I went to my bank for the second time in a week today. Again no line up. Weird. Twice in one week I'm either first in line for a teller or a wicket is open and they are waiting for me.

Banks are going to lose their reputation as large uncaring, unfriendly institutions if they keep this up.

Okay .. so the bank machine decided not to recognize my pin.. and then when i got that reset I found they forgot to hook up my checking account to the bank card. So there is no worry they are efficient and provide top notch service.. its just they are friendly and have less line ups.

Opened a large bag of shredded cheddar from a small local dairy/cheese place. Was going to sprinkle some on my chilli until I tasted it and found it tasted more like a cross between feta and blue cheese than cheddar.

Needless to say I had the chili without any cheese...

Found the number of the company and called them. I think its a relatively small family business. They called me back and I finally got them today.

I'll get a refund most likely but they are going to send a sales rep to pick up the product as they want to find out what happened to it.

Oh fun -- told them to drop by one morning next week. Time to remove the trapeze from over the coffee table (kidding) - seriously my living and kitchen need a slight sprucing up before anyone visits... Guess what I am doing this weekend...

Nesbitt, a stock brokerage has been sending me a statement each month for the last 2 years saying I have nothing in my account. These folks are mental morons I think.

This month I finally wrote to them and asked them to close my account. Okay so I wrote it on the statement and said "please close" and signed and dated it

I hope they do. But I'm not holding my breath after all their systems don't question the point of keeping an account open with $0 in it.

No one courts you more than a phone company that you have left.

I've gotten cards, notes, calls and now emails begging me to return to Ma Bell.

Of course when I asked them why they didn't treat me this well when I was with them they really didn't say anything but indicted that things now I'm gone are "different". Now they'll do backflips to get me back.

You know what. Had you treated me better as a customer I might have stayed.

Misplaced my visa while on holidays. I have no idea if it is lost or stolen but I think more likely lost - no charges other than mine have been made on it.

Rather than stress (and I have been) I had them cancel it. They are sending me a courier that I should get tomorrow with a new card.

Until then I'm fine as I have a debit card (not hooked up with visa or mastercard here in canada) and cash.

Friends just had their cards compremised - three cards all in their possession still with $18,000 in charges racked up (car, car parts (guess the theif bought a lemon), and flowers in London England. The one place they'd used all three cards was an internet server company. The card companies made it "all better" very quickly and were very interested in that connection....

Misplaced my visa while on holidays. I have no idea if it is lost or stolen but I think more likely lost - no charges other than mine have been made on it.

Rather than stress (and I have been) I had them cancel it. They are sending me a courier that I should get tomorrow with a new card.

Until then I'm fine as I have a debit card (not hooked up with visa or mastercard here in canada) and cash.

Friends just had their cards compremised - three cards all in their possession still with $18,000 in charges racked up (car, car parts (guess the theif bought a lemon), and flowers in London England. The one place they'd used all three cards was an internet server company. The card companies made it "all better" very quickly and were very interested in that connection....

Damn Primus who i have my interent with now. I have had great service so i'm moving my home phone to them. To promptly get my dsl cut off while they make the transfer

"sorry lady it takes a week"

&Y#$# @#$#

Yeah right...

Its gonna be a long week

The sales guy assured me they'd be no issues and my service would not be down. The tech and customer support jail that does not allow you out of it to real people assure me I should have been told this and it is 100% necessary and unavoidable.

I so feel like a loved and cherished customer

I did some things today that have been on my to do list for a long time

* Changed my home phone provider to the same provider as my internet - this should save me some $$

* got the password for my email from my internet provider so i can change my mail set up

* Got new bank card so i can use interac (debit) and not be refused cause the card won't work cause its too old (humiliation is a great motivator)

* ordered cheques from the bank (I have two left)

It feels good to have these taken care of!

I bought a very expensive pair of Merrill Sandals about a month ago. I love them. They have all the support of very good runners and look a bit dressier (they are still pretty casual but can be worn with capris or a skirt if I'm going for a casual relaxed look.

I have been wearing and wearing them and noticed that where my foot sits is getting dirty and feeling a bit ucky. So, I emailed the company and asked how to clean them. Their answer:

"On a regular basis, brush away surface dirt with a soft brush. After extended, rugged use, wash with mild soap and warm water. Be sure to rinse all the soap off as it is hydrophilic. Let it dry."

