Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: shopping

  • Ways to thrill a first time customer – Not

    I placed a first time order with a company (a fairly high end company at that) for a total of 26 items. Today it arrived. The ‘quantity shipped’ on my packing slip shows all of the items listed and marked as shipped, nothing is marked on back order.

    How many items are missing?

    7

    That is a lot. That happens to be more than a quarter of them. How much did that bother me? So much that I called. I actually called. I hate to call. I don’t want to talk to somebody on the phone. I would much rather handle such things by email, but I wanted rapid assurances that this was going to be fixed, as well as an explaination of how such an error could be made.

    Their customer service number is only available until 5:30 PM Eastern time. I was unable to reach them. I’ve sent an email. Let’s see if how rapidly they respond.

  • Another Day, Another Annoyance

    Last week on Wednesday the 14th I ordered something at around 10 AM. I upgraded the shipping to next morning shipping. The place I was ordering from is 60 miles away from my house. Even shipping ground should have gotten it here overnight with no problem, but they also claimed that any order before 2 PM would ship same day if you paid for the upgrade, whereas ground orders would go out within 2 business days. I wanted to have it by Friday so it was worth it to me to pay the extra, because if they happened to take the full 2 business days to ship, I’d have to wait through the weekend.

    On the 15th in the afternoon I got an email that said it had shipped on the 14th and provided me with a tracking number. Now obviously if the order shipped by next morning delivery on the 14th, as it should have, I would already have it by the time this confirmation email was sent on the 15th. I did not have it. I was annoyed but not yet completely pissed off. I just needed the item by the 16th. I clicked on the link to the tracking information that was sent in the shipping email. It took me to the FedEx website where I got this message.

    Not found
    No information for the following shipments has been received by our system yet. Please try again later or contact Customer Service.

    There was also a link in the email to contact customer care if I had any questions. I tried filling out the form there, but it refused to submit properly. I tried to call, but they were already closed for the day. I tried looking up my order on their website. It claimed to have shipped on the 14th and also linked me to the same tracking information with the same result.

    The 16th arrived and my package still did not. I had a very busy day. I tried once to reach them by phone but the hold time proved beyond my ability to wait through from home and my call was dropped by cell. Their customer service was closed by the time I made it home again and had a chance to breathe and think and make another phone call. I checked the tracking info again and got the same result. I tried submitting the web form a few more times. They were closed all weekend.

    I called this morning, and waited on hold until I was able to speak to somebody. I gave my order number and explained that I did not have my package and FedEx claimed to not have my package either and that I was not exactly pleased with the situation.

    The man explained to me that the tracking number was for DHL, not FedEx.

    “Umm, you do see that the email I was sent and the account information on your website both say FedEx?”

    “Yes, I think that is just a programming error, but the package was sent by DHL, so let me look that up for you…”

    (In the meantime I look it up on DHL myself.

    Tracking summary
    Current Status Processed at DHL Location.
    Est. Delivery Date: 3/15/2007

    Tracking history
    Status
    3/14/2007 10:25 pm Processed at DHL Location. Riverside, CA
    3/14/2007 6:54 pm Departing origin. Fullerton, CA
    3/14/2007 4:18 pm Picked Up by DHL. Shipper’s Door)

    “…Okay, it tells me that DHL still has the package, so let me give you the tracking number and the contact number and you can call DHL and see what the problem is. Once you have your package, call us back and we will credit you back the difference for the upgraded shipping.”

    *deep breath*

    “I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Why do you want ME to contact DHL?”

    “It shows me that they have your package still. There might be some problem with your address, so you should call them.”

    “I bought this from you. I paid you for it. It is your job to get make sure I get it. I did not buy it from DHL.”

    “Yes, but DHL has your package and there might be a problem with your address.”

    “Well I am looking at my confirmation email from you and you have my address correct in that email. I provided you with the correct address. If DHL has something wrong about my address, it is between you and DHL. Why don’t YOU contact DHL and find out what is going on?”

    “DHL has your package.”

