More customer service kudos

Okay, I don’t know what’s been going on lately, but Neal and I have been having some good customer service lately. We recently placed an order at Domestications.com for an Adirondack loveseat to go on our deck area here at the new apartment. It was a good price for one, but still wasn’t cheap, so we were disappointed when we started to put it together and very few of the pre-drilled nail holes lined up. This didn’t deter us too much, but the splintering support piece certainly did. We soldiered on a bit longer until we had a front decorative support piece that had someone’s handwritten measurements and other numbers on it. On the front of the piece, that is, that shows quite a bit to the front of the loveseat. Big numbers.

We finally gave up and emailed Domestications.com and let them know how disappointed we were. This thing was a huge pain in the rear to ship to us (and had added handling charges because it was so large, heavy, and unwieldy). I explained that I would really like to just return it (we’d wrestled with it for a couple hours to even get to the point where we were and then had to turn around, undo all of our work, repack the darned thing, and get it ready to be shipped back for pick up from our secure apartment building) and get a complete refund, even on shipping. I had a response within an hour or two (first shock!) and was told that they’d let me return it for a complete refund or re-ship another item. I chose to return for refund, and they had FedEx pick it up a few days later. They said it could take up to 5-8 weeks for the refund to happen, but we had the refund back on our card within a week.

The second one was definitely above and beyond. I was attempting to order some items from methodhome.com and receive a free t-shirt I had been given a code for in the main recently. I only really liked one of the shirts, but I couldn’t get it to add to the shopping cart. I contacted the “customer service” for methodhome.com, but they said that they couldn’t help me and asked me to contact some place else, giving me a broken link. I asked for a new one, and followed that one to another customer service portal (apparently method uses a separate company for the shopping cart). I emailed them as well.

The above is not the good service, obviously, because it took forever for the non-customer service place to get back to me both times and then it took a long time for method to get back to me. After a little over a week of no contact, I went ahead and placed the order, putting another shirt in the cart for the free shirt instead. In fact, not only did I place my order, but I received it as well before hearing back about the cart error I kept getting. When I did hear back, I wasn’t expecting much, especially since I had already placed an order from them. I, however, was very wrong. The response was short and succinct: They were sending me the shirt free of charge. (Remember, though, that the shirt was going to be free anyway, but this was a second shirt, since I’d already placed the order and received it for the other items and the first shirt.) That was much more than I expected, although I was a bit disappointed that the customer service issues took so long to get  a response. (Although, to be honest, it always takes over a week each time to get a response back from method, just FYI, in case you ever need to get through to them. In the end, I’ve always had a good outcome, but it has always taken time to hear back.)

I’ve never had two good customer service happenings so close together, and I’m pretty excited that they were both pretty painless to deal with. One was just a bonus, but the other could have been a pretty big pain (and would have been a pretty big loss of money for us, considering how frugal we both are).

My Qwest is finished!

I’ve written about our trials with Qwest many times over the past year-and-a-half. First, we had issues with our account when we changed the speed and the customer service representative lied to us about what they were putting on the account. I contacted the BBB, and an executive customer service representative and I emailed back and forth (and talked on the phone) until the issue was straightened out (in our favor).

I then moved to a new apartment, and all was well for a year with no issues. Then I moved across the hall and instead of moving my service, they continued my old account and started a new one. Every month, I contacted the executive customer service rep I had first talked to with the first debacle. For reasons I still don’t understand, they couldn’t just close the new one and move my old one nor could they actually close the old one. Until yesterday, we STILL had two accounts going, even though we moved at in June of 2008. And then we moved again to the current apartment in July 2009. Yes, we still had both accounts going.

