Friday, February 27, 2009

Oh I am the WHEEL - here me SQUEAK!

After DH & showed up in person at Dufresne last Saturday and spoke with yet more customer service reps (the manager was busy. hmm.). I finally got a call from Tutoris, their insurance provider yesterday. They are going to fix my kitchen stools!!! WONDERFUL. Then I asked the lovely young man (who by the way never returned a single call till I escalated this!) about the cracked vinyl portion on my leather chairs. He unfortunately did not know what I was talking about, but said he would look into it. I was not optimistic - BUT, in the afternoon I got another call. They are completely REPLACING our middle two recliners. Ahh, is that the sound of satisfaction?? I was sorely tempted to challenge him on the lack of response so far, poor customer service etc, but remembered that - hey, I won. Game over. I'll live to fight another day.

UNBELIEVABLE

Monday, February 23, 2009

this n' that

Some interesting things happened last week.

Dufresne came to fix the mechanism on my leather recliner. That in itself wasn’t so interesting. But you should see the letter I wrote management. DH and I went to Dufresne on Saturday to see if we could talk to someone. Again they pushed it off to the insurance provider Tutoris and said someone would get back to me by tomorrow (Tuesday), or they would escalate to Dufresne management. I said that seemed pretty inadequate considering how we’ve been treated till now. Did you know that my kitchen stools won’t be fixed either? Reason given – simply not taken care of – my warranty covers “premature fabric breakdown” and almost every conceivable biological or food/beverage stain. Not taken care of!?!?! My eye! This is just wrong. I will not give up.

The best part of the service tech visit (aside from my mechanism working again) – he found the battery cover for our remote AND Samantha’s cordless phone (lost for 2 years!!!)

I was walking out of our building last Thursday. As I rounded the corner by some cars, a lady looks up at me from behind her walker where she’s having difficulty affixing her basket to the handle.

Her: well don’t just stare, help me!
Me: I was just about to ask you if I could help (in my best, mommy to 3 year old voice – not the patient voice, the other one)
Her: this won’t go on, the cab driver’s always wreck it. He was in such a hurry, he just left me here.
Me: well maybe if we (in a much kinder tone)
Her: no that’s not right!
Me: ok well how about…
Her: NO! It goes this way, you can’t do it that way. Its worked before, oh….
Me: well why don’t I help you get your stuff inside
Her: fine. I don’t know what people expect. I’m only 98lbs you know. I’m in my sixties (she looked way older) what do they expect!?!

I got her into the building (we have a clinic on our main floor – our lovely Winnipeg Regional Health Authority) and handed her off to the receptionist. Wow. She was a real piece of work. I had to wonder why I reacted so strongly to her initially. After my opening comment I was all about helping her, even if she was just totally cranky.

My girlfriend at work had her cat go missing for TWO weeks. She was absolutely frantic. They live in the Polo Park area, so honestly I thought for sure he was a gonner. On Saturday he came home. Do you think he’ll tell her where he’s been? No, absolutely mum on the whole thing. She thinks he may have gone to a fat farm, he’s dropped about 5lbs!