The waffle challenge

I like waffles. I also like pancakes. And up until recently I could have both: I had a little machine that had a waffle iron setup on one side and a flat griddle on the other. Sure that griddle was supposed to be for grilled sandwiches but I don’t make those, and it was the perfect size for doing my fave dollar sized lil pancakes (especially since I only make a small amount of batter… I am only one person).

My machine died a few weeks ago. It was a very sad day. The first time I’d used the machine in almost 6 months (which tells you that as much as I like waffles and pancakes I don’t like ‘em enough to make ‘em much). But I shrugged it off and figured it was okay: I could just get a new machine. After all the last time I’d gone to the stores looking at them, there were lots to choose from…

Boy, was I wrong!

See, it appears that in the interim waffles had become popular. Belgian waffles, specifically. So no one makes the type of machine that does waffles on one side and griddle on the other. You have to get separate machines.

I discovered this when I went to the Canadian Tire website (that’s where I got my original machine). The only machine I could find that did both was a George Foreman grill extravaganza, priced at $150. Umm, no.

So I went to The Eaton Centre and started with The Bay Downtown (I had a gift card). They had a larger selection, so I figured I’d find something. After about 20 minutes of fruitless searching I spot a Sales Associate and go over to ask her. She sees me coming and starts walking away. Fast. I kid you not! I had to chase her back to her register before she’d even acknowledge me (though she had checked over her shoulder a few times as she scurried away). WTF?!

I ask her where the waffle irons are: she says in the Cuisinart section. Funny: that is where we both were before you started your Forrest Gump impression. I go back… still no waffle irons. I search and finally find one mixed in with another company’s stuff. $130. Umm NO. Also, not the type that switches to be a griddle. $130 for just a waffle iron.

I walk through the mall, heading for Sears. I stop at Personal Edge, which is a very small store that sells house wares. There are 3 Sales people there: one at cash, two holding up the wall chatting. I search around and find the waffle irons. Cute; they make a flower design in the grill. Very cutesy and so not me, but I’ll take it under advisement after all it may only make waffles, but it was only $40. Also I am leaving one of the Sales people (male and female) who had been so vigourously ensuring that the wall didn’t fall down asked if I needed help. Sure, lady: you’d just ignored me until I found what I needed on my own and NOW you want to help? I think you are better keeping that wall up; it appears to be all you’re good for.

I go to Sears. As I am going up the elevator I see that Sears Canada is going to have to lay off 300 people because of the recession. I thought it was a shame; then I got to house wares and discovered someone I would like to nominate for lay off.

I couldn’t find any waffle irons (are you getting the theme?) so I went to find a Sales person. I found two talking to each other. Unlike the PE people they were actually talking work, discussing schedules. Neither bothered paying attention to the person waiting for assistance. After a minute or two they finished and that is when the woman (male one just walked off. Apparently male Sales people don’t actually interact with customers) asked if I needed help. I said I wanted a waffle iron. She said well we only have one. And then stared at me. I think, “lady, if you have one could you at least show it to me?” I say, “could I see it please?” She shows me over to one on a display rack that I hadn’t seen where the waffle iron is out of its box on display. The box is above. She points at it. I pick up box: no price. I say “could you please tell me the price?” “$60.” I am still not impressed; after all it only does waffles. I decide to try a different approach. “Okay, so how about…” That is as far as I get. She says, “excuse me a moment” and walks away. I figure there is a shoplifter or something, but no. What it turns out to be is another customer (a thin, blonde one. The type that have the power to render us larger chicks invisible). The Sales person I had to wait for in order to get her to serve me leaves me, in the middle of ’serving’ me, to go over to serve another customer. WTF?!

I have someone I’d like to nominate for lay off. There you go Sears Canada; only 299 to go. And with the manner in which your Sales people serve their customers… I am sure you’ll fill that list in now time.

I search around again, on my own, and finally find griddles (if I can’t have waffles, maybe pancakes would be okay). They are in the $60 and up range, which means in order to get the one machine I wanted I’d have to get two machines, costing approximately the same amount as that George Foreman thingy. Oh, which Sears had, but at almost $200.