Shortly before we moved this last time, however, I discovered @TalkToQwest on Twitter. No, I don’t personally have a Twitter account, but I did discover on that page that they have an email address as well. I emailed them there and inquired about their possibly helping me, even without a Twitter account to advertise my woes. (Although, seriously, you should read some of the tweets that they in turn reach out to in order to help. Some people are really rude, and they just tweet back “How can I help you?” all nice-like. Wow.) Steph at @TalkToQwest returned my email pretty quickly and told me that she’d be happy to look into the issue. A week ago, she emailed me and was ecstatic that she thought that she had finally fixed it. I was pretty happy to be able to email her back tonight that, yes, she had fixed it after a year of someone else’s being unable to do so!

In fact, not only did she help us with that issue, but she helped get us a better price when we moved. We weren’t able to get the same speed as we had here, so she offered for us to either be let out of our contract or she could give it to us at a decent rate. My exec CS rep said that it would be $15.00 more than the @TalkToQwest representative had quoted me and that she could do nothing to lower it. We, of course, immediately jumped on the rate from Steph and thanked her profusely for all her help.

I guess it all boils down to this: If you have Qwest and you have any issues with Qwest (and want them actually resolved), check out @TalkToQwest and ask them from help, after attempting to go through “normal” CS channels (or maybe before going through normal CS channels, if time is of the essence). They will probably be able to help you in a kind, courteous, and quick manner.

Thanks to Steph and @TalkToQwest! (This is all from the kindness of my heart, because I am so amazed that it didn’t take Steph very long to figure out the problem AND to help us get a good rate when we moved. Otherwise, we probably would have just closed all our accounts and gone with someone else when we moved this last time.)

Rape or rape rape?

Okay, seriously, people. There isn’t such a thing as “rape” and “rape rape”. There is only RAPE.

Are there really supposedly varying degrees of rape? Is stranger rape considered “rape rape” while date rape or statutory rape is just “not that kind of rape”? What about incestuous molestation? Is that not “rape rape”? Who are these people who think there’s two “kinds” of rape — or even varying degrees of rape?

My niece is 12 years old right now, pretty darn close in age to the girl who was raped by Roman Polanski, and I can tell you that if any man of adult age drugged her and then had sex of any kind with her, I’d probably have a few choice words to say to this man — and you’d better believe I’d push to have his ass in jail for a long time.

If a man drugs anyone, of any age and completes sexual acts with that person, it is rape. There’s a reason the “date rape drug” is called such. It’s rape. Any time a woman or girl is impaired (drugs or alcohol), there is no consent given. And, most especially, if a girl or woman has blacked out, you do NOT have sexual relations with her body. No answer is not consent.

Statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl is not “lesser rape” nor is it “okay rape.” It’s rape, plain and simple, and I don’t understand how dodging the law for over 30 years is ever okay, even if you make supposed good use of your outlaw time by filming people for millions to watch. I don’t care if you’re “brilliant,” there is no such thing as any kind of rape being “a little mistake.” I don’t care if you’re the first person to walk on the moon, if you make “brilliant” movies, or if you are Joe Nobody who lives the next street over: Rape is rape is rape. You deserve to pay for taking advantage of another human being, even if it takes 32 years to finally track you down and capture you legally.

Anyone else who says otherwise is an absolute idiot and, especially if they are women, they deserve to be completely excluded from human contact ever again: They’ve obviously lost their humanity anyway.

I’ve known many women and have had many friends who were raped in different ways. Some were drugged first, some were raped by “friends” or “family”, and some were raped at knife-point. Some were adults and some were only 14 or 15 when it happened. No matter how it happened, no matter when it happened, no matter the circumstances surrounding the event: It was rape. Sadly, out of the many women I’ve known who’ve dealt with this, not one has ever had her attacker arrested or brought to trial. Perhaps THIS is part of the reason these women don’t come forward — maybe someone won’t think what happened was “rape rape” and delegate it to the “just that other kind of rape” pile. You know what, though? Everyone — man or woman, adult or child — should feel safe and able to turn to their families, friends, and legal officials when they have been raped. Unfortunately, this incident just reminds me how much absolute twaddle is laid right upon the victims of rape instead of the rapist.

Something needs to change, people. Something needs to change.