A Rant on Amazon's Super Saver Shipping

Mostly to save my Tweeps from a half-dozen tweets venting my frustration.

I ordered a HDHomeRun networked tuner and a chunk of ethernet cable from Amazon on Friday morning, June 12. The tuner was ordered from Amazon proper; the cable from whichever of their providers had it the cheapest. I opted for Amazon’s super-saver free shipping, both to save the $6 and because I didn’t have enough $$$ on the gift card I was using to pay for shipping.

Additionally, I ordered a RAM upgrade for my Mac Mini from newegg.com on Tuesday evening, June 16. It came with free shipping.

Now, as to arrival times.

The network cable shipped the same day I ordered it, and arrived in the mail on the 16th. Snappy response, well done to the Amazon retailer.

The RAM shipped from Newegg on Wednesday June 17th, and arrived this morning via USPS. 5 days, including the weekend. Not bad.

Amazon finally got around to announcing that my tuner had shipped on the evening of Tuesday the 16th. So it took them three full business days to even get around to shipping it. And the USPS tracking number they gave me says that yes, they entered the tracking number into the system on the evening of the 16th. However, the arrival scan for the package doesn’t show up until the afternoon of June 19th. So between the time they boxed it up and the time they actually got it to USPS was another three business days.

Now they’re telling me that the anticipated delivery date to my home in Iowa (from, per the tracking info, someplace in Kentucky) is not until Thursday, June 25th - a full two weeks after I ordered it, and a full nine days after they told me it shipped. I know the USPS isn’t the fastest carrier, but hey, that’s just awful.

I have had better shipping service from Amazon in the past - maybe this is just a fluke. Or maybe it’s part of a strategy to dissuade customers from actually choosing their free shipping option. Either way, it’s pretty awful.

End rant. Carry on.

Rainsoft of NE Iowa: A follow-up

A few weeks ago I wrote about a bad experience we had with an in-home sales call from Rainsoft of NE Iowa. I wrote the rant, emailed it to every Rainsoft of NE Iowa email address I could find, and that was that. Both of the email addresses I found for Rainsoft of NE Iowa bounced, and Rainsoft corporate doesn’t list an email address on their website, so I figured that was the end of it.

Then last week I got a phone call from Terry Bonik, who owns Rainsoft of NE IA. He had been notified of my blog post earlier that day, apparently by someone from Rainsoft corporate. In summary, he expressed these details:

  • He apologized profusely for the bad experience.
  • He told me that the saleswoman who visited our home has worked for him a long time and has never had another complaint like ours.
  • He agreed that three hours was far too long a visit, that they typically are only an hour in length.
  • He objected to my characterization of their giving us bottled water to taste but then not advising we buy the drinking water filtration unit as a “bait-and-switch”. Usually, he said, people do buy the drinking water filter, and so that’s a sample of what they would get. Our case just happens to be the exception, since we have pretty good water here in Hiawatha.
  • He volunteered to send me a $100 Home Depot gift card in hopes that it would help remedy the situation.
  • He asked if I would be willing to take my blog post down. I told him I’m not in the habit of taking down blog posts, but I would be willing to post an update on the situation. So here we are.

As I told Mr. Bonik on the phone, I rarely complain like this, and when I do, I even more rarely expect a response. I was quite pleased to get a response from him and was happy that he included some literature about the Rainsoft products. I don’t know how soon we’ll be in the market for a water treatment system, but I will add Rainsoft back to my list of firms to consider.

Now… I wonder if it’d be too forward to see if Chris Hubbs Design could be of any help for his web-hosting issues? :-)

Why I dislike salespeople - or at least their tactics

Update: I received a response from Rainsoft of NE Iowa that very much helped to resolve the situation. Click here to read about it.

Last week while shopping at Home Depot, a nice lady struck up a conversation with us, and proceeded to ask if we’d ever had our water tested before. Would we be interested? It’d take about an hour, and Home Depot would give us a $20 gift card for our trouble.

Oh sure, we figured, we’d not had our home water tested before. And yeah, we expected a sales pitch about some water treatment system, but whatever. And we can always use a $20 Home Depot card.