    “Yes, but I bought this from you. This is your problem. I don’t understand why I should be expected to do work to solve this. Why should I be on hold with DHL, you are the ones who pay DHL. I paid you. Why should I wait on hold again to talk to you later in order to get a refund?”

    “I can escalate this to customer concerns and they will email you back.”

    “When will that happen?”

    “Within 24 to 48 hours.”

    *really deep breath*

    “On the 14th I paid for next morning shipping because I needed the item last week. I don’t understand why I now have to wait 24 to 48 hours for you to contact me back and tell me what you are going to do about it.”

    “That is just an outside estimate.”

    “When are you going to contact DHL?”

    “I will escalate it to customer concerns and they will contact DHL.”

    “When will they do that?”

    “Within 20 minutes.”

    “Then why will I not hear back from them for 48 hours?”

    “That is an outside estimate, in case DHL needs to get back to them. DHL may take time to look up the information. If they have lost the package then we will need to ship you a new one. That will go out tomorrow, so it will be 48 hours.”

    “If somebody is going to contact DHL within 20 minutes, why can’t they contact me then to give me a status report?”

    “DHL might have to get back to them.”

    “Can I speak right now to the person who needs to contact DHL?”

    “I need to send the report first to escalate it, but they will get to it as soon as possible.”

    “Within 24 to 48 hours?”

    “That is an outside estimate.”

    “You are less than 2 hours away from my house.”

    “Yes, I see that from the address you provided.”

    “But it might take 48 hours for you to get back to me about how I will get a package that I ordered for next morning delivery, last week?”

    “They will get to it as soon as they can.”

    “Why don’t you just ship out a replacement order today, so I can have it tomorrow. You and DHL can figure out what to do about the other package?”

    “Yes, we will do that.”

    “So I can expect my order to be here tomorrow morning? Whether it is a second shipment, or the original, I will have my order tomorrow morning?”

    “Yes.”

    “And, you’ll be refunding me the difference on shipping?”

    “Yes.”

    “Okay, I will look for that on my credit card.

    “Is there anything else I can help you with today.”

    “No, I really don’t think so.”

    Along with my general joy over the order, I also have to wonder… What is with DHL? They have in their system that it has an expected delivery of the 15th, it is past the 15th and that is it, just no further updates? I am not convinced that I would necessarily call that package tracking. If they got something with an incorrect address, shouldn’t there be some sort of procedure for getting the correct address from the shipper? They did pick it up from the shipper’s location, so they know where THAT is. They could just go take it back.

    I am tired. My 3.5 hours of sleep did not give me enough energy to deal with this. I wonder if I will get my part tomorrow. Somehow I rather doubt it.

    Oh yeah, for the curious, I ordered from Targus

    .

    Targus Group International, Inc. pioneered the notebook carrying case category, partnering with corporations, retailers, and OEMs to provide the best possible protection for notebook PCs. Targus continues to define and shape the market for mobile computing cases and accessories. As the leading global supplier of portable solutions, Targus has offices on every continent and distributes in over 145 countries.

    Impressive.

  • Useful Things

    MSN displays local gas prices. They are not the only site that does it, but I do find the ones that get updates from the gas stations to be more reliable than the user reported sites. Unfortunately they do not cover the membership gas stations (like Costco, at least not in my area). I still find them very useful.

    When it comes to shopping, I prefer to shop online. When you go to shop at a store, there are people there. I don’t like that. There are people online too, but they interfere with my shopping somewhat less. I am also cheap. Therefore I like things which make it easier to get what I want for less. Froogle is some help there.

    I use fatwallet to look for deals and coupons and to get rebates.

    I also shop at bookcloseouts. It is like browsing through the bargain tables in a bookstore, but with a much better search feature.

    DVDpricesearch was a big favorite because the shopping cart features allow me to figure out the best place overall to get things, and also keep track of things I want to purchase when they finally get cheap enough. I don’t use them as much anymore because I was able to get a bit of a handle on my DVD purchasing addicition by using Netflix. They let me take coupons into account too. gamepricezone by the same guy is also useful, but now we almost always just “keep it” from gamefly, which tends to be cheaper. Gamefly is terrific, it lets us play a lot more games while spending a lot less on games that turn out to not be enjoyable to us.

