Hell Week

Wednesday November 16th:

We begin packing for Thanksgiving travel.  We weren’t looking forward to dealing with eight hours of planes and layovers, but hey the family wanted to see the twins.  The day goes uneventfully, and I spend the evening doing a double load of homework so I can be done ahead of time.

Thursday November 17th:

I wake up to discover Thing 1 has puked in her crib.  She doesn’t appear sick, so maybe it was something she ate, or she had reflux.  Packing continues.  Cheap tablet is purchased to load with Wiggles and Elmo videos to keep the critters quiet on the plane.  I keep an eye on my daughter, but she seems fine all day.

Friday November 18th:

Thing 1 has been quite sick, and has evidently spent the night making “vomit-angels”.  My wife takes her to a health clinic, where she is diagnosed with Strep Throat.  My family is warned, but we are told that travel may be feasible if antibiotics are applied soon enough.

Saturday November 19th:

The wife goes shopping for various travel items.  While she is out Thing 2 begins heaving.  Since we don’t want Thing 1 to have to go through another car trip if we can help it, we decide to let her sleep in.  The wife comes home and takes to boy to the health clinic.

While at the health clinic my wife projectile vomits, poops herself, and keels over.  It appears that she has food poisoning.  Health clinic personnel help with the care of Thing 2 as my wife can no longer move under her own power.  The clinic calls me to come and get her.  This proves impossible as I have a toddler with me and all of the car seats are in the mini-van, which is how my wife got to the clinic in the first place.  Friends are summoned who have to come get drive our car back.  The wife is carried/dragged out of the car and looks like she is trying out for a part in an Exorcist reboot.  She has to be assisted into the bathroom at frequent intervals, which is fortunately not too far from the bed.  Unfortunately any form of motion, such as me touching the bed, will make foul substances fly out of every orifice, so I get to sleep on the floor.  She proves equally sensitive to other stimuli like the lights in the bathroom, and loud noises such as toddlers who have Strep Throat over a baby monitor.

Sunday November 20th:

Children are sick.  Wife is only barely able to move.  We discuss the possibility of attempting to make the trip anyways.  As the only able-bodied member of my family I veto this plan.  Fortunately I purchased trip insurance, and an illness in the immediate family is covered.

I call the airlines and the insurance company and discover that they make it hard to actually collect on travel insurance.  Every person I speak to thinks I need to speak to someone else.  The buck gets repeatedly passed.  I spend most of the day arguing with people about my travel plans.  Nothing is actually resolved.

Monday November 21st:

Everybody is still sick. Children spend the day on the couch watching Sesame Street videos.  A few hours from the time to leave I cancel my flight, and finally reach someone useful at the insurance company.  They assure me that I will receive an email in a few days which will tell me how to finish filing the claim, and as long as I have a note from a doctor specifying no travel, we should be covered.

I spend about half of the afternoon speaking to every person at the medical clinic, trying to track down the Doctor that saw my family.  He is eventually located, and the situation is explained.  He writes us a note forbidding travel, and has his office fax it to our house.  The fax doesn’t go through.  We try again.  The rest of the afternoon is spent listening to a medical assistant learn about fax repair.

Things settle down, we put the children in their cribs and we joke about the worst being over.  And then a power surge takes out my wife’s computer and the television, despite the fact that each one was on a surge protector.

The wife goes to bed out of frustration, leaving me to deal with the problem.  I call the GeekSquad service, since we purchased an extended protection plan, which I was actually feeling pretty good about right then.  I was told that due to the holiday the soonest anyone could come out was on Wednesday.  I asked about a loaner TV, seeing as how the service plan I signed up for came with one.  I was told that a repair person would need to see the TV first.

The computer turns out to be fine, as the surge protector actually took the brunt of the damage.

Tuesday November 22nd:

Sick children aren’t having any of this “no Elmo” bullshit.  I twist my computer monitor around so that it’s facing the living room, and they sit in a beanbag chair and watch videos on my computer.  It’s only a mildly horrible pain in the ass to get anything done.  TV Repair service calls to ask for details about the TV. He explains that it will take at least a week to get the parts needed based on my description of the issue. I ask about a loaner TV.  He informs me that he has loaner TV’s but I need GeekSquad to authorize it.

I call GeekSquad.  They tell me they can’t authorize a loaner, and that I need to call my local Best Buy.