The brushing doesn't do much but washing them with soap and water cleaned them up and they feel like new. So easy but I hadn't thought of it.

I'm calling the supermarket with the crappy meat an am on hold hearing about how important my call is to them.

You not only have crappy meat but right now you aren't making me feel very loved at all.

2 thumbs down for Superstore (ontario)

(Got them on the phone. They are going to look into it. Nice of them. Not like I'll trust their meat anymore though)

For resetting passwords to banking sites automated phone systems rock, cause there is no admitting to people that you are an idiot with the inability to type and recall a 6-10 digit password.

Got in there. Paid off my visa from last month before Luigi and Guido showed up at the door or on the phone demanding knees or immediate payment.

Need to call Visa thursday to make sure the payment went through as I'm paying for next years subscription to dinner theatre for a friend and I that night before the opening of The Full Monte

Wrote to pinesol today to tell them I can't use their product anymore. And I can't. the product which I had used for years gives me a major migraine when I use it now.

I'll be interested to see if they have any suggestions. This time I made sure to take a copy of what I wrote.

I'm not doing this to try to get free stuff or even coupons. I'm trying to understand more about the products I use, give feedback and see if the companies really do walk the customer service walk or if the stop at the talk..

I week or so I wrote to Unilever about one of their products. I summarized my note here

Got an answer about the vitamins. Glad I didn't throw them out thinking they expired in 05. Got an email from NOW (the makers of them) and they confirmed that the expiry date is 2010. They got back to me in about 24 hours - great customer service on their part!

A nice surprise and saved me some money as I didn't have to replace them.

Now I just have to start remembering to take them. Honestly, I'm better at buying them than actually remembering to take them.

One of the things I did this weekend was clean out medicines. After I tossed a couple of items that had been expired way longer than is likely good to take them I found some vitamins (Magnesium and Calcium) that have an expiry of 05/10.

I'm not sure if they expired in 05 or will expire in 2010, so I've written to ask. I really wish that until 2013 companies would use 4 digits for the year on expiry dates.

I bought some All laundry detergent a few weeks ago. Ultra concentrated and does a pretty good job on clothes. I like the small bottle because I use a laundromat and appreciate not having to lug a big bottle with me. I had some feedback to give the company about the product that was mostly positive. However I found the marking for the right amount of detergent very hard to see and wanted to comment on that and how much I liked the small bottle and how little of it you needed to wash clothes.

Looked on the bottle. All is a Unilever product. So went to the Unilever site. All is not listed there on the contact us or in the list of brands.

Went to the All site. The "contact us" page is under construction.

It took a bit of looking but I finally found a contact form that would work.

Unilever is a multi-billion dollar company and they have unfinished websites? They don't list all their brands on their contact us page? It really boggles my mind.

Cleaning out my cupboard I found an old container of Tetly herbal tea. I don't drink much herbal tea and had no idea of how long I had had this.

They send me back an email the next morning that was very useful

The shelf life of an unopened box of tea is approximately 2 years. The production code number indicates when the box/canister of tea was produced. If you have a canister, this number may be found on the bottom of the canister, and if it is a box, it is on the side panel of the box. For example, for the production code number that you have quoted, "3362", the "3" indicates the year, so the tea was produced in 2003. The "362" indicates that it was packaged on the 362nd day of the year (approximately December 28th). Therefore, the canister that you have
has passed its shelf life. Due to the sensitive nature of tea, once the box is opened (cellophane removed) the teabags themselves are very susceptible to picking up other odors or flavours. Therefore, in order to prevent the tea from becoming "tainted" by absorbing a foreign odour,
or from becoming "stale", we strongly recommend to our consumers that tea be stored in an air-tight canister mmediately upon opening, and placed in a cool, dry area.

This information allowed me to go through my tea stash and ditch most of it. I'm not in a phase where I'm drinking flavoured tea so there isn't much point keeping it around. When I buy it in the future I'll likely buy 2 or 3 individual bags from the bulk food store rather than box that I'm not likely to finish.

I didn't ask for a coupon or expect to get one - and I didn't.