    Of course ebay is good for locating deals or unusual things online. I like using jbidwatcher. Unfortunately due to some assholes he might quite working on the project. I’ve donated to him in the past.

  • reply from Costco

    Thank you for your email to Costco Wholesale.

    Legacy items are PRE-new policy. Members who purchased prior to the new policy are grandfathered in, so the new limits do not affect them. The revised policy only applies to purchases after the policy change date.

    Thank you,

    Costco Wholesale Corporation

  • Costco’s New Return Policy

    We guarantee your satisfaction on every product we sell, with a full refund. Exceptions: Televisions, computers, cameras, camcorders, iPOD / MP3 players and cellular phones must be returned within 90 days of purchase for a refund.

    Now, I did not use Costco’s return policy as a way to get free upgrades. However the policy was part of the reason I shopped at Costco. It was not about cheap prices. The prices were decent, but usually I could find things for cheaper elsewhere. I spent the extra amount at Costco because it was like buying an extended warranty. I have returned a few expensive items because they quit working in an amount of time that was not acceptable for an item of that price point. I’ve also just tossed out cheap items which quit working. I have also bought plenty of things on impulse because “I can always return them if I change my mind.” Most of those never found their way back either, even if the box was never opened. Obviously their policy quit working for them, and I am aware of many people who routinely abused it. It is no doubt easier overall for them to change it across the board than to limit certain customers (although since they keep track of all purchases by account they could easily see who the abusers are.

    Anyhow since I have often been known for pimping Costco, I thought I’d point out the change. I’ve sent them an email to verify that purchases under the old policy would still be honored under that return policy. It is why we just spent more to purchase an MP3 player at Costco than we could have gotten it for at Amazon.

  • I have an idea.

    When I order something from you online, do not sign me up to receive your dumbass paper catalog. I do not want your catalog. I will not shop from your catalog. It is going to clutter up my mailbox, my house, and my recycling bin. It will aggravate me.

    I shop online. I proved to you that I shop online by placing an order online. That is where you got it into your fool head that I was interested in your products. I found you online. I found the product online. I purchased from you online. I gave you my address so you could send me what I wanted, not so that you could harass me forever with pounds of paper. Yes the catalog has instructions on how to stop the mailings. That takes up my time and effort. I need that for other things. I do not want to jump through hoops to cancel your catalog, only to have you sign me up again if I am stupid enough to ever buy something from you again online.

    Guess what? I know how to request your catalog should I want a catalog for some reason.

    Stop the waste. It wastes your money, paying for the catalog, paying to ship the catalog… Who pays for all that bullshit in the end? That would be your customers, assuming you know anything about business, which is somewhat questionable to me since you are making the mistake of targeting me as a catalog customer. I do not want to pay extra for your crappy items because you don’t know how to spend your advertising dollars correctly. If you piss your advertising dollars away, next thing you know you need to throw more money into that budget and you raise your prices. Also a good way to keep me from buying. Plus, paper is a resource. It does not appear by magic. It does not simply vanish the second I do not want it.

    You want to drive me really crazy? Send me things that look like catalogs, when you don’t even do mail and phone orders. (What is with Amazon sending me multipage advertisements of the crap they only sell online? Do they think I might forget how to type a m a z o n . c o m if they don’t send it to me? They would be wrong.)

    I have too much to do already, I do not want to be dealing with a mountain of your catalogs that will do me no good ever. They are printed on glossy paper, so they aren’t even good for absorbing pet piss and shit.

  • Who wants to go to the mall?

    Not me.

    Okay, I just sent off pdf number 20 of the day, so they can all be approved by the client. I am pretty sure they will be, actually the one I have been fighting with the longest, he already approved but I was unhappy with how something was working out, so I have been fighting with it for the past week as I continued to work on the other items. Next will be getting them to the printer and getting proofs.