The night before our scheduled appointment we got a phone call from a call center confirming our appointment, making sure multiple times over that yes, both Becky and I were going to be home at that time, and then asking a series of questions that really didn’t have anything to do with our home water solution. Becky answered as few as she could and then hung up the phone. We ended up having to call back to reschedule, and we ended up on the calendar then for 4 pm Monday.

At five minutes until 4 the lady we had met at Home Depot knocked on our door with her three briefcases of equipment. Guess we tried to cut it too close by giving the girls a bath, but hey, who ever shows up early for an appointment? So, we rushed the girls out of the tub and set them up with an hour-long TV show.

We sat down at the kitchen table and she told us briefly about her company, RainSoft. Then came the water testing. The kitchen sink didn’t quite work to hook up her little mini-water-treater, so we all huddled in the bathroom as she ran a battery of tests. I knew she was getting verbose, but next thing I knew we were still running tests and it was 5:30. That’s right, 90 minutes, and we weren’t even close to getting the sales pitch. She did let us taste a bottle of their tasty drinking-water-treated water, though.

Finally the tests were nearing completion, so she set us down and worked us through her little notebook-driven pitch, warning of bad things like acid rain (didn’t that get debunked at least a decade ago?), chlorine (“many water systems have more than is safe for a swimming pool!” oh, guess what, we don’t have any in our water), and other nasty chemicals that can cause bad things. (Guess what: we don’t have those, either.) Her sources were as reliable as Women’s World magazine articles from the late 1980’s can be. Eventually we found out that our water is very hard (which we already knew), but otherwise safe.

So then it was time for the sales pitch. It was as bad as a TV infomercial. Guess what? They normally charge $300 for installation. But they’ll waive that today. Then the price of the unit is $4000. And, oh, by the way, you don’t really need the drinking water filter, so how about a home air filtration system instead? Normally it’s $2000, but how about today’s special deal: it’s only $1000! What a great deal! (I would’ve really liked the air filtration system about the time she walked in the door - she must’ve been smoking in her car all the way here. The dining room smelled of smoke for 30 minutes after she left!)

Then she “ran the numbers”. Here’s what a typical family spends on cleaning supplies. You won’t need to spend that much at all because of your soft water. Oh, and we’ll give you a long supply of soap so you won’t need to buy any at all. Here, Chris, you run the calculator. Are you with me on these numbers? They make sense, right? Here, so see? You can get our deal for only $99/month. You’ll actually be saving money! Don’t believe us? We have this free coupon program we’ll toss in free for 5 years, too! Just as a special gift!

It was nearly 7 pm when we had finally convinced her it didn’t matter how rosy her numbers were, we weren’t about to open up a $5000 line of credit to buy the thing tonight. She sullenly packed her bags and audaciously asked for the names and phone numbers of 5 homeowning friends who she might be able to contact. “As a favor to” her, she said. She’d get a gas voucher if we gave her names. We declined.

So, if you’re our salesman reading this, here are some helpful tips for how to make a sale to this cynical engineer next time:

  • Be on time and don’t go past the time you said you’d take. I have three hours between the time I get home from work and when my kids go to bed. Don’t take all of them. Did you ever wonder when we were going to eat supper?
  • Don’t make us feel like we’re doing you a favor by listening to your pitch. We don’t owe you anything.
  • Don’t use the old bait-and-switch. Sure, the nifty specially-filtered bottled water tastes good. But then you didn’t recommend it for us. And you didn’t let us taste the normally-filtered water. Tsk tsk.
  • Be up-front about the costs, including the financing. I’m a pretty sharp guy, I know how the numbers work. You preach $99/month up front, but when I ask “for how many months?”, you finally admit that it’s just a $99/month minimum payment on a line of credit that charges 17.99% interest. That’s 8 years at $99/month. Ouch.
  • Don’t try to rush me into a sale. Seriously, you’re asking me to make a snap decision, without doing any other research, on a $5000 system? In 10 minutes while you’re here staring at me? If it’s a good value today, it’ll be just as good a value tomorrow. If not, you’re trying to pull one over on me. For shame.
  • Don’t try to talk circles around my wife. Yeah, she was struggling trying to verbalize her objections to the deal. But making her feel stupid because she doesn’t see it your way? Bad form. A little hint: if I have to choose between my wife and you, she’s gonna win every time and twice on Sundays. Be glad it wasn’t a Sunday.
  • If you’re really trying to sell a product, leave some literature behind in case I change my mind. You didn’t even leave as much as a business card tonight. That gave me the idea that you were only in it for the quick sale tonight, and not interested in the long-term cultivation of a customer.

