, CA, US | ROUTED INCORRECTLY AT UPS FACILITY;PKG HAS BEEN REROUTED TO DESTINATION | ||||
| 6:38 A.M. | VAN NUYS, CA, US | LOCATION SCAN | ||||
| Dec 21, 2000 | 6:03 P.M. | ONTARIO HUB, CA, US | UNLOAD SCAN | |||
| 4:35 P.M. | ONTARIO INTL, CA, US | ARRIVAL SCAN | ||||
| 3:18 P.M. | DES MOINES, IA, US | DEPARTURE SCAN | ||||
| 9:24 A.M. | DES MOINES, IA, US | LOCATION SCAN | ||||
| Dec 20, 2000 | 1:20 P.M. | US | PICKUP MANIFEST RECEIVED | |||
| ||||||
The package arrived! They were cool enough to upgrade the package for free, without my asking for it. So, without sarcasm: thank you for fixing your error quickly and effectively. That is a hallmark of good service.
Well … thanks again, UPS. Griping about UPS is becoming quite boring; at a certain point someone could justifiably ask me, “Well, what did you expect from them? Service?”
But I won’t let this die quite yet. UPS gets away with actions that would put most companies out of business, it seems to me. My track record with them is abysmal: I would not be exaggerating if I said that 80% of UPS-delivered packages to me have been screwed up in one way or another. Damage, delays, delivery people not bothering to knock on the door, delivery people literally throwing packages onto the doorstep…. This is absurd. And it makes me more frustrated because I just keep putting up with it.
As you have probably guessed, the Christmas gift did not show up today. I called their customer service number to pressure them into providing free Saturday delivery for me (I have been successful at this in the past.) Not that I got a chance to this time: I reached a recording that said, and I quote,
“Thank you for calling UPS. Due to extreme call volume, we cannot take your call at this time.”
There is not even a semblance of customer service here. I’m at a loss as to what to do about this. My best idea so far is this: any time an online store will only ship via UPS, I will avoid placing an order with them, and send the owners an email informing them that they just lost a sale due to their UPS shipping policy.
And that’s my rant for tonight.
I used to promote At Your Office, an online office supplies retailer, on my Best of the Web page:
A deep-discount online office supply company. It’s so deep discount, in fact, that I have never had to pay for anything I’ve ordered from them, they simply email me every couple of weeks with a free offer.
A year and a half ago, I added a note to the entry:
As of 25 May, 1999, this ceased to be true; I ordered 4 permanent Marks-A-Lot markers from them along with my free order, for $0.54 apiece and no extra shipping costs.
Then a few months later I felt compelled to add another note:
As of 8 October, 1999, the preceding remains humorous but sadly no longer true. I have ordered several times from At Your Office, but never without something getting damaged en route. They pack things very, very poorly. So, for now, my recommendation is to look somewhere else.
I am still on their email list, however.
In early December 2000 I decided to buy a guillotine-style paper trimmer. I drove to the local Staples and selected one that looked promising. When I got it home I found three problems with it. First, the unit was too light so it risked sliding on the table when in use. Second, imagine you are looking at the trimmer from the top: on the left there is a flat grid area for laying out your paper, then a perhaps 1 cm metal strip to its right, then the blade. The grid and the metal strip were not at the same height, which meant that paper would never lie flat on the trimmer. Finally, the ruler along the top that tells how much you are cutting was mis-calibrated.
I decided to return it and buy a new one, so I started poking around online. I checked out the online stores of Office Depot, OfficeMax, and Staples. Each of these companies offers a service where orders of most items are delivered the next day by a truck dispatched from one of their stores (Rockwell Science Center, where I work, has such an arrangement with Office Depot.) I did not find a trimmer that I liked, however, so I reluctantly decided to check At Your Office, which had just sent me an email advertising “free shipping and one-use Kodak camera with any order over $50.”
It turns out that two things have changed at At Your Office since I penned the less-than-favorable reviews above. First, they were acquired by Office.com. Granted, Office.com is a company with a rather vague business model (”Office.com� [...] — a website that focuses and harnesses the potential of the Internet for the workworld. Office.com combines best of breed content, commerce, community and communications to create the place we work when we work online.”) but at least it’s new management. Second, At Your Office is now offering free next-day delivery via UPS (I assume to compete with the bricks-and-mortar stores.) So I decided to go for it: on a Thursday, I ordered the paper trimmer, a box of hot cocoa mix for Jenn, a Pilot disposable fountain pen, and the free camera.
That evening I checked their site to get UPS tracking numbers for the packages. It showed that the order had been split into three shipments. One, the heaviest, was scheduled for delivery on Friday as promised. The second was scheduled for delivery the following Monday. The third tracking number brought up a package delivered in June of 1999 to Washington state. This was unexpected.
The next morning I called AYO customer service to see if I could get the real tracking number. The woman on the phone was courteous, was just as surprised as I about the tracking number incident, and told me that she had no additional information about it. “If it doesn’t show up on Monday, call us back,” she said.
That day (Friday) package #1 arrived, containing the paper trimmer, one corner of interior box dented. Its arrival was appreciated as it was the reason for the order in the first place. On Monday packages #2 and #3 arrived. #2 contained the hot cocoa mix, interior box dented. #3 contained the one-use camera … and a $0.65 medium point black Pilot ballpoint pen instead of my fountain pen. I called customer service back and explained the error: again, the associate (a different one) was very courteous and promised the problem to be fixed immediately. Sure enough, the next day, a big AYO box arrived by UPS, holding one pen and perhaps 8 liters of packing material (wrinkled stiff paper.)
So, the verdict? From my small sample size, I submit that AYO has really not improved since my previous evaluation. Packages arrive late and damaged, poorly packed but using more packaging than necessary. If you are looking for office supplies, perhaps Staples or Office Depot could help you out.
Well, the hamster saga has turned out well, I think. The pet store was willing to take the two hamsters back, and gave us a half-hamster worth of store credit (about $7 total) for each. We went to Petsmart to purchase a second habitat so the two kept hamsters would have their own spaces. It seems to be working out. Both built nests from shredded bedding after they realized they were alone.
Also found … ack! … that Petsmart sells the habitat purchased on Thursday for $15 less than For Pets’ Sake. For Pets’ Sake is a small local store, and generally I like to support stores like this, even if it means spending a little bit more. However:
My effort should probably be to support small business owners whom I admire, who work against odds, paying higher wholesale prices than the big chain stores, with no choice but to charge a bit more. I don’t think my effort should be to support the theory of small business ownership. If you want me to pay more for a worse selection, you’ve got to make it up somewhere.
There are other small businesses in the Thousand Oaks area that have a smaller selection and higher prices than larger stores, but don’t do anything to make up for this lack. Conejo Valley Wine & Provision Co. is one, where the business model seems to be to make every buyer feel stupid (”I’ve got it! If they feel offended and embarrassed, they will give me more money!”) Paper Depot in Thousand Oaks (right next door to the previous store) is perhaps worse: they assume your question is stupid without even listening to it. I was looking for #6-3/4 envelopes. I was walked through the conversational steps of being told that such envelopes don’t exist (which they do), then that their width wasn’t 6 1/2 inches (which it is), then that that size wasn’t listed on their wall chart (which it was). At the end of this she finally looked in her catalog and found some examples, but was unable to get me a sample envelope: I would have to pay for them in full and if I didn’t like them when they arrived, too bad. Sorry folks … I can order out of a catalog (and for lower prices) without your help. [--- Text removed 27 March 2001 ---]
To offset the negativity of this list, I should provide a list of small stores that do go above and beyond the call in order to provide a great shopping experience:
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