Tommy can you hear me . . .

Well, he's here. All the way from Lee County, VA is our newest member of the family. Poor little guy was a mess when we picked him up. He was dirty, smelled, had red itchy skin, was shedding like crazy, and spent the ride back from the rescue sound asleep in my arms.

Once we got home, he got a well deserved bath, and spent the first night sleeping at my feet on the couch. He was exhausted. Now a couple days later, he smells better, has lots of energy, and just loves his new home. We took him to the vet (actually Diana took him to the vet) and we found out he had a broken leg and pelvis, probably from being hit by a car a few months back. His pelvis healed fine, but the leg looks like a pretzel in the x-ray. But he's a tough little guy and he is obviously a survivor. And he runs like hell on three legs. But he can use the leg, and I'm hoping as it gets stronger, he'll use it more.

But now he's ours . . . and it is good.

Oh, and the name, Tommy . . . that song just kept playing in my head all the way home.

Ooooo . . . Tommy . . . Tommy. Tommy can you hear me . . .

Smart little guy answers to it already. I didn't think good ol' boys from Virginia were into the British Invasion.

Stop Alien Abductions

Okay, look . . . I couldn't help myself on this one.

Here's a nifty little website to help stop alien abductions. And it makes a real fashion statement as well. Check out the "Thought Screen Helmet".


Now all I have to decide is . . .

Who gets this for Christmas!!

(Duh . . . that's obvious isn't it?)

RIP Overstock.com

As what can only be described as an exercise in pure delight, I just filled out a survey for Overstock.com. Well . . . maybe delight isn't truly accurate. You see, they annoyed me immediately upon sending me the following email.

Dear Customer,

Regarding your recent contact with Overstock.com, would you please take a minute
to answer a few questions. Your feedback will help us in our commitment to excellence.

http://echo.benchmarkportal.com/overstock/survey.taf blah blah blah

To respond to our survey, please click on the web address above. If that does
not work, please cut and paste the entire web address into the address field
of your browser.

NOTE: Please respond within five days so that you can provide timely feedback
to us. This survey will be available for only 5 days.

Thank you for your help!

Overstock.com Customer Support

Okay, if you've followed closely in your books, and understood the significance of my little color changes, then you've been paying attention, give yourself a gold star.

I was further annoyed by the fact that this survey is really a generic piece a pablum. You'd think, considering the THOUSANDS of customer complaints they had in the last month or two, that they'd focus on what they really did wrong. Instead, this particular survey focused on courtesy of agents, ease of navigation, quality of merchandise . . .

Wait . . . I NEVER GOT THE FRIGGIN' PRODUCT. Isn't it a little, oh, I don't know . . .

STUPID

to ask me what I thought of a product I never received.

to ask how pleased I was with the shipping and handling. (Hello, it was NEVER SHIPPED)

to ask me how well CS is doing when I had to talk to 6 different people, to contact them 5 separate times, wait 4 separate "waiting periods", scream and yell 3 separate times, write two separate blog entries ( and a partridge in a . . . oh forget it)

They give you a bunch of "Agree, Somewhat Agree, Strongly Agree, Really Really Agree, I Don't Know Maybe I Agree Maybe I don't Agree" kinds of multiple choice questions. I was able to give them one "strongly agree". They can apologize with the best of them. But they do give you a space where you can enter 2000 words of comments.


I didn't need all two thousand.

;-)

The Perfect CS employee?

Contortion Photo fix # 4.


Now I ask you, doesn't this just make your back hurt?

Overstocked, underwhelmed.

It's nice to know that incredibly inept customer service can bring people from all over the globe together. I'm beginning to feel like part of one big unhappy family. Maybe we could start having a reunion every year.

Actually, maybe I need to call the White House and see if I can make that case to the State Department.

And it's even bringing me fame, if not Fortune. Check out the third comment to my last Overstock rant. If you go to the first link page and do a search on the page for "boba" it will take you to the two mentions of my blog.

And this is the second time I've been described as funny. I'm starting to like that! But for REAL funny, use the second link and read about the "Phantom Menace." Maybe it's just me, but I'm thinking anytime you have the CEO of a large online retailer send an email to a Fortune writer and ask her; "So, why exactly did you become a reporter? Giving Goldman traders blowjobs didn't work out?", you've got the makings of a good HBO sitcom.

