Category: Uncategorized

On Tuesday my couch was delivered with what I thought at the time was minimal fuss or complications. Someone phoned my at 9am to say my delivery window was between 10am and noon. That’s actually pretty good compared to some delivery services.

Around 11am the delivery driver phoned again and said they’d be there in five minutes and I should come downstairs to meet him. I went down right away and didn’t have to wait for an elevator. Just as I got to the front door, the delivery van drove right up. What awesome timing, this was gonna go great I thought.

Two guys helped delivery my couch, which is one of those combo ones, with a chaise part so you can stretch out your legs. So the two pieces were the big couch part and then the chaise part. There was no wait for the elevator going up, which can be a problem in my building but we lucked out this time.

The delivery dudes were nice enough to get the couch almost right into place in my living room. The two pieces, however, were still covered in plastic wrap and some cardboard. I didn’t pay extra for them to handle all that stuff, so it was left to me. Before the dudes left, they said it was up to me to put on the stubby wooden legs of couch and the chaise part. That’s not a tough job at all, you basically just screw them on.

So, I got to the task of removing all the plastic wrap and cardboard. Wrapped up with the couch was the first set of four legs for the couch. I opened up that package and in less than five minutes, I screwed them on. I then unwrapped the chaise part of the couch and looked for its legs. There was none. I went through all the packaging and there was nothing. I was missing four legs.

I immediately called the furniture store to tell them what happened. I got the delivery coordinator I believe, on the phone. They were fairly nonchalant about hearing that my product arrived incomplete. I’m not even sure they even apologized for having this happen to me. All they said was that I’d have to wait two full days for the legs to be delivered to me because they didn’t do deliveries to my area the next day.

I asked the person on the phone how this could have happened and this was pretty much their reply:

“Oh yeah, sometimes the manufacturer forgets to pack all the parts before it gets shipped out. It happens.”

It happens? Yeah sure, stuff happens, but don’t make it sound like this is an unheard of occurrence. Tell me this doesn’t happen at all or this is rare. Apologize to me and tell me this isn’t the level of service they strive to give their customers. Let me feel like they are doing everything possible to make it right.

I even asked them if I could come down to the store and pick up some legs there. I was told this could not happen. I would have even been fine with taking the legs off the display model. They did not offer this solution.

The only option I was given was to wait two full days while a third of my couch was not usable. At this point, I usually don’t do this type of stuff but I left a Google review. I wanted to be fair because the Internet is full of hyperbole and over reactions. My first thought was that I’d leave a rating of 3/5 stars. Leaving a 1/5 star over some missing legs would be unfair. The couch itself looked great and had no visible defects. It also was delivered in the time frame that the salesman said it would be, eight to ten weeks. In my case, it got delivered in about nine weeks.

So, in my 3/5 star review, I said that after waiting over eight weeks for my couch, it came with some missing legs. I called to get it resolved and it seemed like they weren’t too surprised to hear something had gone wrong and it would take two full days for it to get resolved.

At that point, I submitted the review and had to get back to work because there was something important I had to attend to and also I had some meetings to be at. While I was in one of those Zoom meetings about 40 minute later, my phone started going off. I couldn’t get to my phone because of my meetings.

Once the meeting was over, I checked my phone and I got two separate voicemails. One was from the furniture store from some dude I’d never heard of before. He told me to call them back. Another voicemail was from the original sales dude that sold me the couch in the first place. He also texted me to call him back.

I decided to call the sales dude back. He answered immediately and said they saw the review. Alright, so my review lit a fire under them for some reason. To summarize the conversation, sales dude wanted me to change my review and in exchange they’d actually put some effort into getting me those missing legs as fast as possible. Like it was very clear that the current state of the review was the motivating factor in trying to make things right with me. He even mentioned that he wanted all of this resolved before his boss saw the review.

I told the sales dude that if he got me the legs today or tomorrow, I’d be willing to change the review. He said that he would delivery the legs to me personally and he’d take them from someone if need be. He didn’t give me any time frame, so I just left it at that. He did say that he’d contact me once he got the legs.

After that, I just went about my day and early evening. After the store closed and I didn’t hear anything, I figured that this would probably get resolved tomorrow. At around 8pm I got a text from sales dude and he was gonna swing by my place in fifteen minutes to delivery the legs for me.

