Daily Mess

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?

I have not been too happy with the male species lately, I have found them to be bullish, hurtful and on the humanity scale they are rating about a 1 with me right now. Men suck. They have so many self esteem issues it is scary. From calling people “son” so others will think they are older and wiser (when in fact, they are just old) to calling females fat (even though they can do with dropping a good 30 plus pounds themselves).

I have never understood this need for putting others in their place, for belittling them, for trying to inflict emotional pain on them just for their own amusement. It seems they think it is cool to hurt or embarrass someone. It is like they really believe that in doing so, it puts them up one notch on the “cool scale” and makes their male member grow by an inch or two.

Well, I got news for y’all, it lessons you, it makes you childish, it makes you unworthy as a human being in general and I pray that one day, karma is going to walk up to you, and bite your @#$#@$@ face off, chew it up a bit and then toss it on the ground. 99% of men such and the problem with us women, is half of us haven’t figured it out yet. Given the chance they will screw you, fuck you around, fuck around on you, and take everything you have, just because they can.

So to the guy, a complete stranger who walked up to a girl he has never met before and called her fat (when she is not fat) and made her cry, ruined her night, and made her feel like she was worth nothing…..a big FU goes out to you. I hope you one day, Karma pays your back ten fold.