I've been giving more feedback to companies lately! Seeing what their response is.

Nestle - feedback on their Tollhouse Cookie dough with brownie bits ice cream. While up to nestle quality it was not what I thought I was buying. i wanted cookie dough ice cream and this was more like chocolate with bits of indistinguishable chocolate in it. So I wasn't very happy about it and send them a note. They sent me a coupon for $1 off my next purchase and a standard letter about sending stuff to quality control and thanking me for my feedback.

I will likely give the coworker the $1 coupon as she has kids and unless I want a "wide load" sign on my butt I don't need to be buying more ice cream.

I went to a website yesterday that had wee window pop up to say that they would send you a free product coupon in exchange for completing a short survey.

I filled it out. Then for some reason clicked back and realised that the offer ended in February.

I then tried to complete a form to send a comment to the company to tell them about their outdated web page. I tried to send it twice but have no idea if it went or not.

Had this been some small mom and pop company I wouldn't be so annoyed. But this was Alberto Culver (hair stuff). I really think that multinationals with mega staff and budgets should be able to keep their websites up to date and have response forms that work.

One of the things that makes me irritable is going to the grocery store and finding food that is expired or about to expire.

Last night I thought I had done my shopping then realised that I needed 2 other items. So I popped into the grocery store to grab them.

I wasn't impressed by the packed to the gills display of sour cream that had a best before date of December 6th. I know that you can usually use items for a day or so after the best before date but I really don't like a grocery store that displays food that shows they don't manage their inventory well.

I took the minute or two to find someone who works in dairy to let them know and they *said* they'd have it off the shelf ASAP. I didn't hang round to see if they did.

Buying stuff that is expired or will expire in a day or so just adds to my grocery bill. If I am doing to add to the bill I'd prefer to do it with some exotic foodstuffs and not stuff that could make me ill.

I got a response from Hertz. The folder they gave me for my rental car in Oct claimed that every car has satellite radio. Unfortunately the car I rented did not have that feature. I was stuck listening to some pretty boring AM radio on my trip

The pertinent part of their response:

Thank you for letting us know about the difficulties you encountered. We appreciate the opportunity to review your concerns. We sincerely apologize for the satellite verbiage on the rental record folder you received. We appreciate your bringing this matter to our attention. The management involved has been directed to investigate and determine the source of the problem so that appropriate corrective action may be taken.

I like they did reply to my specific complaint. They rate much higher than K-mart in how they responded to me.

I wrote this post about my experience at Kmart a few days ago.

A three dollar refund from my complaint about the two non working dryers in the laundry room! Quickly sent. Kudos to them for that.

Got to thinking about it though - must cost them significantly more than $3 to issue it (cheque stock, bank fees, envelope, mailing etc). The cost of not upkeeping their machines is pretty steep. No wonder it costs so much to do a load!

Rented a car to come home today. Why is it all rental cars are white? Car was easy to find when I stopped as I rented it in PA and was driving it to ON and the plates on it were FL. That's one well travelled car

For the record, its fun trying to explain FL plates to the customs person when you never were in FL. I think I went on a bit too much with the explanation as she waved me through after a few more questions. The only question I don't normally get asked is if I am carrying a gun and ammunition. I entered the US a week ago - showed no ID (was in my BF's car). Drove home today in a rental car - showed no ID. That surprised me in both directions.

My minor pet peeve - regular radio on this drive sucks. Their advertising says "all cars have sirius radio". Well all fullsize and up do. I rented a wee little thing. It didn't. I might write to them and say that having a brochure that says "all cars have satellite radio" is a wee bit demoralizing when you are in radio no mans land with no satellite radio. I got to listen to some dweeb go on about CBS not showing the last 5 minutes of the Steelers game - I gather it was a slow news day.

I wanted to try a website while I was visting here in the US. It is one that helps you match coupons with codes. I checked - my boyfriend is in a zip code they cover.

So I went to enter my visa information so I could partake in the trial offer. Of course, its not set up to to work if your visa billing address is outside canada.

I then write as follows to the help box of the site:

I tried to sign up for the trial offer. 'm in the US visiting my boyfriend but I'm Canadian and your form doesn't allow me to enter in my address in Canada which is my billing address. Too bad. I was hoping to do some great shopping here.

