Daily Mess

Ok, so I have been told recently that I don’t play nice.  This was not a revelation, I have known this for years, I left my patience back in 1980 when I got too damn tired of being a punching bag to care much what anyone thought of me.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am one of the nicest “not so nice” people you will ever meet, if you follow my rules of conduct.  First rule is don’t bug me, second rule is  don’t jerk me around and the third rule is do what you are supposed to do.

Most people don’t follow my three rules, so yes, I can get testy.  Let me give you an example.  My husband and I were in Costco, and we made a purchase that did not fit in our car so we decided, ok, since the people we are buying this for have a car half the size of ours, this gift is not going to work, we will just get the smaller size.  The people were taking this item across country, so we had no choice.  So we are standing in the RETURN line (this should let everyone around us know that are intention was to RETURN the item) and out from nowhere comes they guy that checks your cart on the way out.  He asked if we had not just purchased the item.  My husband said yes we did.  I said, it will not fit in our car, so we are returning it.  Apparently, I didn’t say it so nicely and my husband let me know, at which point, I thought it best to just keep my mouth shut.

So the receipt checker tells us, why don’t you pick it up tomorrow?  My husband politely answered it was a Christmas gift for someone else.  I think the guy thought we should go rent or borrow a truck, but anyways he left, and we continued to stand in the RETURN line.  He comes up again and says, “you can have it delivered you know” at which point my husband tells him, no, that won’t work out, the people have a very small car, if we can’t fit it in our car, then even if it was delivered, they would not be able to fit it in theirs to go across country.  The guy left.  He then came back moments later and said “We have costco’s in a lot of places, maybe you could buy it online and they could deliver it to them where they are”  at which point, my husband politely said no, it is a Christmas present, and the couple were not even at their destination yet so it wouldn’t work out.

I stood by confused, part of me wanted to lash out and say “YOU IDIOT, can’t you tell yet we do NOT want this TV” and part of me was amused that he kept coming back because my husband isn’t exactly known for having much patience either and I was hoping my husband would just snap and tell him to get lost.

No luck, my husband remained patient and I kept my mouth shut.  I was proud.  Looking back, the guy was just trying to help, I understand that.  The thing is, he was not obeying my rules, namely number 3 which states “do what you are supposed to do”.  In my mind, he was a receipt checker, he was not the return department, he was not customer service, so he should have stayed on the other side of the room and do what he is supposed to do, check receipts, not convince us to keep something that clearly was not going to work out.

I think the issue in that particular case was my “thing” about privacy.  I don’t think I should explain my actions to anyone not directly involved in the issue at hand.  I did not feel that I should tell the receipt checker “ok, this is how it goes and tell this stranger this long and drawn out story about why we are buying it and why we are returning it for the same thing, just a smaller size.

Oddly enough, when we did reach the Returns counter, the women said “Oh, you just got this, so the box hasn’t even been open, ok, great” and that was it.   She followed my rules, she was polite, did her job, and didn’t bother me and she was a pleasure to deal with.

Having said all that, and this being the season of love and joy and all of that stuff, I have decided to try and bite my tongue more often and be nice.  This is going to kill me.  I figure though, best to do it now, because if I don’t try now, I will end up having to make it my New Years resolution and that would mean working at it all year long, I would be insane by then.  It is best I do it now, and then just say “well, I tried, but the entire world is idiots and I just can’t help opening my mouth and telling them”  I will at least get credit for trying.

I am a firm believer in getting what you pay for.  I also believe that companies should stand by their products.  It is pretty easy, and it goes like this.  I work like a dog to provide the necessities in life and try to get a few of the finer things in life.  In return, the products I purchase should work, and if they don’t, the company should bend over backwards to make sure the consumer is happy.  That builds brand loyalty.

Well, last year for Christmas my husband and I decided to buy ourselves a joint gift.  So we purchased a Samsung flat screen LCD TV for the office.  Having it on in the background sometimes helps pass the very long hours we spend working our butts off so that we can buy things like the TV.  Well, we are (or should I say were) very loyal to Samsung.  We liked their products, have a few of their TV’s and a few of their monitors.  Well, as luck would have it, a couple of weeks ago the screen went black.  The sound on the TV works great, but I am one of those people who believe TV’s should also have a picture to go with that sound.