I'm not sure why the commenter attached the Fortune link, (I mean it's not about me, hello) but it is entertaining reading, especially in light of how warm and cuddly I'm feeling toward Overstock.com.

One for the Vatican

While I don't continue to carry on about it, I have been known to be critical of the Catholic Church. And I did spend at least one post here detailing why I could not remain a catholic. A lot of that post dealt with what I feel is hypocrisy between teaching and actions.

Well, it would be hypocritical of me not to acknowledge what I see as a positive statement from the Vatican; one that is reasonable and one that indicates to me that there is hope here.

I especially agree with the warning that religion risks turning into fundamentalism if it ignores scientific reason.

Now if they'd only stop telling me for whom to vote.

Unhappy Endings . . .

When I started this blog, I wrote mostly about things happening in my life which affected me in a profound manner. As time went on, I developed a more detached tone, and tried to interject some funny where I could. Today I need to send up the unfunny flag, as a random event last evening has thrown a pall over my weekend.

Diana and I had dinner with friends in town, and we were driving home when we saw a small dog running down the middle of the road toward us. I stopped the car and my friend opened the door and called to the dog, which bolted away from us, but returned to running down the road. We turned the car and followed it a short way. I got from the car and walked slowly toward the animal, calling softly. The dog was afraid and ran from us, but again into the road.

Another passing car had pulled over, and a woman was attempting to the call the dog as we approached. At first it approached her, only to bolt once again. It ran passed me, and I reached over a guardrail to try and grab it. This terrified the dog which started yelping and running even faster down the road, dodging my friend as he attempted to catch the dog.

Again we followed. Again failure. Diana tried as well, with no success. Suddenly more traffic appeared on the road. Cars began pulling over and flashing their lights to other cars to slow down. I pulled over and waited for Diana to get in the car so that we could pursue.

That's when it happened. The driver of a large pickup truck either did not understand what the purpose of the flashing lights were, or was distracted, or maybe something worse.

As the dog stood in the middle of the road, the truck ran it down.

As I pulled up along side the animal, it was stiff and groaning. The woman from the other car that had being trying to help was frantic. "I flashed my lights at the truck and he didn't slow, he didn't even stop." I got a blanket from the trunk of my car to cover the dog, which was now bleeding badly, and making pitiful sounds. I scooped it up and held it to my chest and it seemed to be comforted.

At that moment, I truly did not know what to do, and kind of staggered back and forth with the poor thing in my arms. Diana came and took it from me and suggested we go back to the house and call a vet.

In our area, the procedure, I found out, is to call 9-1-1 and the Police will send Animal Control to the scene. They transport the animal to emergency veterinarian care. As we waited, the dog experienced several seizures, but continued to breathe. Finally, with great trepidation, we handed the injured animal over to Animal Control. And this poor little spec of a life rode out of our lives to a future we will not know.

In that space of 30 minutes, I feel like something profound occurred which I cannot fully comprehend. I know there are great tragedies in the world. Thousands of people are homeless after hurricanes in Louisiana and Mississippi, and thousands and thousands more in South Asia. People suffer everyday from poverty and illness right here in my own community. Yet as I felt this small animal's life ebb and flow in my hands, its suffering touched me in a way that those other things do not, and I felt more powerless than ever to do anything.

In the night, as I woke from restless periods of sleep, the image of that tiny face floated to my mind and I'd begin to say Hail Mary's until I'd fall back asleep.

The reason I write this is to say that even though we tried to do something good and right, I am left with a heavy feeling of responsibility, and an overwhelming sense of failure. And I think of those people, especially the people I love, who take on work that they believe in, knowing they are fighting against the odds.

And they still do it.

And I grieve for every thorn prick their choices cause them, because I believe that it is truly Christ's work that they perform.

You guys should know that I'm really proud of you.

Finally, a link for the Humane Society, on what to do when you find a stray.

Overstock means having to say you're sorry

I think I've discovered the cause of the computer problems at the Overstock website.

To refresh, I ordered a little something there on October 20th, only to have the order cancelled 4 days later because of a computer issue they've had that ignored payments made to them by Paypal. That began the odyssey, which is customer service in the 21st Century.

