My transition from brick and mortar shopping to
e-tailing (what a gross word) has been a long road. One of necessity and convenience rather than principle. It is not without some weight that I shed the local store. Be it chain or small business there has always been at least something worth visiting for. The pros and cons of both are well worn stones that I won't bother shining here.
I rejected comic book stores for cost, lack of customer service and the feeling that they could smell the
newness of me. I left in-store computer parts ages ago for
cost, variety and return policies. Book stores were easy to dump in the face of sky high mark ups and convenience. A fair amount of my clothing is purchased on the web these days and I merely smile as the scale tips. It is a rare thing that I black list a store or company entirely though.
Comcast is was an "asshole" and I have happily had their service for going on 9 years now.
Best Buy is on that list now however. After years of less than stellar service, unsavory return policies and high prices I still occasionally stopped by for an impulse buy. Never for media, they shot themselves in the foot on that long ago. No returns what so ever on opened media. In that vein, it was odd that I found myself at Best Buy to purchase my first
Kindle
. A device created by the company I buy near 100% of my media from. Gift card in hand, it was too tempting to not get my new e-reader without a two day wait though.
After a week of bliss, disaster struck. I'll save the gory details and say that my Kindle had a run in with a car door at midnight. It was never the same and completely unusable. I called* Amazon to tell them my sob story and got a super friendly person on the phone. They told me about their 30 day return policy. Despite the fault being mine and mine alone, he told I would have to go to Best Buy, but could get a new one.
So off to the brick and mortar I went to get my new gadget replaced. Why I assumed it would be easy I don't know? The reassuring friendly Amazon rep helped, but I should have known better. On my lunch break I walked in past security and bee-lined it to the return desk. I was told it was broken and they couldn't do anything for me. I calmly explained my conversation I had with Amazon. They explained that had I purchased
Best Buys replacement plan they would have happily given me a new Kindle. Lacking a time machine, growing frustrated and with no desire to cause a scene, I thanked them and began to walk away.
It was raining, so before I left the return desk the lady behind the counter offered to put my receipt in my Kindle box. It seemed like a nice enough offer so I accepted and turned heel to the door. Nearly out of the store the security guard stopped me to see my receipt. The same receipt that had just been buried deep in the box. I explained in a mildly frustrated tone, that what I had in my hands was mine and that I was just at the return desk.
Him: Still need to see the receipt.
Me: Fine.
Him: Next time get a sticker. (pointing to a roll of pink return stickers)
Me: From who? You were chatting with someone when I walked in the door.
Him: Next time get a sticker.
Me: Was there a sign to tell me that?
Him: Next time get a sticker.
Me: Was there a sign to tell me that?
Him: Next time get a sticker.
Me: Fuck You! (exit stage left)
It was not just a plain old "fuck you", it was layered. What it really meant was "Fuck you and don't worry about next time, there won't be a next time". I am done. No more standing in the rain at
5am on Black Friday. No more random trips just because or running out for something I don't want to wait for shipping on. Best Buy cost more, has shitty service and could give two shits about their customers. Sum up the future buying potential of a customer. Wait not "a customer", this customer, me. Tech-savvy, late 20's and disposable income. Is it worth $139 to lose me. I'd bet more than I have in this life on it.
Now lets take it down a notch. Breathe deep and know that this tale has a happy ending. Two days later I called Amazon again. I explained Best Buys refusal or ignorance in adhering to whatever agreement they had for returns. I told them about the replacement plan to salt the wound further and hoped for a better outcome. The second friendly Amazon representation I had spoken to that week seemed genuinely concerned. He put a replacement Kindle in the mail that day and sent me a prepaid label to send back the damaged one. Moments later I was off the phone, a weight lifted from my shoulders. Excellent customer service saved the day. I've since made 4 separate orders from Amazon and am near finished my first e-book. They already had a customer who liked them. Now they have one for life.
*
So you don't call Amazon. You go to their website, put your number in and they call you with in 5 minutes. Why isn't everyone doing this? As a customer I avoid hold times, layered menus and frustration. For their hunt group or call center it is presumably the same experience as the traditional model.
Blogging for three plus years has affirmed one truth for me. I love writing. I liked writing in college, hated it from K to 12 and now I love it. Part of that love is writing about things I find interesting and the other part is keeping a schedule that hopefully makes me better at it. I have aspirations to one day write a novel, but for now I'm content to just dump the contents of a weekend with the family into a post.