That was enough misery for one day. I gave up.

But I am still looking. So I went to Home Hardware (waffle iron only: $55, griddle $60) and Canadian Tire (waffle iron only: $50, griddle $60). The Bay Yonge and Bloor (waffle iron only: $340!!!!)

I even looked up online (Cayne’s: waffle iron only $50), Overstock.com (waffle iron only $40… shipping HORRIFYING!).

I looked in the US: Target (waffle iron only: $30US… and have to go there to get one). Wal-Mart: ditto.

I suppose I could also try Wal-Mart Canada or Zellers, but frankly I am getting tired and pissed. Why aren’t those other machines not made any more? As well as allowing you to switch plates, they allowed you to take the plate out and put it in the dishwasher. None of the others do that: what happens if the waffle doesn’t come out properly? Get out the chisel? Throw it away and get a new one?

Now I suppose you are thinking the same thing I am: it shouldn’t take so damn long to find a decent waffle iron. I suppose I could just but one to the cheapo ones, but as none of them give me any assurance that they can be cleaned properly, without have to be replaced, I am being wary.

But I am also damned frustrated.

And Eggos are yucky.

How Air New Zealand ruined Christmas

I started on my trip Down Under with high hopes and in good spirits. My stop in San Francisco was wonderful; I love that town. So much to see and do… and the food! YUM! What a great start to my trip (the only ‘bad’ spot being the man in the next hotel room who liked to be called “the King” during sex… I kid you not!).

Unfortunately, Air New Zealand decided that my bags needed to stay in San Francisco even though I had left. I arrived in Sydney, after a long 13 hour flight to Auckland, an hour rest and then a 3 hour bump over to Australia, to discover that my bags had been left in the US. Actually, that was discovered about 6 hours after my arrival – until then no one knew where they were.

The first day I was more concerned about getting clean clothes, but as days pass that quickly fades when you have trucked around the world to spend Christmas with your nephew – his first Christmas – and with your somewhat estranged side of the family, and have arrived empty-handed. Literally. Definitely not the way to make a good impression.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported, while I was in Australia, that several thousand travellers had had their bags go missing, and I also heard from several Aussies that both Qantas and Air NZ have a ‘propensity’ for losing bags around the holidays. I am not sure if there was any truth in the rumour that one Qantas flight from London Heathrow has arrived filled with travellers, but sans all luggage, but I can certainly believe it.

It took almost four days for my bags to show up. After Christmas. After having to sit there like a beggar at the table, feeling like crap whenever anyone handed me a present to open, knowing that the best part of Christmas is the giving of gifts – and I had nothing to give (yet).

Four days. A day and a half of which they had sat in Auckland waiting for someone to notice that they belonged in Australia not New Zealand. During that time I had called Baggage Services about six times, sitting on hold for on average an hour each time. Air New Zealand graciously compensated me $100AUD for my troubles… but I had to come to them and get it.

They failed to compensate me for having to replace one suitcase – when my bags did finally show up one of them wouldn’t roll properly. I opened up the back to see why the handle wouldn’t work and discover that the entire infrastructure was bent inward in a reverse V. I am afraid to think of how it was thrown in order to have created such a deep bend.

I said ‘ruined’ didn’t I? Well, perhaps not entirely, I did get to spend time with my family and to play with my nephew, but the first few days of my trip were marred by a preoccupation with the bags. Christmas Day was unenjoyable because I was unable to give the presents I had spend months selecting. By the time they did show up it was very anticlimatic, and I still felt like the beggar child. So no, not entirely ruined.

Canadiantire.ca wasted my time

I will have house guests coming soon (to look after me post-surgery), and as I only have one bed in the house and I am not going to share it… I need to get a bed for them to use. Seeing as space is an issue and I really don’t want a whole bed frame, I thought I’d get one of those blow up beds. A friend of mine has one, that I used while visiting him a while back, and it was very comfortable and easy to set up. Definitely a good option.

Until I tried to get one.

I headed over to the Canadian Tire website to see what they had, and found one on sale (yippee). Then I clicked on the “availability at a store near you” button. And they were available! Double yippee. So I pulled on my jacket and trudged over to the store.

