1. You know how Biden was supposed to write some sort of edict about being able to cancel subscription services with one click? I have been fighting with Chewy for yearsss. You can't actually cancel things altogether (and that account has come in handy before when we needed prescription meds mid-move), so I just keep delaying orders by 6 months. Along with that, we began using Pet Flow a few years ago for dog food because it's cheaper and they don't put rainbow bandanas all over the pets on their site a month or two out of the year. However, they will not let you cancel. There is no way to do it on the site. You have to call. No one answers the phone. Scott has been trying to cancel our account for over a year. We started buying our food locally to support smaller businesses and have no need for Pet Flow. Finally, Scott just canceled the credit card and they're emailing him every day saying they need an updated number. He literally canceled the card and got a new one so they would stop hassling him. That is the state of customer service in this country.
So, if Biden could actually do something about that, he'll go out a-okay in my book. I mean, maybe.
2. Speaking of annoying...this company sent me 22 emails in 5 days. I signed up for a webinar or something. 22 emails in 5 days. It's an education company.
3. Arbonne initially did me wrong. Twice in 4 months, I've gotten the wrong free gift with my Replenish Me order. I, like many others, plan the free gift into the purchase of my recurring order and, without notification, my gift has been replaced with something I don't actually need or want. I guess they update the list of "free gifts" regularly and if your selection gets the ax, they just stuff something else in the box instead of telling you to go in and change it. This is why MLMs are hard.
So anyway, I asked if I could return the free gift I'd received and they were like no and wrote all about what I said up there ^. My consultant was apparently supposed to notify me and she definitely didn't, either time. The first time I thought it was user error on my part so I let it go.
But I'd had a rough day and wasn't in the mood, so I wrote them back saying I understood the changes and thanked them for clarifying. But it seemed unfair to customers and I know if it happened to me twice, it happened to others. They immediately wrote back saying they were putting my original free gift in the mail to me, at no charge. This is a $110 product so that's an A+ for their customer service department. I mean, the response time, the fact that they made it right, and the fact that they seemed to care about retaining repeat business. The product is the icing on the cake.
4. My Shark air purifier just up and died at the beginning of December. Just shot straight to 0%, wouldn't function, made me think there was some kind of gas leak in the house. Luckily, I have another air purifier with an air quality measurement on it (despite what Scott would classify as "lucky") and I could see that it wasn't the air, it was the device.
So I spent an enormous amount of time on the phone with Shark and they said they'd put a new one in the mail, free of charge, replacing it because it was a faulty unit. It was only 7 months old and had a two year warranty. The new one would be arriving in "10 or less business days". I was kind of concerned it'd show up while we were in Pennsylvania for Christmas. While I'd put a hold on USPS, that doesn't apply to other carriers. I didn't really want a $300 air purifier sitting on our porch for a week.
Never fear, though. They never sent it.
I emailed them January 6th, one month later, and said "hey, I never got it" and they were like "OH right. We never sent it."
Currently, as of January 19th, it's at a Fed Ex facility 40 minutes away. Fingers crossed, guys.
This is my own fault. I buy things and just assume they won't break or assume I'll get what I paid for and it never quite works out. I got a crazy deal on an EdenPure plug-in the other day and I used birthday money for it. EdenPure has definitely disappointed me in the past but they make the best products when it comes to actual function.
4. I sent a Stitchfix box to Colorado by mistake. They actually solved my problem immediately when I contacted them (they do have a useful chat feature for customer service issues) and sent me a new box. Unfortunately, the clothes from the first box were not the clothes in the second box and I really liked some of the clothes in the first box. :/
5. I wrote a whole post about it that I'll get around to publishing, but Scott had to take Jett to an animal hospital in Springfield to have him put to sleep last month. We couldn't get him into our regular vet soon enough. It was an immediate need, sadly. We had an appointment here, ready, but he wasn't going to make it to the appointment. But, we'd never even heard of this animal hospital before, and I made an appointment for same-day at 7am and Scott took him by himself. Scott said it was the best customer service experience he'd encountered, maybe ever. We got very lucky. Scott was so impressed that he took them a Panera gift card for the office staff when he went to pick up Jett's remains a few weeks later. We also received a sympathy card from their office and one from our regular vet. So, veterinarians "win" the customer service era right now for us.
6. Lastly, I wanted some kind of anniversary ring/band for my birthday and I ended up picking one out on Kay's website. I have a ring for 10 years and I wanted this last spring for 15 years of marriage but we were busy paying for lots of dog treatments and it wasn't a priority. Scott ordered this ring at the end of December and it showed up a week later and it wasn't at all what I had seen on the site. I sent that back too. While it was a "want", not a "need", I'm back to square one. I think I'm going to go look in-store. The problem is that a lot of their rings, and especially the ones with the deals, are online.
7. Okay, never mind. LASTLY, Little Poppy Co. bows. I started this subscription for Sutton a year and a half ago and it's the only way I get bows. I don't buy hair things. Three bows just show up every month. It's definitely superfluous and fun (for me, she doesn't care yet) but I do skip months often because it's not like it's free and we do have a lot of bows that don't get worn. They don't send you a warning email that a shipment is coming. You just get the receipt saying "Thank you for spending $18 on bows!" The only way to skip is to remember to go in and skip in advance. The only way to cancel altogether is to write them an email saying you want to cancel. I can't be bothered to do that yet. And they are high-quality hair accessories. Every other brand I've ever used for her (that were gifts and whatnot) has had at least one bow break (unravel, come off the clip, etc). The Little Poppy ones are good. Just...annoying.
