Category: Retail Experiences

Butterball’s customer service blows

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Yesterday I submitted an e-mail to Butterball explaining how difficult I’ve found it to locate their turkey polska kielbasa. I used to get it at Meijer and Dominick’s and now neither store carries it. They aren’t out of it either; there’s no price tag to indicate they have any intention of re-stocking it. I’ve been bummed because I have a few recipes where I use it, like my sausage and peppers and even the chicken and chorizo stoup (I use the turkey instead of chorizo). I’ve tried Hillshire Farms and Eckrich’s versions of the turkey polish sausage and neither were as tender and juicy. I really miss the Butterball version!!!

I explained all that to Butterball, asking whether they are discontinuing the production of this sausage and if not, if they could tell me what store in my area carried it. This was their response (silly grammar included):

May 14, 2007

Dear Nicole,

Thank you for your question about the location of turkey polska kielbasa, however, we are not able to tell you what your local retailers have in their inventory. We recommend asking the meat manager at your local retailer so the item will may be available at your retailer.

Sincerely,
Howard Lewis
Consumer Response Representative

Well thanks for nothing! Why “product locator” is even an option on their website when sending them an e-mail is beyond me. They can’t locate shit. Nor did they even answer whether the sausage is still being produced. Am I to assume it is since they didn’t say otherwise?

Honestly, I don’t know why I bother. I am practically begging these people to take my money, but they don’t want to help me. I guess they could learn a thing or two from Edy’s/Dreyer’s who can not only tell me what store carries their product, but can e-mail me the day a particular flavor of my choosing arrives at the store I’ve selected. Now that is inventory control. I hope for our sake the Jenni-O turkey kielbasa I bought this week is really good so I don’t have to buy Butterball’s again. You know, provided I can even find it.

Pearle Vision sucks

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I cannot express how disgusted I am with my recent experience with Pearle Vision. They have always been the only place I’ve trusted when getting new glasses and after the horrible customer service and job they did cutting my lenses, I will never go there again.

I should have known to run far far away the day I walked into their establishment a little over two weeks ago and the girl who eventually took care of me didn’t know they were having a 50% off sale even though I had just been told about it by another girl working there. From there it was nothing but aggravation. When I said I wanted to get the same coating my lenses currently had, the two girls argued over whether it was a UV or anti-reflective. The total price came to $172 and that was with a $100 discount and with me using my old frames! Can you believe that? It’s highway robbery!

Not only that, but they never called me when the lenses came in like they were supposed to. After 10 days I finally called to check on them and Smug Employee told me “they’ve been here” like I was an idiot for not knowing it. I asked why they didn’t call me and she said “we normally do” and when I said they didn’t she didn’t apologize or anything. When I asked how long they had been there she said she didn’t know (yea, right). So then I tried to find out when the lens cutter would be in since they don’t have one on staff full-time like the other Pearles I have been to. She had to keep putting me on hold and would tell me everything BUT what I wanted to know.

For example, here’s the conversation I had on Monday:

Me: What time will someone be available tonight?
Her: Hold on …. after 6. Probably 6:30.
Me: Ok, and what about tomorrow in case I can’t make it in tonight?
Her: Hold on.
*Puts me on hold for three minutes*
Her: Ok, if you want an afternoon someone will be in on Wednesday at 2 pm.
Me: What? I asked when someone would be in tomorrow.
Her: Wednesday they will be in at 2 pm.
Me: Will someone be in TOMORROW?
Her: Yes.
Me: What time? I want to know what time someone will be in tomorrow. Just because I can’t make it tonight doesn’t mean I was asking when someone would be available in the afternoon.
Her: Ok, tomorrow around 6 pm.
Me: Thank you.

Talk about retarded!

I had Joe call them again later in the week since I was ready to rip their collective idiot heads off. I had no intention of getting aggravated with them after work so he got the lens cutter’s schedule for the weekend. So we went in yesterday at 4:30 like we were advised and the lens cutter wasn’t there. Even worse, Smug Employee (same one who didn’t know about the sale) said to us, “that’s why you should call first” before even asking if we had. She just ASSumed because she’s a condescending moron. When I told her we had called first, she just looked at us. Again, no apology. Gee, why apologize to an upset customer on behalf of the establishment? That’s only good customer service!

So I asked what time someone would be in today and she told us “I don’t know, I don’t even work tomorrow”. Well what does that have to do with anything? WTF kind of business are they running there that they don’t know when someone is available to cut the lenses? Isn’t that a HUGE part of the service? I asked if I could take the lenses to a different Pearle since I was fed up with them at that point and she refused to give them to me. In fact, she scolded me, “I can get in a lot of trouble if I give these to you” as if I was supposed to know there’s some law against it. It was all about her and what might happen to her instead of doing what she could for the customer. She was very defensive and unapologetic about all our hassles even when I said to her, “You could see how as a customer how frustrating this is”. Seriously, I wanted to knock her block off.