    This should be a relief, but instead it means it is time to take my MIL to the mall. She wants to buy me an outfit, which is a very nice thing. It is just I am very bad at traditional clothes shopping. At this point I mainly order things online and just suck up the postage fees if it turns out I hate it or it doesn’t fit. The crowds, the noise, the cramped dressing rooms that are always way too warm for me, and all the muzak.

    Alright, enough stalling. Off to shop I go.

    First I have to move our outdoor bird into the garage because they are predicting record lows for the next two nights. Look at that, found another way to stall.

  • No Thanks

    It’s just not that magic to me.

    At 17 I got my first job in retail. Being trapped inside the mall for the entire holiday season, both the purchases and returns, was, let’s call it “unpleasant”. Working with the general public was not something I enjoyed on a normal day, but during the holiday season everything went to extra utter shit. The number of temper tantrums increased tenfold. There were people fighting with strangers over who was getting the last of some dumb piece of crap.

    Even on sale, it is an ugly damn sweater ladies. If you don’t both stop yanking at it you are going to ruin it, It will then be my job to damage it out, and since I already have more than enough to do today cleaning up after you fucks, it is really not going to make me happy. Merry Christmas.

    The closer it got to the big day, the longer my work hours and the shorter the shoppers’ tempers. Best of all, school was out for vacation so most shoppers were dragging along all form of snotty, fussing, writhing, complaining, demanding, brat with them.

    People could talk all they wanted about the magic of the season, but I saw what they were really like, and the overwhelming majority were not swept up in tides of joy, nor did they feel goodwill toward mankind. They felt aggravated, rushed, pressured, frantic, crazed and entitled. It was just like the rest of the year, only amplified. In my book giving some canned peaches to the food drive does not even out treating everyone at the mall like shit.

    Giftmas

    It all comes down to the gifts. I’m not opposed to giving gifts and I am not opposed to receiving them. I am a firm believer in the saying “It’s the thought that counts”, but I don’t interpret it the same way most people do. I do not think that just any gift will do because at least it shows they thought of you for a second. That is what a card or a phone call or an email is for. A gift shows what they are thinking of you, and if that thought is “Oh shit! I forgot to get you something and I really think I should because it is X day tomorrow. I was already in line when I realized this, but here is a random piece of crap set near the register lines for exactly this purpose.” I honestly don’t want it. I also really don’t want to give gifts like that.

    When I am out and about in the course of my life (or sitting on my ass surfing the web, as the case may be), and I stumble upon something that makes me think of a particular person, that is a gift worth considering. I don’t want to not buy it because there isn’t an X day until 9 months in the future. I don’t want to buy it and hide it in my cluttered closet for 10 months and find it after X day has passed.

    My father was never much of a gift giver, so when I was a teen I began to do the Christmas shopping from US. My action + his money, both names on the card. I’d start early and put thought into each and every gift, but I was a teen and not overly in touch with a lot of people on our list, so I probably had more misses than hits. As the time grew closer and I’d remember the people we’d left of the list, I would scramble to get *something*. I understand how it happens. I just hated the way it felt. If I didn’t know somebody well enough to buy a gift for them that they would actually like… If they weren’t on my mind enough that I remembered them when I put together the list… Why exactly should I be buying a present for them anyway? Because they were going to buy one for me? This was only of benefit to the retailers.

    This much is being spent on this person, so this much should be spent on that person. More expensive is *better*. They spent this much on me last year. The Christmas advertisements started at the beginning of November (they now start at the end of September is some stores). I was saturated with the commercialization of Christmas and I just wanted to wring it out. I did not feel holiday cheer, I felt holiday stress.

    This was what I was going to raise our family on? Yes, children LOVE Christmas. Children are selfish creatures. Humans are selfish creatures and the young ones have learned to hide it less. People pile tons of presents on them and that makes it an enjoyable holiday to them, and they want more. It wasn’t exactly a traditional I felt gung ho about passing on.