Now, what have I learned? Maybe I should’ve just turned down the test in the first place. But really, is there some unspoken social contract that obliges me to purchase the product because I invited the salesperson into my home to make their pitch? I didn’t think so. In the future I’ll stick to doing my research on the internet and proactively contacting vendors when I want to make a purchase, thank you very much.

its wisdom, who can measure?

Work necessitates that tomorrow I travel from Cedar Rapids to Denver to attend three days of FAA training. On the face of it, that doesn’t sound too bad, travel-wise. CID -> DEN is only a two-hour flight, and one US airline, when not eternally funding the estate of George Gershwin with its advertising budget, provides three daily non-stop flights from our fair city to the Mile-High.

But wait! This is no ordinary travel planning. This is corporate travel! Per the guidelines of our corporate travel policy (its wisdom, who can measure?) I have been routed on a different airline from Cedar Rapids first to Dallas-Fort Worth, and only then to Denver. For those scoring along at home, that’s 850 miles and two hours south-by-southwest to DFW, a 90-minute layover, then another 800 miles and two hours northwest from DFW to DEN. Which is quite obviously far superior to the 700 miles and two hours directly west from CID to DEN. To ice the proverbial cake, the forecast for both CID and DEN tomorrow calls for nothing but sunshine. DFW? 80% probability of thunderstorms.

Two years ago when I attended this training travel was a mess and I ended up driving through downtown Atlanta at midnight searching for my hotel; last year DFW gave me delays heading to New Orleans and I was trying to avoid the bayou and find my hotel after even The Big Easy had fallen asleep. Even with this year’s circuitous routing I am scheduled to arrive in Denver before 7 pm MDT, so it will take some serious delays if I am to achieve the three-peat. Still, with travel plans like this, anything is possible.

Another Half a Foot

Rest easy, friends, I’m not growing some fractional appendage. But I am pretty much tired of winter. Whatever the steps are in dealing with issues, well, I’ve moved past frustration and anger on to acceptance. It’s just more snow. Half an inch of ice to start it off? Well sure, why not? We can use the variety. I am glad this year, though, for the snowblower.

Two weeks from now I will be jetting off for a week in Augusta, GA. I can hardly wait to feel the warmth. The highs for this upcoming week, per weather.com? 11°F, 14°F, 10°F, and 19°F. Windchills down below zero most of the week. Now, I know that this winter is likely a climatological statistical anomaly that has no bearing on the validity of “global warming”, but the cynical part of me would like to invite Al Gore to move to Iowa for a few winters like this one. Right about now I’d be happy to trade him and move down to Tennessee.

At least when it gets cold in Wisconsin they can call it “The Frozen Tundra”, and it sounds cool. Here in Iowa it’s just more snow and ice and cold. And in Wisconsin they specialize in cheese… which would go pretty well with this whine.

Should this really be our fight?

“Clergy fight same sex marriage”. This headline stared out at me from this morning’s copy of the Cedar Rapids Gazette. The sub-heading (which was used as the title of the online version of the story) gives more detail: “Iowa church leaders planning rally ‘defending marriage’”.

A coalition of church leaders today announced plans for an Oct. 28 prayer rally and other actions to defend traditional marriage in the face of a district judge’s ruling striking down a same-sex marriage ban – a development they warned could convert Iowa into the nation’s “Rainbow Vegas.”

“This is a call to arms,” said Dan Berry of Cornerstone Family Church. “The sleeping giant is being awakened.”

Later in the story, the Rev. Keith Ratliff of Maple Street Missionary Baptist Church in Des Moines said the “…campaign is not geared toward hate or fear of homosexuals, but rather seeks to preserve the longstanding, family-based and Bible-backed tradition of marriage as being a union between a man and a woman.”