I got there and headed to the Sporting Goods area. I found a sign for the bed, proudly touting the sale price, but the beds located right next to the sign weren’t by the manufacturer I was looking for. The boxes to the left of the sign were by that manufacturer, and the same price as the bed, but they were all tents (wonder how many people they fooled with that). I managed to track down a salesperson and asked about them, and he shrugged and said “must be out of ‘em.” Then he walked away. I called him back and asked about the price on the ones that were right there. Major sigh, and then he went off to look it up. $50 more expensive than the ones I was looking for.

I told him that I had just been online and checked the availability there and it said they had them in stock. I was told that ‘that thing is never right’. I asked him to look it up and see if they did have them in stock. Sure enough, nope. I asked where did have them and the list he came back with beared no resemblance to the list that was coming up online (the list that gave me several nearby stores that supposedly had them). I was also told that when I called I should just ask the stores to do a visual check, because ‘the systems are never right’.

Wow! Surly, unhelpful sales associates AND a useless inventory system! Whyever do I not shop at this place more?

That was sarcasm, BTW.

I am sure that the whole idea behind Canadiantire.ca is that you are supposed to buy online, but if that is the case then then first thing they have to do is change the design. When you first come to the site one of the first things you are asked to do is enter your postal code. To me that would mean that they are interested in giving me the best results for my geographic area, but now I am wondering if it has any purpose for the customer at all.

If you are going to have a ‘check availability’ button, could you at least make sure it comes up with REAL results? Putting that button on the site indicates that Canadian Tire understands that people want to purchase in store rather than online, but don’t want to waste their time heading to the store if it is not there… but if the inventory list that comes up online doesn’t relate to the actual store inventory it renders the whole process useless.

And if the product is no longer available in store, remove the signage! Talk about a ‘bait and switch’ scheme.

Oh, and if you want people to come to your store, try and make sure you hire people who are actually helpful. The guy who served me was horrificly rude, and getting information out of him was like pulling teeth. I do tend to like to shift for myself, so I only look for help when I really need it. And the help I got from him was no help at all. He would answer a specific question only, offered no extra information at all and denigrated the store’s systems the entire time.

So now I am off to check Canadian Tire’s competitors for the product… I’d rather pay more at one of them than bother wasting my time trusting Canadian Tire again.

New amusement park in Orlando…

So apparently there is a new amusement park in Orlando. Right on International Drive. It’s called… Walgreen’s. 

Seriously! I got into Orlando late on the Friday night, after a very scary-licious ghost tour in New Smyrna Beach. Headed to my hotel and immediately regretted my decision to stay on I Drive (instead of going for the bed and breakfast downtown that I’ve always promised myself I will stay in).. I got off the highway and only had to drive 3 and a half blocks to the hotels… which took me about 15 minutes – nothing like Friday night traffic on I Drive. Sigh. I dodged the drunken tourists blocking the door, managed to get my keys from the check-in dude who was busier ogling the hottie in the lobby than paying any attention to me and finally managed to track down my room.  

I swung by Walgreen’s around 11 p.m. to get some water and aspirin and saw the most ridiculous thing – parents were actually dropping their kids off there and then, I guess, going to the bars nearby and drinking.  

WTF!? 

Yo! It’s a DRUG STORE! Sure, they have toys and magazines and candy and crap, but come on…  Parents. It’s them I just don’t understand.

Never again for purchases using Futureshop.ca

I admit it – I do not like to shop at Future Shops stores. The sales associates are pushy and assume that you don’t know what you want (no matter how hard you try and prove that you do) and you often do not get the best deal at a storefront shop.

I am an online purchaser and I tend to prefer it that way.

Futureshop.ca had this great offer – 1GB USB Flash Drives for $20! Wonderful! That is cheap enough that you are going to want to get them because even if they don’t work well it is an inexpensive enough cost that you are willing to try.

Only problem – trying to buy them.