    If I am going to a person’s house for dinner, I bring along a bottle of wine or some other consumable I know they will actually use. If I am a house guest, I make sure to take them out to a nice meal. I am all for manners and thanking people by treating them to something. I’m just not that into providing a wrapped item because of a certain date on the calendar. I try to make sure the people I care about know it every day. If they need a certain amount of money spent on a certain date to know it, they probably don’t know me well enough that they should be expecting a gift from me anyhow. If I am going to attend a wedding or birthday party, then I will make a point of having a gift in time for the event, or I don’t attend. Like I said, I am not anti gift or anti manners. I just don’t want to be part of frenzied gift exchanges.

    None of the memorable gifts I have gotten showed up on Christmas. Many of my favorites showed up out of the blue, just because somebody happened to be thinking of me. It might be the gift giving season, but please, nothing for me.

  • Aggravation, mental wiitardation, aggravation, a game we used to play

    I do my best to avoid going into any store that isn’t a grocery store from Thanksgiving until mid-January. Holiday crowds and holiday shopping irritate the shit out of me.

    When Nintendo announced the Revolution, I wanted one. When they announced that the official name would be Wii, I still wanted one, although I was not impressed by the name. The thing is, I wanted the console. I wanted Zelda. I wanted to rent other Wii games to play. What I really wanted was to preorder the fucking thing online from a retailer I actually have heard of, when it was convenient for me, and I was at the computer. Then I wanted that retailer to ship it to me as soon as possible, in a fair fashion based on when the order was made. If it got was sent out on launch day, great. If they fairly were not able to provide my order until January, fine. I just wanted it ordered and taken care of.

    Instead, even to get a preorder, one needed to wait in line, or hope to get it during the hour a place might accept preorders online. In many cases one was expected to preorder in offensive ways, “You have to agree to buy a bundle, but we don’t know what the bundle will consist of.” So preorders came and went and went and went, and I had no preorder.

    Now, if it were just me, I would be done. Whatfuckingever. My husband really really really wanted one. Being in the video game business, one would fantasize that it would be easier to get new consoles, and in some cases it is, but the timing of his recent job change kept him from getting one from his old company, and it was too late to arrange to get one through the new company. He really wanted a Wii, and I really like to provide him what he wants.

    Now, we might not see eye to eye on the exact point of when we get so annoyed with the whole purchasing process that it is time to simply say fuck it and wait until they are available everywhere easily, much less when to get so irritated that we wait until the fucking things can be found on clearance. However, we at least agree that we should not need to buy bundles that include shit that we don’t want. We should not have to wait out overnight, and we sure as fucking hell should not pay over retail.

    The night prior to launch found me, disturbingly, teaching my daughter how to purchase something online so that she could man Amazon.com at midnight while we went out to a 24 hour Walmart. No joy. Launch morning saw me hitting Target, TRU, Best Buy and Circuit City as well as continuing to try to order from Amazon and trying to get a Costco.com order. Nothing anywhere except an increasingly pissed off me.

    Now if everybody was buying one for themselves, it would be one thing, but the whole purchasing them to make a profit on ebay, while taking them away from people that just want to play, gets on my fucking nerves. I am even further fucking irritated by the dumbfuck parents who are so worried about putting what their spoiled brat wants under the tree for the dumbass holiday, that they will pay above retail on ebay. Not only do they encourage the asshole ebay hoarding behavior, but they just add to the fuckedupedness of their kids. This wouldn’t be so bad if they would just keep the kids in their basement forever, but they insist on letting them out of the house.

    So a couple of weeks have been spent, checking online multiple times a day, stopping by stores, making phone calls, and with each bit of effort expended my interest in the Wii has further waned. It is not a unique piece of artwork, or even a limited edition print. It is a consumer electronics item. I don’t like Nintendo fucking around with availability and I dislike the retailers fucking around with it even more. Get a shipment in and put it on sale, don’t hold it over for a certain date so you can create buzz and lines. Nothing like launching a product and quickly leading me to dislike all the companies involved within a short amount of time. Impressive.

