Saturday, July 9, 2011

Round and Round We Go

Wow. Blogger really changed the way the blogger interface looks. And , of course, where all the different tools are located. I sure hope they had a good reason because change for the sake of change just sort of cheeses me off.

Anyhow, The last couple of weeks have just whizzed by so quickly! Summer weather is finally here in the Bay Area which means I now travel with layers of clothing. It may be a clear and warm 75° in the morning when I leave the house in Fremont, but when I get to work 30 miles away in Berkeley it's 62° and fogged in. Just your typical Bay Area July.

I sent off my landscaping suggestions and requests to the landscape architect a little over a week ago and haven't heard back. And we (I) had a minor meltdown with the appliances we ordered from Sears.

The appliances were scheduled to be delivered to the build site on 6/30 but the builders are not ready for them at the house, so I tried changing the delivery address to the builders' home address. What a fiasco!

I've tried to adjust this order twice before—once to unsuccessfully change the delivery date and again to, also unsuccessfully, cancel a single item on the order—and it was a nightmare each time. First, they tell me to contact the national delivery center. But they have no record of my order, which sets off alarms bells because here I am diligently making my monthly payments. So finally the national rep finds the order, but then has no record of the delivery in the national database.

They tell me to contact the local store. Okay, the local store the delivery is being made from (Raleigh, NC)? Or the local store where I purchased the items (Newark, CA)? Now, when you call the local stores, if no one picks up the phone within the first 2 rings, you're transferred back to the national center. And a different rep answers. And you get to start over at the beginning.

Finally, after 45 minutes of playing this loop I get a live person at the Newark location, who then hangs up on me immediately after saying Hello. Here we go again. Luckily it only took 20 minutes to get someone on the phone the second time. Although, for the first 10 minutes of our call she is absolutely convinced I need to talk to the national delivery center.

Finally I get her to look up the order. She says she can change the delivery address. Would I also like to change the delivery date? Well, yes, I would (because the builders' were currently out of town and I could confirm with them when they'd be back). Okay, I can do that she says. She also said she would call me back if she ran into any problems.

The following day I get a call from the gal I originally purchased the appliances from, we'll call her Hallie. My entire order (and her commission) has been cancelled! W! T! F!

The whole reason my previous attempts at adjusting the order were unsuccessful was because they would have to cancel and re-ring the order at current prices to make the changes. I made the purchase during and excellent appliance sale and got everything at 30% off, so I did not want them to do this. But, the reason they needed to cancel it was that Hallie originally entered the order as a store-to-store transfer sale with local delivery, and this was also the reason it never showed up in the national database.

So, that evening was spent at Sears sorting out the whole shebang. Luckily, there was a similar sale going on and Hallie was able to re-ring my order making sure I didn't pay more for any single item, she changed the delivery date and address, she cancelled the item I had wanted to cancel, she rang it as a regular sale (so now it is in the national database), and she gave me another 5% off everything for all our trouble.

Hopefully everything is all sorted now, though the phone call I received this morning from Sears asking me where my appliances are for the 6/30 scheduled delivery does not inspire confidence.


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