The final, colorful quote in the story comes from Chuck Hurley of the Iowa Family Policy Center, who warns that if the same-sex marriage ban is permanently reversed, Iowa will be come “the Rainbow Vegas”.

We have gotten all too familiar with hearing pastors and Christian leaders like these over the past two decades. On a national level, radio hosts like Dr. Dobson, televangelists/presidential candidates such as Pat Robertson, and leaders of movements like the Moral Majority (the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, an OK guy in my book), and later on the Christian Coalition (Ralph Reed, who turned out to be a bit more crooked), urged their listeners or viewers to call their congressman, write their legislator, to stop this piece of legislation, encourage that one, or to decry a recent judicial ruling.

There is a place in the life of a Christian for speaking the truth to our community. In many cases that should and will include involvement in the political arena. At our church this past week we had a petition on the table in the foyer urging Iowa lawmakers to pass a state constitutional amendment in “defense of marriage”, and to urge them to support an amendment to the federal constitution as well. One of our elders, during announcement time in the service, asked folks to consider signing it. Many did. (I didn’t. I’m not so sure that we should change the constitution for something like this.) But I fear for the sake of the Gospel and our churches when what our pastors are known for are leading the “sleeping giant” into the political arena when those rascally judges finally go too far. (Why is the church “sleeping”, anyway? Maybe that’s problem numero uno.)

Particularly disgusting to me was the quote from Mr. Hurley of the Iowa Family Policy Center, pulling out the scare tactics to warn good little church people that their beloved, safe hometowns will become a “Rainbow Vegas”. “Ooh! Run away!!! Gay people!!! Be afraid!” I don’t know whether Hurley is a pastor or not, but the IFPC website is pretty plainly espousing Christianity, including on their site a Prayer Request page with a quote from John Bunyan. Mr. Hurley, I see plenty of prayer requests on that page for new donors, success in the courts and the legislature, and politically active people. But where’s the prayer request that these people who you fear so strongly would hear the good news of Jesus Christ and be freed from their bondage to sin? If we’re going to rouse the “sleeping giant” of the church, why are you only rousing them to join the political fight against your adversaries rather than rousing them to minister to and serve those same people?

Our primary command as believers in Jesus Christ is the Great Commission: to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel. We are not to huddle in a spirit of fear, desperately attempting to protect our little enclave against the evil world around us. Christ has already won the victory. It’s over. Instead, we need to go to “those people”, and love them. Serve them. Find out who they are. What makes them tick. Show them the love of Christ in action, so that when we find avenues to share it verbally, they will already understand. We are not to fear “them”, but rather to fear for them, knowing that we, too, were once hopelessly ensnared in sin. Our new righteousness is not our own; we dare not boast in it. Only in Christ.

Change comes from the inside. Pass all the laws you want, legislate your own specific understanding of perfect morality, but if you don’t change the hearts, laws aren’t gonna do any good. (See: The Prohibition.) However, if lives are changed by the power of God, pass or repeal all the laws you want; people living for Christ will make whatever country they live in the kind of country that you probably want it to be. I fear that the siren song of political power has been too attractive to the Church. Let’s stop being distracted by it, and focus instead on loving our neighbor.

Somebody's leaving tracts in the bathroom again...

This morning’s visit to the bathroom here at work revealed that someone has again been leaving tracts on top of the toilet paper holder in the men’s room stalls. Now, the efficacy of leaving tracts at random as opposed to other evangelistic techniques is a discussion for another blog post. But if you’re going to leave a tract in the men’s room, should your first choice really have a pink rose and the words “You’re Special” scripted on the front? *sigh*

Not again!

UPS dutifully delivered my second refurbished iPod this afternoon. The battery was pretty well dead, so I hooked it up to the wall charger for a few hours until it said it was all charged up. Then I hooked it up to the laptop, setup iTunes to sync 18 GB of music, and crossed my fingers. Would this one work?

No. iTunes claims that it’s synced about 350 songs, and then it gives a file write error and dies. I tried removing the song that it died on from the sync list and syncing again, still no joy. The iPod totally locks up, has to be reset, and doesn’t end up with more than the first 11 tracks of the first album on it. Now, I like Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, but I’m gonna need the iPod to hold more than that.

