Open Note to Retailers...Dedicated to Guitar Center

So, it appears in our spare time (between 2-3a), we're going to take up electric guitar. We decided that Guitar Hero is an absolute waste of space, we can push buttons, let's learn a craft. T has an old one that's he's taken apart and is going to need a lot of work, and I don't have one at all, so we decided to do our homework and get some gear.

Imagine the glee when we found that Guitar Center is running tax day specials, (since we'd have to purchase, at minimum 2 guitars and an amp) that we could get up to $100 off our order, because hobbies ain't cheap, bitches. Well, decent musical instruments aren't anyway. I played bassoon for over a decade; ever price one of those things? Hint: you could buy a car.

Note to retailers, if you run a sale, then exclude everything from such sale, it's not a sale, but a gimmick. Exactly ONE of my items qualified. They had a note on their website that if you had exclusions, call them. So, I'm thinking, given the size of this order since this stuff is excluded, you might cut me a little break, yeah?

HELL NO. Basically, the Customer Service Rep told me that once she keyed in everything (manually), there might be specials that aren't online advertised. So, I asked, "you're not going to make me redo this order manually with you, and spend 20 minutes out of my life before you tell me there are no special deals, when I can just do this one I've already got online in a couple of minutes?" She assured me, "defnitely not", that there are deals that they can't run online.

The short of it, is that she lied. I spent 20 minutes doing a phone order, there were no special deals, and the thanks I got was some nice young lady trying to upsell me on extended warranties. No little 5-10% discount or whatever because the order was a biggun or anything. Just a "fuck you very much, what's your credit card number?" Actually, she was totally nice, I'm just pretty dissatisfied with Guitar Center right now.

So, what was on special? Well Roland (excluded) would allow some obscure synthesizer to be sold on the promotion. Basically, a lot of back stock shit nobody wants is on sale. They're running a deceptive special and I just wanted to take my 5 minutes and let people know.

Try Musician's Friend (their tax day special is a bit of a gimmick as well) or One Music Square. The latter is a small town shop out of Huntsville who will match any advertised price. Anything but Guitar Center, because right now, as far as I'm concerned, Guitar Center is stupid and sucks balls.

An Open Letter To American Express

Dear American Express,

You don't know me, and I don't know you. Yet for the past 20 years at irregular intervals you have besieged me with correspondence about how we should get better acquainted. In all that time, you have probably sent me hundreds of pages explaining how wonderful you are. Frankly, it bothers me a little bit that you are so needy that you harass random strangers trying to get them to have a relationship with you.

In any event, out of all the correspondence you have sent me over the years, sooner or later it would have dawned on you that I have never, not once, responded to any of your letters. At some point, it must have occurred to you that I'm not interested. Yet you still keep sending me extravagant promises of how my life will be better if I pay you money so I can spend my own money. Or is there something I'm missing in there about what, exactly, you'll do for me?

No matter. Whatever you think it is you have to offer, I don't want. Please quit sending me letters. Thanks.

Sincerely,
T

A Nimbus for Nimbus

As a follow-up to my post about the lovely people at Inter-Global, I received the ballast in the mail. It has been installed and the repaired light is casting a lovely glow over the turtle tank. We are all pleased now. Many thanks to the nice folks at Inter-Global for the ballast. The turticle* is much happier for it, I am sure.

*Nimbus V. Turticle by name. Not that it matters since a turtle won't respond to it's name no matter how loud you yell it.

The Blub Is Fine

Since I am quite fast to complain about companies who are not up on the need for customer service in this day and age, I figure I should be at least as fast to give credit when it's due.

The aquarium light for the turtle tank cratered on me. After buying a new bulb, I determined the problem wasn't the bulb. It was the ballast for the fluorescent bulb. After contacting my usual supply houses for a matching ballast, I was unable to find one of a similar size. So, in a burst of inspired thinking, I pulled the nameplate off and searched for the manufacturer, Inter-Global.

I called the friendly people at Inter-Global up, and told them I wished to purchase a single ballast to replace my broken one. The nice lady, whose name I don't recall, took my name and address along with the product information. I was informed she would have to check with someone who was at lunch, but that she would get back to me. About 15 minutes later, she called and told me Inter-Global would be shipping me a ballast at no charge.

I'd like to thank the nice people at Inter-Global for taking care of me. It's not like I bought the ballast from them or will ever be in a position to buy from them, since they are an OEM supplier. Still, I had one of their products in hand which was broken, and they sent me a replacement based on nothing more than a phone call. If you ever need a few hundred ballasts for some application, you could probably do worse than to call them.

Vacationland Adventures: Part I

Inspired by the wafting summer breezes and the need to visit my dad before he forgets who I am, J and I embarked last Saturday on the quintessential American summer vacation: a road trip halfway across the country to visit relatives. We loaded up my truck Friday night and rolled out bright and early Saturday to drive to North Carolina. Fun and merriment ensued.

The first glitch in our jaunt across the nation occurred somewhere in Louisiana driving down I-10. J drives in LA for the most part, since the state and I have a long-standing disagreement over the validity of certain fines. While sitting in the passenger seat, I stupidly called Bank of America to inform them I would be going out of town and to request they not flag my debit card. This was a spectacular mistake on my part, and a fine demonstration of Bank of America’s sucktacular customer service policies. The first moron I talked to flagged my card because I, in his mind, didn’t answer one of the security questions correctly. He informed me I needed to go to a banking center. After checking (wireless internet is fabulous if someone else is paying, BTW), I found out that there are no banking centers in central Louisiana. There are also no banking centers open past noon. Upon discovering this at 11:30, I called back and explained to the dim-witted and demonstrably incompetent young lady on the phone there were no banking centers. She informed it could wait until Monday, as my card was not flagged. This, as I later found out, was false. Later that afternoon, I tried to fill up the truck with gas and guess what? It didn’t work. Why? Because moron number one flagged my card. The charming young lady I spoke with the third time didn’t seem to really give a shit that because her co-workers screwed up, I was in Louisiana with no access to my money. She also told me that there was no way to fix this over the phone. This was lie the second from Bank of America’s crack customer service department. I know this, because I did get my card reactivated on Monday. How? By talking to someone on the phone. I am, as you may have noticed, not happy with how Bank of America handled the situation and I think customer service sucked in this instance. Let me reiterate for the benefit of search engines: Bank of America customer service sucks. On that note, I’d also like to link to a similar tale of woe: Sony VAIO customer service sucks.

I will however, cut B of A a slight break by pointing out this applies only to the morons who handle their debit cards. The B of A MasterCard people, a completely different support staff, were nothing but helpful over the duration of the trip.

Anyhow, we stopped for lunch in New Orleans and took a quick walk around. The Quarter is different in a lot of ways. Still smells the same, but the street traffic is considerably less and of a different quality. Also, places aren’t open the same hours. We had wanted to eat lunch at Arnaud’s. We always try to eat there at least once whenever we visit, since we got married upstairs in one of the banquet rooms. However, Arnaud’s is no longer open for lunch. Who knew? I tried to check the website before we left, but it was having issues, otherwise I might have known. A lot of other restaurants were keeping evening hours only. We also noticed, on a quick walk-through, a multitude of for sale and for rent signs.

Moving cheerfully along, we left and got to Slidell or Kenner, where I discovered the cheery fact I had no way to access my money until some nebulous time in the future. However, MasterCard to the rescue and onward to Alabama, where we stopped for the nigh in Birmingham to eat a lovely meal of Indian food with some old friends. The food and company were delightful, although we ended up providing directions to our hotel. I’m still confused by that, but no matter.

More vacation fun tomorrow...