Why isn’t anything ever easy?

Buying furniture – or anything that a store has and you’re willing to pay for – should be very straight-forward and simple. They have item X, you want item X. The price is fair to you and something you can afford. You purchase/order item X. You should get item X, right?

I understand that sometimes mistakes happen. Incorrect size or color. Damaged goods. Whatever…mistakes do happen, but since you, the customer are paying for these goods, the store should make it as easy as possible for you to really get what you paid for – at no extra inconvience to you.

And then there’s reality. Or maybe it’s just my reality…maybe I just have the worst luck.

At the beginning of February, I decided that I wanted to use my tax return money (plus some) to get a new dining room table and four chairs at Z Gallerie. I went to the store all excited, paid for the new set and then found out they were on backorder and wouldn’t be delivered until May. Talk about a buzz kill.

I patiently waited until they were delivered. On May 16th, I left work for two hours to wait for it. It’s funny that even with today’s cell phone technology, they still only give you a window in which you’re supposed to drop everything and just sit at your house waiting. The table and chairs came, and the delivery people set them up and left – all under what seemed like five minutes. As soon I locked the door behind them, I went over to admire our gorgeous new table. That’s when I saw a huge, deep scratch on the side of the table. I hadn’t noticed it when they set it up b/c of how the table was situated. They never asked me to look over the table to make sure it was ok – they practically ran out of my house.

I immediately called the Pittsburgh Z Gallerie to tell them about this scratch on my brand new table. The manager who I spoke with seemed very nice, understanding and willing to help me. He said he would call customer service and then get back to me – by the next day at the latest. Well, that came and went and a few days later I called Z Gallerie again and asked for Chad. He wasn’t working so I explained my situation to the person who answered the phone – only to be told that I’d need to talk to Chad since he’s a manager. I asked if she could please leave a message for him to call me. I never received a phone call back, and the previous situation repeated itself about four times.

Finally, a full month after the damaged table had been delivered, I got a helpful and empathetic sales associate on the phone. He said that he wasn’t a manager but that he’d work on it until he got an answer for me. I received a call from Z Gallerie cusomter service the next day to schedule a replacement table top delivery for the next week.

Once again, I had to “disappear” from work for two hours to accept the new table top. When they got to my house, I showed the delivery guy the scratch and he went back out to his truck to get the replacement. A few minutes later, he came back in empty handed and told me that the replacement table had a huge scratch in a totally different location. I asked him what I should do, and he recommended refusing the delivery and calling the store ASAP to get things figured out.

I did that and got a complete bit*h who claimed to be a manager at the Pittsburgh Z Gallerie. She was rude and her tone was almost accusatory towards me. Like I was behind these scratches in the tables or something! After assuring her that yes the scratches were different and that they were deep enought that they couldn’t just be sanded down, She said she’d have customer service call me again to set up a new delivery.

Then I went on vacation and missed their calls. When I returned and got a hold of customer service, I was told that the table had been discontinued and there wouldn’t be any replacement sent to me. I had two options – I could either return the table or get a $100 gift card.

I had chosen this particular table b/c it fit in my dining room and matched the chairs that I wanted and absolutely had to have. I couldn’t return it, so I took the $100 gift card to somehow compensate me for a damaged item that cost $700.

In the meantime, the new dining room table – which I do love and have situated so you can’t really see the scratch – didn’t go with our current living room furniture…so we went couch shopping. We found a gorgeous dark brown leather sectional at Macy’s. And, it would fit in our living room. (Because of the room’s set up, a sectional has to be configured with the sectional piece coming out of the right hand side, if you’re sitting on it. Or else our sliding glass door would be blocked, the basement door won’t open the entire way and the couch would face the dining room and not the TV.)

We ordered it and were once again told it was on backorder. Funny because three weeks before when we initially saw it, it had been in stock. But they said it should only take a month, so at least it wasn’t too bad.

I was so excited and had been preparing for our house’s new, great look for weeks. I bought accessories, built a shelf, figured out what I wanted to do on the walls and so far it looked awesome. We just needed the couch!

It came yesterday.

And it was configured wrong.

The delivery guys tried to call Macy’s to get them to help me – they could immediately tell the configuration was wrong and I’d be a complete idiot to order it that way. But the person they called told me to call my sales person. They said they’d wait until I talked to him, so I went upstairs to get his number. He wasn’t in, so I talked to some woman in the store who couldn’t have cared less about my situation. I went down to tell the delivery guys and they said they’d note that it was wrong and wished me luck. And, they apologized because apparently something had changed with their customer service to make it harder to them to get someone to help people on the spot.

I spent the next hour (that I had again just disappeared from work) calling Macy’s customer service numbers that I found online. I was transferred three times. ANd basically told different things with each person I spoke with. There was the 10% restocking fee I’m going to have to pay (WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?!), that the configuration I need won’t be available for 90-100 days (Again, WHAT?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?) and basically I can’t do anything to remidy the situation until my salesperson gets in. Thank goodness it’s today, but if I don’t hear what I want, it’s going to get ugly.