One of the other employees just standing there with their thumb up their ass finally spoke up and said someone should be in at noon. So we called at noon today and the lens cutter wasn’t there. But the girl who answered said she’d call us when someone came in and then actually did call us back about an hour later, so we dropped my frames off. We went back an hour later and they were done. And now that I have them I have to say that it’s the worst lens cut I have EVER seen and I’ve been getting glasses since I was six. Maybe they need a full-time person instead of someone who, based upon the information I’ve gathered, works two hours a day. They obviously did not take their time or put any care into the cutting of the lenses. They are not smooth around the edges like my old ones were which causes light to bounce off them and distract me because I see it out of the corner of my eye. Plus I paid $20 extra for scratch-resistant coating and they gave them to me with two deep, albeit small, scratches in them. They look like apostrophes. Luckily they aren’t in my line of vision.

Honestly, if I thought I could take them back and get a refund, I would, because the quality is that poor. But after everything else I’ve endured with that place I cannot see them being that accommodating considering the fact they can’t even apologize for all their previous mistakes.

So I guess I’ve learned my lesson the expensive way. Stay away from Pearle Vision! I don’t know where I’m going to go next time I need glasses since I already tried Lens Crafters once years ago and hated them. I’s just unfortunate because I never trusted any other establishment more than Pearle and now I will never trust them again.

Half Price Books

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There’s this really cool bookstore that opened a few months ago called Half Price Books. I’m not sure what possessed us to initially check it out since we don’t buy books (we borrow from the library), but I’m glad we did. They don’t just sell books for a huge discount, they also carry used vinyl and cds, new and used video games (mostly computer software, but they do have used PS1 and PS2, Gameboy, and XBOX titles) and magazines as well. We got the kids a $10 gift card for Christmas that they redeemed today. The girl bought two games for her computer and the boy got some books as well as a game for his computer. Their totals were over $10 but they were able to use some of the American Express gift card they received from their uncle for Christmas. I browsed their clearance cds and got a copy of Nickelback’s Silver Side Up for only $3. It’s not as good as All The Right Reasons but it’s not bad either. Afterwards we spent the White Castle and McDonald’s gift cards my mom had given us to pick up lunch. The kids spent most of the day playing their new games, although they did come downstairs for a game of Scene It Jr. which I won. Hey, I tried not to, but the game was starting to drag on too long so I had to end it.

Mongolian Beef & other things

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We ended up at our favorite Chinese restaurant, Luong Loi, for lunch today. I had completely forgotten about it when lamenting last week on not finding a good Chinese place since they are little pricier and we don’t consider them take-out. But so far their food is well above the rest. Today we tried the Mongolian beef and damn was it good! It wasn’t spicy at all, which was surprising, but the beef was so tender and not fatty at all. There was a ton of it served over a bed of rice noodles. I’ve never had it presented that way before, but it couldn’t have been more delicious. I could eat at that place every week if it didn’t burn a hole in the pocketbook.

Joe finally used his Radio Shack gift card from last xmas and got me a battery charger since my Energizer one doesn’t seem to be working properly. The charger came with 4 AA and 4 AAA rechargeable batteries and the best part is it charges them in a half hour instead of eight hours like the old charger. Hopefully now I won’t be caught without any batteries for my Powershot!

We also hit (evil) Best Buy to get a game for the kids so we could use the last of the balance Joe had on his gift card. I really really really hate Best Buy (sorry Jeff). It’s hard to describe the feeling I get just walking into that place, but it’s not a good one. First off, I think all the employees there are jackasses. It might just be the BB by me, but I just have the overwhelming urge to punch each and every one of them in the face. There are way too many of them crawling around the store, watching you like hawks as if you’re going there specifically to shoplift every item you can get your hands on. They have like five people guarding the doors! It’s ridiculous. Then the cashier inspects your credit card as if she works for the CIA! And to be honest, while they may have to be friendly and courteous, I don’t buy that they really give two shits about the customer. I feel the waves of hostility coming off them. It’s like they are trained to view the consumer as the enemy. I get that they don’t want to get ripped off, but feeling like they don’t trust or even like the consumer is probably not the proper way to conduct business. I’ve never gotten that feeling anywhere else but Fry’s Electronics and I won’t shop there either. Screw Best Buy. I was so glad to get out of there. I hope to god Joe doesn’t get another gift card this year from that place.

Anyhow, we also stopped at the library to buy an Entertainment book. It’s interesting how if you order the book online they want $25 yet you can get it locally for $20. Free shipping my ass. Anyway, Joe would like everyone to know he’s been trying to get me to buy that book for years. It’s true, and I never thought it was worth it. But I flipped through the 2007 book my boss has and there were many coupons I can see using. Maybe I should keep track of how many coupons we do use to see how long it takes to recoup the $20 and start saving money. Hmmm ….

Faux wood blinds

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After that fiasco at Lowe’s earlier in the week, I was not looking forward to going back. Luckily their incompetence did us a favor in the long run because as we were walking around the blinds aisle waiting for someone to help us, we spotted these white faux wood blinds (brand is Levelor) that we really liked and decided to get them instead of ordering the Bali blinds that are on sale.

The best part was they had them in stock and just had to cut them down slightly to fit the width of the window. The girl who cut them kinda bent the headrail but it’s covered by the mounting bracket, so you can’t see it. There’s a small crack on the bottom rail as well, but that was there when we opened the box, so she gave us 10% off. She also told us it would be facing the inside of the window so no one would see it, but once we got them home we realized she was wrong and the crack is actually on the side that faces the room. Luckily it is very small and not noticeable unless you’re looking for it. So between the discount and the 10% off coupon I had, the blinds were only $60. Not too shabby after all. Thanks Lowes!