On the heels of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt committed the U.S. to the production of 60,000 warplanes in 1942 and 185,000 for 1943. Monumental numbers by today's standards and even loftier expectations in the 40s. As a promotion to illustrate just how many planes would need to be produced, 4,500 model planes were hung from the high ceilings of Union Station in Chicago. Just wrapping ones mind around the number of planes in the picture above is crazy. Add to that they are only 1/48th of the goal and that they actually take up the space of an actual plane.
Yup that is a mailbox made X-wing or is it a X-wing made mailbox? In any case it is wicked cool and Crystal would never in a million years let me do something this nerdy to our home. I'll just have to settle for building a time machine and dropping off my parcels in a R2-D2.
Apparently this blog is just pictures of my son and hobby mash ups that get my geeky blood flowing. Hmm, I'm fine with that, lets call a spade a spade and move on to more of it. This time it is Lego and tattoos, via a marketing campaign for extrafine Pilot pens. Cool idea and if that inked isn't Photoshop-ed than they have someone with incredibly steady hands on staff.
I'd be afraid someone would find my charred corpse and not know what I was attempting to do in my final moments. Embarrassment and scandal for my family and friends as it is revealed that I had a weird toilet water fetish. At least he died doing what he loved.
Tie tea is ultra clever in it's simplicity and allows for a post my Mom will love when she gets around to reading it. Win Win!
Forbes's interact migration map is fascinating. It displays the movements of Americans from county to county since 2008 via IRS data. The screen capture above is of Detroit, where red lines represent people leaving the city and black lines are people moving to it.
A recent study conducted by a Tufts University professor found that a majority of people are inclined to pick southern routes when trying to reach a destination. This preference for the big "S" on the compass stems from a psychological association between north and uphill travel.
I have been hunting for a basic bottle opener key chain for for the better part of 2009 and into 2010 (pronounced twenty ten). Sure I could go with a shark or race car with a penchant for bottled spirit penetration, but I want for more. I discovered Planet Pocket Tool in the process, but they are pricey and you have to check your RSS feeds by the second to secure one. Today though, the keychain Gods did smile upon me. The Screwpop, while not the best name, is exactly what I want from a keychain. A perfect blend of form and function, rather four parts function.
Pretty slick design, the lasers that indicate the minute and hour hands are only visible once you tap the outer ring to activate them. Otherwise it just looks like a watch with no face.
Our home was built in 1954, when ice cream cost a nickel and bathrooms were the spokespersons for the atomic color pallet. While I do cordon off a place in my mind for an appreciation of vintage design, our bathrooms have found no quarter there. Thankfully our kitchen was striped of it's presumed mustard finish long before we moved in. The bathrooms, I'm afraid, still cling to their respective rose and mint finishes like the petrified instruments of a basilisk victim in a tomb long forgotten.
Four years did they stand and four years did we abhor them. No more, I am pleased to say, well not the downstairs lavatory at least. Over our holiday vacation we went about remodeling our bathroom from a bygone era. The whole process started out by bringing in a contractor to reglaze the old salmon tile to a glossy snow white. It took collectively 4 days for him to complete it. Day one was cleaning and tile repair. Day two was spray prep and spraying primer. Day three was spraying the resin and clear coat. Finally, day four, Christmas Eve, was removing the masking and final touches. The whole process seemed like something I would never want to attempt on my own and well worth the money we spent to have it done.
The follow up to the new color was pulling our old pink toilet and flooring up and sending them to the bottom of the sea in cement footy pajamas. Once they were gone we set about scraping the floor for three days in a row to remove the old adhesive and get back down to the original sub-floor. It was a labor intensive, pain is the ass job, that I would have gladly paid someone to do had I the foresight. Once it was done though the new flooring went down easy and the new toilet soon followed.
Apparently I am taking this month off, a blogcation if you will, to work on other projects and be with family. I didn't plan it this way, but it was a welcome break in the face of the holidays, bathroom renovations, video editing and more. My Tumblr went dark for the week of Christmas as well, but the lights are back on today. The same goes for Twitter, but that has a pulse again too.
When I got home from work last night, I hit the kitchen to start prepping for burgers. I'll take grilling outside over cooking indoors any day and the weather gods have been kind enough to bless us with warmer temperatures as of late. As with my last trip to the grill I brought the dog (Macy) outside with me so she could run off some energy. A practice we have been encouraging as of late with the baby coming.