I better have the right couch in my house in one week or less. I will not pay any restocking fees. If the right couch is not in my house in less than one week, they will come and pick up the couch that’s there and I will go to one of the MANY other fine furniture establishments in this world and give them my business.

I’m the paying customer. I should be right, right???

I found a cleaning lady!

I’ve been without a cleaning lady for several months.  Until today! 

My boyfriend’s mother recommended this Portuguese woman and her sister, and today we had our initial house clean.  It took them seven hours to clean EVERYTHING…baseboards, walls, behind the fridge, cabinets, closets - and then the normal dusting/vacuuming/scrubbing.  The house is so clean.  Impeccably clean.  I am so happy. 

They’re going to start coming every two weeks!!!  I really feel that this is the best cleaning quality imaginable.  And, there are all of these really nice touches – the toilet paper is wrapped into a flower at the end…same think with kleenex and the towel display in the bathroom look like they belong in a hotel!

If you live in Pittsburgh, and need a good cleaning team, please let me know.

This…from the NY Times???

I, along with the rest of the world, have become a huge Michael Phelps fan.  I just read this article on the NY Times website, and can’t believe how horribly it was written.  Words are missing, the article has no focus and it doesn’t really make sense.  Are they slamming NBC?  Praising NBC?  Do they like Phelps?  Who can tell from this article:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/sports/olympics/17nbcphelps.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I copy and pasted the text below…in case an editor wakes up and realizes how bad it is:

By Richard Sandomir

For Michael Phelps’s Spitz-breaking gold medal, NBC’s Dan Hicks and Rowdy Gaines avoided the histrionics that have characterized some of their past swimming calls. They balanced emotion during the 4×100 medley relay with clearly-spoken narration and analysis, without losing lucidity.

Hicks sounded just right as he described the final moments of Jason Lezak’s freestyle lap — without a screechy interruption from Gaines.

 

 

“Just about 30 meters left for Lezak to give Phelps the greatest single performance in Olympic Games history,” Hicks said. “Lezak trying to hold off Eamon Sullivan above him. Lezak is going to break a world record, trying to stay ahead of Sullivan. And Lezak, the hero in the 400 free relay, won’t … let … Phelps … down. History in Beijing for Michael Phelps.”

Without lingering for a nanosecond on Lezak, NBC cut to an exultant Phelps, the same sequence followed by ABC Sports when Mark Spitz won his seventh gold medal in Munich 36 years ago. Spitz swam the butterfly leg, the third in the relay, just as Phelps did. But the post-race reactions differed vastly: Phelps and his teammates were united by joy, while Spitz and his teammates were subdued and seemed to lack camaraderie.

(On the medal stand, Phelps and his mates held hands; 36 years ago, Spitz and his teammates looked as if they barely knew each other.)

While ABC did not have reaction shots of Spitz’s mother, NBC kept a camera on Debbie Phelps, a consistently telegenic character at the Water Cube during her son’s races. After swooning when her son won the 100-meter butterfly by a hundredth of a second the day before, she was seen Saturday night on NBC saying “Come on, Jason” five times followed by a relieved and giddy “Yessssssssss!”

And then came the Visa ad that congratulated Phelps for his eighth gold medal. I can’t be sure if Morgan Freeman, recently in a serious car accident, was standing by, waiting for the right moment. More likely, Freeman recorded his words weeks ago, in anticipation of the victory.

“One gold medal is amazing,” Freeman said. “Two is, well, incredible. Three? Practically unbelievable. But eight? Eight gold medals? That’s, well, we need new adjectives for whatever that is.”

As the night (or Beijing morning) moved toward Phelps’s live race shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, NBC restrained its urge to over-promote his eighth race. Sure, there was hype. It couldn’t be avoided. NBC showed Phelps’s arrival at the aquatics center, played highlights set to a Queen Latifah song, cut to him in the warmup pool and did a little feature.

But NBC kept its Phelpsmania at bay. Imagine what it could have done to pump up Phelps instead of spending two and a half hours, almost without interruption, with the live women’s marathon. That race was won in a rout by Constantina Tomescu of Romania and lacked the presence, after three miles, of the American Deena Kastor. NBC then kept its focus on Dara Torres for her two silver medal-winning races.

But Phelps’s victory melted NBC’s reserve. After he won the eighth gold medal, NBC started hawking a DVD of his races. He was interviewed with his teammates by Andrea Kremer, went solo with Bob Costas, then accompanied Costas to the international broadcast center for more chat.

Phelps’s races created a nightly viewing moment that NBC could rely on to boost its enormous prime-time viewership. NBC will miss him, especially with taped track and coverage filling much of the coming week in prime-time. During Friday’s prime-time, when he swam the 100-meter butterfly final between 10 and 10:30 p.m. Eastern, NBC’s rating peaked at an 18.8. It seems a certainty that Phelps repeated the feat Saturday night for NBC.

Wohoo – Regola quits Senate race

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08225/903590-178.stm

Thank goodness. However, it’s not surprising that Regola is blaming the media’s “unfair coverage” for his withdrawal. The guy can’t ever take responsibility for ANYTHING. Pennsylvania, Westmoreland County and Hempfield Township are so much better off without this shady, disgusting character in office.