So I guess it’s back to Best Buy tomorrow for yet another return. I’m not good at being confrontational in the store - usually I figure that the person behind the counter doesn’t have much control over it, so why be hard on them? But this time I won’t wait long before asking to see a manager. I waited two weeks for this second refurb, and it turned out to be trash, too. I want a gift card. I know their policy says I need to get another lemon before I get a gift card, but I really don’t want to have to wait another two weeks just to find out whether the next one is any good.

Grrrrrrr.

The trip to Best Buy, or, why you should think when you design a computer system.

So, as planned, tonight I went to Best Buy to find out what was up with my iPod replacement. Long story short, I took my original one in for repair, they sent me a refurb which was also dead, so I took it back, and they were going to send me another one. Two weeks elapse. We pick up on the story tonight as I talk to a member of the “Geek Squad” at our local Cedar Rapids Best Buy.

I explain my story. I brought in the refurb for the second return 12 days ago. The guy wasn’t able to enter it into the system yet, but assured me the system would let him enter it by the end of the day, so 3 - 5 business days and I should get a new one. 8 business days later, I’m back. I talked to them last Friday on the phone and they said yeah, the service tag just closed, so expect the iPod in a couple of days. Three days later, still nada.

So the guy looks it up in the computer and finally says “I think they sent it here by mistake. Let me go look.” So he goes into the back room, and eventually comes out… with the refurb I returned 12 days ago. And then he goes to explain. Yeah, they couldn’t enter it into the system until the previous service ticket closed. And the previous service ticket didn’t close until June 8th. It ends up the way their return software is designed, the service ticket doesn’t close until the one I sent back in is repaired and returned to store stock. Absolutely ridiculous! So my returned iPod has just been sitting there on the shelf for the last 12 days, with nothing happening.

I can draw a couple conclusions from this: First, the guy who told me he could have the service ticket entered “by the end of the day” was lying to me. Certainly he knew how the system worked. He just wanted to get me out the door. Second, they have some very poorly designed software. You telling me they didn’t think about this case where a refurb is itself bad? Or did they think about it and dismiss it as an acceptable error? Either way is unacceptable.

So now I have a new service ticket in hand, and can expect another refurbished iPod to be delivered via UPS in 3 - 5 business days. If that one is bad and requires a return, I’ll be interested to hear how soon they tell me they can enter it into the system… I won’t be too accepting of another two-week wait just to get a return into the system again.

iPod Replacement: A for Effort, D for Results

My refurbished iPod showed up via UPS late yesterday afternoon. I have to give Best Buy full marks for sending a quick replacement; they said 3 - 5 business days, and it ended up being only two. They sent an iPod identical to the one I had before (20 GB 4G, white), though they had obviously cleaned this one up, buffed out the scratches, etc. It looked good.

So last night I hooked it up to the laptop to reload the 4100 songs that belong on my iPod. The first time I tried a sync I got a weird Windows delayed write error. Strange, I thought; maybe I just jiggled the cord at the wrong time or something. So I tried again. The second time, it managed to sync about 2 GB worth of music, then stopped syncing. When I disconnected it and tried to play the music from the iPod, uh oh. The iPod didn’t show any music on it at all. When I reconnected it to the PC, it gave me a nasty error and told me that I would need to re-download the iPod firmware and reset it.

At least running iPod firmware updates isn’t so tough these days; it did make me dig up my wall power charger, but I found that and completed the reset. Then I set it up to sync again. As I watched it gallantly attempt to copy the music, I started listning to the iPod - not to the music, but to the device itself, and discovered that the hard drive in it sounds sick. It’s clicking too much, spinning up and then quickly spinning down; I think I found the source of the problem. Again the sync died after 2 GB of transfer; this time it shows that the songs are there, but it locks up if I actually try to play any of them.

So after work this afternoon I will be heading back to BestBuy with my refurbished iPod (still in box) and my service plan paperwork (still conveniently accessible - hadn’t refiled it yet). I am sure they will have me send it in and get yet another refurbished one. I can only hope it goes better than this one did. I think I have to have three replacements die before they’ll actually just give me store credit. :-( I’d be happy enough just to have one that works.