I call Best Buy.  I am told that they no longer give out loaner TV’s but I can buy a TV and then return it when my repair is complete.  I tell him I am not inclined to give him several hundred to a thousand extra dollars.  I also explain that when you have a contract you can’t just decide that you don’t feel like living up to your end any more.  He offers to get me a Best Buy credit card.  I inform him that the last thing I need is another credit card.  He apologizes and suggests that I contact GeekSquad again to see if they can fix it.

So I call GeekSquad.  Again. I am informed that of course I am supposed to get a loaner TV.  It should have happened automatically.  Unfortunately the dispatch people who are supposed to approve it are gone for the day, so i should call first thing in the morning.

Wednesday November 23rd:

Children are still sick and demanding passive entertainment.  The wife is mobile enough to assist with their care.

I call GeekSquad yet again, and after a mere thirty five minutes, I manage to get through to the dispatch department. They take the name of my TV repair specialist, and will send him an authorization for a loaner TV.

I have lunch, and call the TV repair man to ask if he had received the authorization to give me a loaner.  He had not.  He calls distribution and the warranty service department to see if they have the authorization.  Nobody has any fucking idea what he is talking about.

Once again on the phone with GeekSquad.  I explain my problem, at length and with a minimum of foul language once you consider the circumstances.  I threaten to go to my local Best Buy and share my story with the people purchasing high end electronics in an attempt to prevent them from purchasing GeekSquad protection plans.  She offers to get a manager, which I agree is probably a good idea.

A manager is fetched, who informs me that there is a form I can fill out, and then a loaner TV will be sent out to my house.  I ask if this TV will arrive today.  She informs me that it will take two to three days.  Possibly longer due to Thanksgiving coming up. I politely point out that if this form had been presented on the first day, I would already have the TV and that I shouldn’t have to wait because they didn’t adequately train their employees.  I point it out loudly.  I tell the manager that I would like to hear an option where I could get the television today.  I am informed that there is no option to get me a loaner that fast.  I asked to speak with his boss.  I was informed that his boss wasn’t available, but could call me back within a few hours.  After arguing for a bit over this last point I realized that they were not going to budge.  I somewhat graciously accepted the callback option.

Several hours pass, my phone silent and taunting.

So I clean myself up, shave, put on nice clothes and head out to Best Buy to see how much holiday business I can cost them.

On the way in I pass a small tent city which is either some very dedicated Black Friday shoppers, or a very lost OWS contingent.

Once inside I cheerfully introduce myself to the management, and go over my problems once again.  The whole “you could always buy more stuff from us and we totally promise not to fuck you when you try to return it” option was brought up and discarded.  Management informed me that they understood my frustration, but they didn’t have any TVs.  I pointed out the rather large section of TVs not fifty feet away, directly under the ten foot wide “Televisions” sign.  He informed me that he wasn’t authorized to let me have one.

“I really want to help you.  This really sucks what happened.  But if I let you just walk out with a TV I will lose my job.”

I point out that somewhere, above him in the electronics retail chain-of-command, there was a person who could make that decision.  I suggest that he calls that person.  I remind him that there are an awful lot of customers buying service plans in the store right now.  I was going for “quietly intimidating” although I suspect it came out more “enraged Star Trek nerd.”  He offers to attempt to track down the regional manager for me.

I call home to give my wife a status update, and get barraged with a tiny angry voice yelling “Melmo! Melmo! Melmo! Melmo!”

My wife gives me the phone number to Brian Dunn, the CEO of Best Buy.

I call the number.  It turns out that Brian doesn’t answer the phone personally, but he does have some sort of crack customer service commando team that does.

A nice young man listened to my story, including the part where I was minutes from running amok in one of his stores.  He asked me for the address of the store, and the name of the manager I had been speaking to.  He asked me to hold on, and that he would call me back.

Fifteen minutes later the manager came back and informed me that the TV had been entered into the system as an Internet-order with in-store pickup and would be ready for me shortly.

The Customer service commando called be back to make sure the manager was playing nice, and to get my address to send me a $100 gift certificate as a way of saying “sorry I wasted your entire day.”

So I guess the moral of this story is if you are not happy with your service at a large retail chain, throw a giant fit in one of their stores and you will get what you asked for plus extra money in order to make you go away.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 8th, 2011 at 12:31 am and is filed under Just kind of babbling. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.