As I said, I do a great deal of online shopping and I have never seen the level of over-securitizing incompetence that I got when I made the, in hindsight foolish, decision to buy from this company. What is worse (for them, not me) is that the purchase I was making was not for my personal use but for my company. And as the process required more than a few hours of attention from both myself (as principal technology buyer) and our company accountant – which clearly made this ‘economical’ purchase one that was WAY more expensive than necessary – I can guarantee that the next time I (both personally or for business) am called upon to make a quick, small, technology purchase… Futureshop.ca will NOT be where I go.

Heck, seeing as Best Buy now owns Future Shop, I will not be going to them either because, frankly, tarred with same feather.

As I said, I wanted to make quick purchase of a couple USB flash drives. Logged on to Futureshop.ca and found a deal (yeah!) so went forward with purchase. I put them in the shopping cart and head to checkout. Oh, did I want to pick them up at a store or have them shipped? Nope, need shipping. How much would shipping cost to you location? Enter postal codes, get answer. Okay, fine with that, can I now please check out? No, you have to have a Futureshop.ca account. That’s okay; I do so let’s get this order finished…

I hadn’t purchased from them much recently so when I logged in my user ID worked but passwords didn’t. No problem, ask them to send me a new one. It arrives, and I log in. Because I haven’t logged on in a while it needs verification that I am me. Either call the 800 number or enter a previous order number. I chose the latter. Woohoo! I’m in.

First it asks me to update my information. I do. It thanks me. But that is all it does. No indication of where to go from there. Personally, I think it is a pretty basic thing for a site to ask you if you want to return to your order basket or something to that effect at that point – multitudes of other sites can do it… why can’t a major Canadian technology retail company’s?

The next button down on the left hand column is update shipping info. Okay, perhaps that is where I am supposed to go next. Go there, update that.

“Thank you”. End of conversation.

Sigh. Back to the trying to figure out where to go next… Next is fixing your password, which I was going to have to do anyway because the temporary password they gave me was just that: temporary. And certainly not something I want to have to try and remember. So I update it. Again with the thanks. It takes a while (hey it was late at night) before I notice the teeny button for shopping cart up top. I click there – yep there is my order. Only it wants me to start again with the whole ‘find out about shipping’ thing that I have been through at the beginning. Fine, I know how much it costs for shipping… lets move on. You want my credit card? Okay, here it is… NOW can we finish this? FINALLY we get to the ‘thanks for your order, emails on there way to you’ window.

It’s over 45 minutes later but at least I am done…

HA! Not even close. The ‘thanks for order’ message comes through. It says how much the items cost, but no mention of the shipping or final costs. Hard to give that to the Accounting department – Heck it’s hard to even figure out whether or not it will be shipped! Call me crazy but no mention often means ‘not happening.’ But, at least I got an email… so it is a start.

But wait!The next day I get an ‘unable to process order’ email:

“Thank you for placing order number XXXX with futureshop.ca.
As part of our extended customer service, you will receive a telephone call, at the number provided as your bill to phone number, providing further instruction to verify your order.

Please note that we can only discuss these matters with the credit card account holder in person.

We will send you 2 more email reminders during the next 5 days but if we don’t hear from you in that time, we will automatically cancel this order.

For your convenience you can view and edit order information as well as check the status of your orders 24 hours a day through via our website… simply click on the link futureshop.ca!”

Fine. A phone call to verify. Okay… despite the fact that I had asked for quick shipping… just have to wait.

24 hours later I get tired of waiting and check the site. I can log in this time, however when I get to the ‘you need to verify yourself’ page I does not recognize the order number that was given to me. Okay. So I enter the other, older, order number that I used before. Now IT isn’t recognized. Only solution is to call them.

The 800 number is on the ‘order number cannot be verified’ page of the site so I dial it. According to the message it can take 3-5 business days for the order information to be put up on the site. Strange when you consider that according to their email you have only 5 days to let them know that you did in fact place that order. Okay, they are idiots… move on… talk to Customer Service person.

And now more gets revealed: YOU have to call them from the phone number that is attributed to that account and tell them that “yes, I did make that order. Now could you actually start the process of getting it to me?” How foolish of me not to know that from an email that:

• says they’ll call, and
• doesn’t even include a phone number you for to call.