    The online reports told me to once again expect limited quantities available this morning, so once again we woke up early and headed out into the foul holiday shopping world. The first store at 10 minutes before opening, the line outside was too long to even bother stopping. The second we drove past wasn’t opening for 2 hours and we were not going to wait that long. The third place we got to 15 minutes after opening, so we parked and went inside to see what was up. In the electronics department there was a line. They had 33 units and had handed out 33 tickets. We decided to lurk. A couple had 2 tickets but one of them had to leave for work and it was taking them forbloodyever to check people out, so the man had to bail and gave me his ticket. Another couple had seen the line and hopped in, they had no idea what for. When they finally got close enough that they saw what it was for, they didn’t want it. They gave one ticket to a lady who was there with her boyfriend. The other they gave to our friend. Our third friend did not luck out. We waited through all 33 sales in case somebody had a bad credit card situation.

    So now we have a Wii. My husband is happy. My daughter is happy. I am relieved to be done looking, but I am not happy. I am still irritated.

    On the PS3 he is just going to have to wait. I don’t want to set foot in a store until after the holidays are over.

  • Another step toward becoming a hermit, on a mountain… with a shotgun (and internet access)

    We were running out of things we needed, important things, like dog food. Since I know that if we go too long without dog food, we’ll become the food, I forced myself to go to the grocery store.

    I had forgotten to make a list, so the shopping experience took longer and was more frustrating than usual, except in many ways that is the usual. I even knocked an item off the shelf and broke it, creating a mess. “Clean up on aisle 13!” I was finally ready to checkout, and there was only one line open. There were 10 people ahead of me (but some were together), and as I waited 3 more people joined the line behind me. People were getting antsy.

    The Assistant Manager spoke to the cashier and then walked over to another lane. As the cashier informed the people in our line that another check stand would be opening, an older woman walked up with her cart to where the AM was getting signed in to the register. The AM had not turned on the light. The older woman asked, “Are you open?” Obviously she thought we were all stupid. Of course the line was open, but we couldn’t be bothered to ask and just preferred to queue up with more than a dozen other people. The AM pointed toward our long line and told her, “I’ll be opening up, but I’ll be taking the next person in line.”

    The older woman huffed and muttered something under her breath.

    Meanwhile, in the line I am waiting in, everybody looks at each other to determine who is splitting off and who is staying. The next person in line already had her items on the belt. The people behind her decided to peel off for the new lane. This was a group of six people who were all there together, but paying separately. They only had four items between them. The person directly in front of me elected to stay in line, so I went to the new line and one person behind me followed.

    The older woman was pissed. She grumbled her way over to the first line I had been in, at exactly the place she would have been had she got into line to start with, complaining the whole way about “people cutting in front of her”. When she got up to the cashier she asked who was in charge, and the cashier pointed to the AM. This angered the older woman even more. The AM is trying to answer her angry accusations from the other lane, which slows her considerably in getting through my order.

    This allowed the older woman to finish checking out before me. She then came over and started complaining up close and personal to the AM. The AM was trying to finish ringing me up, but the older woman kept interrupting her. She wanted the manager’s name and phone number and the AM told her it was printed on the bottom of her receipt. The older woman insisted that the AM write it down for her and write down her own name. The AM finished helping me first, enraging the customer further. Essentially she was pissed off because she thought that the AM should have only taken one person from the other line, and then allowed her to be second. She said the AM had treated her badly by saying she was “taking the next person in line” but then taking more than one per person from the line. Absolutely nobody had gotten checked out ahead of her who hadn’t already been in line when she came up to the front of the store. Not only that but all her arguing meant that two people finished AFTER she did. She didn’t even seem to be in much of a hurry, since she was still hanging out to gripe long after her own transaction was complete.

    I checked over my receipt until MrsGrumpyBritches finally stomped and muttered her way out the door, and then I gave the AM my business card and told her that if manager had any questions, she could call me.

    I try to avoid leaving my house, it rarely works out well for me. Stupid dogs.