Their response

We are working hard to bring our service to your area. For now, our _____ would be an excellent choice for you.
I recommend that you shop at Safeway in combination with the Tips in our ______

*Sigh* Their service is available where I want it, I just can't pay for it with my visa becuase my billing address isn't where they allow it to be. And safeway? They aren't any where I live at all.

Oh well, I'll go play with flyers

We went to a small regional chain restaurant, very similar to Ponderosa yesterday for supper. I'd asked to go there because we'd never had a bad experience there and I like their salad bar and steaks.

We got there and the experience was poor from the get go. The cashier who takes your order before you are seated couldn't keep her attention on the customers in front of her - she kept interupting to say stuff to another of the employees there. We get to the head of the line after a short wait and the girl is pleasant (not the one with the short attention span) and takes our order.

We are seated and head up to the salad bar. It is almost empty, although a minute or twso into getting a plate an employee came out with replenishments - all very quickly and nicely handled (bonus marks there).

I have that plate and then a second plate of salad. My boyfriend had just ordered salad bar, while I had ordered steak. We realised we had been there 25 minutes and still no steak for me. After 30 minutes we decided that if still no steak we'd just cancel that part of the order and I'd do salad bar too (I was starting to fill up)

At 30 minutes from sitting down, he went and asked them to take the steak off of our menu. The waitress did that with no fuss or muss (very professionally handled and just mentioned they were very backed up).

We go to the cash to pay and the manager asks for our bill. We mention what had happened and he mentions that they had sat us in the wrong place and "lost" our table. Huh? I think we flustered him by not being angry or upset. He ended up taking 20% off of our bill in addition to the steak. This was unexpected and nice of him.

Still, we left there shaking our heads. Different stories are disconcerting. WBest sometimes to not explain and limit explanations to profuse apologies . We'll go back to the chain just not that particular location.

Citibank just sent me the most interesting offer. They want to lend me money. $4,500 or more depending on my credit. If I return all the money they lend me during the first 14 days I can return it with no fees, charges, hassles - Guaranteed.

Its tempting. But I can't think of anything to do with it where I'll still have it all two weeks later. Putting it in the bank and earning interest is an idea but seems more trouble than its worth.

Maybe I'll call up the manager of the branch and ask her as her name is on the personal letter they sent me. She might have some ideas of what to do with the money for 13 or 14 days - I mean she is a branch manager and everything - they are supposed to be smart aren't they? I'm sure she'd love to sit down with me for an hour and brainstorm ideas....

I also woulnd't mind asking her why something so important got sent by addressed admail and not first class mail. I mean they printed "Priority express" and "UrgentNoticeRequired" on the envelope.

Dang, I'm too busy to do this. But it is tempting....

Rhetorical Question of the day: Why does it take longer to procrastinate the task then do it?


I've been really hesitant to finish getting my ING account set up and dilly dallying on making the phone call to set up my PIN etc. I made that call about 15 minutes ago. It took about 5 whole minutes to get it all set up.

In the last 15 minutes I did the following:

1. Made the call

2. Paid my visa bill via my bank website

3. Transfered money into my ING account


I'm a happy camper! I once again owe no money and I have moved my emergency fund along. Woo hoo!

The store had such a nice display of Kleenex boxes. And a nice coupon. Buy 3 get 1 free or something similar. Good for a while.

*grab a couple*

Look at them later and see they are good only in the US. That's fine I'm there frequently and if I don't use them not hard to find someone who might like them. The question has to be asked of Kleenex though - did you fail geography? Why have pads of these coupons sent to stores in Canada?

I feel a letter to Kleenex coming, asking them if they can send me an equivalent coupon that I can actually use in the country I found it in.

I had bought some lipstick a while back only to find in it a coupon that expired in Feb 2005.. which makes the product a wee bit old. I contacted Revlon and they said they'd replace it and send me a gift certificate.

Two weeks after contacting them I have 2 - $1 coupons (aka the gift certificates) off any product they make NED, and a brand new lipstick!

A good mail day. That and a pile of walmart samples. I haven't checked out the samples yet.. Its 1am.. I think I'll wait until I've had a good sleep.