Frankly, at this point my call to them is not to verify that the purchase is going through, it is to find out what the hell is going on because if they have decided that they are “Unable to process your futureshop.ca order” (the subject line from their second email to me) then just let me know so I can go walk up the street to The Source by Circuit City and just get it there. The Customer Service Rep I am talking to is very put out that I don’t understand their process. After all it is ‘for your security”. I say that they are going to ‘for your security’ themselves out of business, but clearly he doesn’t really care (though I am obviously a fool for not being overjoyed at their determination to keep me secure).

He takes my info down, and tells me that he is now sending the order forward and that they will get around to shipping it in 24-48 hours. I mention that if I hadn’t called when I did it would, even including my request for quick shipping, have been middle to end of next week easy before I saw my order. That is not his department – that is now shipping’s concern.

Honey, it IS your department because if I had sat around and waited for someone from your company to call me (as they hinted they would do in their email… but didn’t bother to) then we would still be stuck at the order processing stage…

I say again that I am horrified by the length of time it takes to get an order through and get the same ‘you are an idiot because you just don’t understand that you are so freaking secure ordering through their site that all of your troubles will be over forever’ speech. I tell him I am still not impressed and that I doubt I will be purchasing through futureshop.ca again. He responds with ‘do you want to make a suggestion about how to improve it?”

Yes.

“Here is the address.”

Address? I want an EMAIL address.

We can only give you an address. Or a fax number.

(Snort. Yep, really they really are a technology company…) Okay give me those.

He gives address and fax number. “It is for our head office in Burnaby, BC”

Is there someone I should direct it to?

“No, just send it there.” CLICK.

Clearly any mail I send them about this situation will be paid as much attention by head office as it was by this Customer Service Rep.

So let’s recap:

• If I had purchased in-store it I would have gotten the item, been told I didn’t actually want what I got from an overzealous condescending sales clerk, argued that I did and was going to take it to cash to pay for it so back off, gone to cash and paid for it and walked out in about 10-15 minutes.

• If I purchased online I will select the item, wrestle with the shopping cart, finally complete process, get ‘thank you for your order’ email, wait 24 hours until get the ‘unable to process your order’ email, wait another 24 hours before I get fed up with waiting for the promised phone call and then try and get into my account on the site, be unsuccessful but finally find a 800 number I can all to get answers, verify my identify with officious, could-give-a-care (okay, not my original word but there are children present – by which I mean Future Shop may be watching) service reps, listen to him rant about how I should bend over and show my extreme gratitude for their over-protection of my online experience, and then be condescendingly told where to stick my complaint. And the product will still take another week or so to get to me. (Just so it is a fair comparison that is 48 hours and counting).

(Oh and I pity the fool who doesn’t have time to follow the process as closely as I did because who knows if they would ever get their item).

Look, I know that if you purchase online you need to have protection – I only shop at sites which offer password protection and SSL protection and all of that. I shop on sites run by considerably larger organizations than Future Shop, and I buy from people who are way smaller. And I have never had a security problem – though if I did I can guarantee I’d be all over that immediately.

Statistics show that the majority of Canadians (companies and individuals) have made purchases online, and that there is a large minority who (again, companies and individuals) are extremely online purchase savvy (colour me part of that minority).

The system Future Shop has in place is clearly not geared to protecting my security; it is designed to ensure that I never shop online with them because the hassles, hurdles and time wasted it will not make the experience worthwhile to me.

It is the only online retail site I have ever come across that punishes you for using it!

(And as someone who recently made a $20k+ online purchase quickly, securely and effectively… making a purchase of under $100 and getting two days of trouble… not conducive to me wanting to return).

But not to worry, Future Shop, because I will not be using your site again.

Nor will I be using your owner, Best Buy’s site (feathers… tar… remember my earlier comments?)

Heck, I doubt I will be purchasing in your stores. After all, just like there are other online retailers who can meet my needs without all the bullcrap you have in place… there are other storefront retailers who can meet my needs too.

Oh, and I need some more tech stuff right now – mouse extension cords and such. Where are my shoes, I need to walk over to the computer store up the street…