What I've found out in the meantime is:

• Overstock employs a lot of people who are very good at saying they are sorry. Really, really extraordinary apologists. Outstanding in their field, seriously.

• When Overstock says 24 hours, they must mean 48 hours plus. 4 days is really supposed to be 4 days, but in practice should actually be a week. But it really means 10 days or 2 weeks. I wonder what kind of math they use there. Is it a "new" new math?

• When they say they are escalating an issue, that doesn't necessarily mean they are they are going to resolve the issue in a timely manner. It might mean they are raising the level of frustration. (I'm not sure.)

• This glitch apparently went on for two weeks before being either discovered or resolved, during which time all their orders paid for by Paypal were cancelled, even though the money was deducted from the customer's Paypal accounts.

• There appears to be only one person at Overstock handling the Paypal issue. A supervisor told me that person currently has over 1,500 emails pertaining to issues with payments received via Paypal where the ordered was cancelled.

• Overstock.com apparently believes it is better to frustrate customers with their inability to deal with this problem in a timely manner, rather than . . . oh, maybe hiring temp help to help slough through the backlog.

• That the first level of customer service sole purpose for existence appears to be to apologize, gather information about a customer's issue, redirect that issue to another department, ask if there is anything else they can do for you (even if they haven't done anything) and then thank you for visiting their site and wish you a great day.

So finally today, I broke down and called customer service (which actually was faster than the online chat option) and spoke with a real live person. She apologized eloquently and offered to escalate yet again (Level 4, if this was "Doom" I'd have really cool weaponry by now.) I told her I'd been escalated 3 times already without resolution, and I was tired of the process. She told me I could speak to a supervisor, and I accepted.

When this guy got on the phone, he had obviously read all about what was happening, as he had my whole story down. Yet all he could do for me, he said, was to escalate me yet again.

I freaked.

You know what, I'd had it. I had been promised timely help, and not had it. I had been guaranteed a resolution and not gotten it and I'd been assured a positive outcome and not seen it. I told him what I thought of escalating this for the 5th time.

This is when he narc'd on what kind of problems they had with the Paypal stuff, and how long it really would be before I saw the end of it all. I told him I didn’t care about their problems, because that was their issue. I told him that if they knew what the issue was, they could have just shipped the twenty-dollar item and I'd have received it a week and a half ago and everyone would have been happy. Instead they did this, and they had lost me as a customer forever, and I was out in the world telling my story.

He asked if I could hold on while he called up two levels.

When he got back on, he promised that I'd have my credit by the end of the day.

So I got off the phone sometime after 11 AM, and at 11:35, I got a message from Paypal stating:

Overstock.com (paypal@overstock.com) has issued you a full or partial refund for your payment.
Please do not reply to this email. Email sent to this address cannot be answered.

Message From Seller:
Refund $21.95 in reference of invoice #21640412 that cancelled due to system error. Thanks


Now the truth is that I've spent more time and energy than it was worth to get this refund, but on the same token I couldn't let them have my money. So now they have me as a pissed off ex-customer. They didn't sell me anything, and they never will. Don't they realize that?

If I had been Overstock, here's what I would have done.

I'd have emailed all those people whose orders were cancelled and ask that they reply with their Paypal confirmation number. Then I'd have shipped those orders. I'd have made the sale, and wouldn't have created the nightmare. I'd also have had the chance to tell all those people that I'd ticked off by canceling their order that I'd made a mistake, but was going to follow through in a method that was the least inconvenient to them. Then my apology might not have sounded so hollow. And then I'd have felt that I could really ask if there was anything else I could do for them without feeling like such a smacked ass.

Bad days at the office.

Ever have one of those days? You're doing the best you can, but things just keep going downhill. I had a few of those at work recently. But I feel like it's important to remember, at those times, that things could be worse. I mean, I'm a graphic artist for goodness sake. Other than deadlines and unreasonable customers and uncooperative coworkers, how bad can it really be?

On days like this, I want to see pictures of OTHER people's bad days, to kinda, well, . . . uh . . . cheer myself up. Okay, that's cruel and insensitive. But it kinda works.

Take this guy, for example.

Somedays, you get the bull, somedays you get the horns.