So I call up Samsung to tell them that my poor TV is broken.  What I expected was someone to say “don’t you worry about anything, we will send a service man to your home within 3 days to fix it, or even “We have a Samsung repair depot only 5 miles from your home, can you drop it off there and we will have it fixed?  What would have rocked, is if they would have said, we will send you a new one to replace the old one.  I don’t think I was being unreasonable to expect service like that, but alas that is not what I got.

I was informed, much to my dismay that if you look at the fine print in their manual you will see that what Samsung does is send you a “refurbished” TV that may, or may not be the same model and or size you have to replace your non-working TV.  Your used TV will then have a warranty of 90 days after which, if it breaks down, you are going to have to pay for repairs yourself or go buy yourself a new TV.

If this was not bad enough, they told me that I had to give them my credit card number, because I had 30 days after which receiving my used TV to get my non-working one back to them, or they would charge my credit card the price of a brand spanking new TV.  Oh, but wait, there is more.  It is going to take them approx. 30 days to get the TV to me, and it might be longer, because it all depends on what, if any used TV’s they have in the warehouse, and if they don’t have anything for you, then you are just going to have to wait until such time as they do.

I was not impressed.  First of all, I don’t like the idea of “refurbished”.  You see, the TV I have, I know everything about.  I know exactly when I bought it, approx how many hours it has been used and how well it was taken care of.  Yes, I am one of those people that go out and buy the $20 special cleaner and the $10 special rag to clean the TV with.  I want my own TV fixed, that way, if the exact same thing happens again, I can say “this is a continual problem”, but with a refurbished, you know nothing about the history of it.  For all I know it was played 24 hours a day in a day care where 35 screaming, vomiting, poop dropping 3 year olds used it as a lunch table.   Without knowing what was wrong with it before, how will I know if/when it breaks down again whether it is a new problem or an old problem?

To top things off, my disgruntled husband goes to work and expresses his displeasure about the TV to a coworker and his coworker tells him that he too had a problem with a brand new Samsung TV and he too had to get a refurbished one.  He is now having a problem with his refurbished one and Samsung is not too keen about doing anything about it.

Now, there isn’t too much I can do about the situation.  They have me in the corner and they know it.  The only thing I can do is tell others, and inform people BEFORE they buy a Samsung about their policy.  I figure if I can stop even 10 people from buying a Samsung, then I have done my duty as a consumer.  So I need 9 more people to convince not to buy one because when I was in Best Buy the other day, there were three men on the verge of buying a Samsung TV and I walked right up to them and said “before you buy this TV I think you should be aware of their policy”  The men listened intently to my story and decided that maybe buying another brand of TV would be a better idea.

Their entire policy stinks from forcing refurbished TV’s on the consumer to taking 30 plus days to get it to you.  Instructions on returning my broken TV are supposed to come with my refurbished one, and if they expect me to pay shipping, then I am just going to have to up my crusade against them!

I don’t like being cold. Especially that cold that seems to go directly down to the bone and make you want to just curl up under a pile of blankets in from of the fireplace. Well, the thing is, I have work to do, I don’t have time to curl up in front of the fireplace, and besides that, the damn thing isn’t working to begin with (it is on my To Get Done List.

So besides complaining to my husband and fending off Chi’s who keep trying to crawl up my legs to suck the last bit of warmth I have in my body for themselves I am stuck here. When they first started talking about Global Warming I thought “great, I will be able to swim all year long and finally get to grow palm trees. I happen to love Palm trees.

I don’t think I have to tell you that I am not seeing any Palm trees outside my window. I guess I should be thankful for the freezing rain yesterday, it washed away the snow so I didn’t have to shovel it. Which all comes back to Global Warming, I have a feeling this is all going to happen 500 years from now when I am long dead and buried, mostly likely dying from frostbite or pneumonia. I feel like I should be asking someone for a refund.

Yes, I do care about the planet to an extent. I think we will all be long dead before we destroy this planet, it is much stronger than I think we believe. Or a comet will come down and crash into us and destroy all life. Ok, so it might heat up for 1/2 a second then before my flesh falls off my skin but that is not what I am hoping for.

It doesn’t have to turn into a tropical island here. High 60’s in the dead of winter and the abilityh to grow Palm trees and not have my feet feel like frozen blocks of ice will do nicely. Mother Nature, come on, give me a break, send a little heat over this way will ya?