I was home, so I told him to come by. I went downstairs fifteen minutes later and he drove by not long after that. He had a box of wooden legs with him, which he gave me. I thanked him for his level of customer service, especially at this hour, well after his working day. I also promised that I’d go upstairs and edit the review that he was so concerned about. After I said goodbye to him, I did indeed go upstairs and changed the review.

I edited to say that there was a problem with the delivery but they went the extra mile to make it right. I also added another star to the review.

In the end everything was ok but a customer shouldn’t have to write an Internet review to get a company to increase their level of customer service. I know I am being naive because everyone understands that a single Tweet can cause a company to care when they wouldn’t have given a damn about a regular phone call.

Anyways, I’m just glad I have somewhere to sit (and stretch out) in my living room.

My website was down for most of the evening so I was unable to write the follow-up post to yesterday’s gripping yarn of a tale. It’s well after 2am here and my site just went back up. I need to go sleep now. I’ll be back tomorrow with real content.

My new couch sofa was indeed delivered today but it was not without incident. I am too tired to get into all the details so I’ll just do the terrible thing of teasing something and then not writing about it until tomorrow. You have my apologies for that.

In my building, every floor has an apartment that faces the elevators. On my floor, there’s a dude who lives in that apartment. From what I can tell, he’s lived there for many years, I’d say five to seven years if I had to guess. In that time, I think I’ve seen him twice.

Since I use the elevators a lot (who doesn’t in an apartment building?), I’m often standing outside his door, waiting for the elevators to come. I don’t think I have ever heard any noise from his apartment; no sounds from a TV or any music. I haven’t heard anything like a blender or sounds of cooking. The apartment is quiet all the time.

The two times I saw this dude were quite interesting. The first time was out in the hallway of our floor. I must have been waiting for the elevator. He was outside his unit and he was complaining that he couldn’t be home for smoke alarm inspections. They had put a notice on his door that they couldn’t get into his unit for such inspections. I am guessing that he’s away during the day for work and can’t be home to open the door for the inspectors. I am also guessing he’s got no one to give his keys to so they can be home for him. That is all very understandable. I had sympathy for him.

The second memory of seeing this guy is a bit fuzzy. I believe that I had to get up very early in the morning one day. This might be when I was going on a trip somewhere. It was something very crazy early like 5am or 6am, a time that I’m not usually awake, let alone waiting for the elevators in my building. There he was, also waiting for the elevator. I think we had some small talk, very briefly, before the elevator arrived.

I don’t want to say this guy was reclusive but in the many years we’ve both lived on this floor, I’ve only seen him twice. I have never seen him on a weekend. I have never seen him getting his mail. If he walked past me on the street, I probably wouldn’t even recognize him since it’s been years since I last saw him.

Last week, I saw a note on his door. I couldn’t but help read it was I waited for an elevator. His landlord had been trying to reach him many times without a response from him. He hadn’t forwarded his rent cheque for April. The landlord would be entering the unit for inspection today (if you’re reading this as a new post). The note addressed him by his first name, so now I know at least that much about this reclusive neighbour.

I don’t know what’s going on with him or what his story is, but I am intrigued and fascinated. Does he even spend any appreciable amount of time in his apartment? Is that why he is so quiet and I never see him? Or is he in there and just living very quiet and very minimalist? I am also so curious to find out what the apartment looks like. Is it spotless and spartan or like a hoarder home?

If I find out more, I will update everyone.

On January 24th of this year, I went into a furniture store and paid for a new couch. They told me it could take anywhere between eight to ten weeks for the couch to be constructed and ready for delivery. On Tuesday, my new couch will be delivered to me.

It did indeed take about two months for the couch to finally be ready for me. I have been without a couch for much longer than two months though. I got rid of my old couch before I got my new flooring installed. It’s been well over six months since I’ve had anywhere comfortable to sit in my living room.

I can’t wait to watch TV and be able to stretch out properly!

A rare sketch where Will Ferrell plays the “straight man” and Spider-Man gets to have all the fun.

So I’ve been sponsoring a child for over a decade now. She was just a little girl when all this started and now she’s a young teen. Because of the language barrier and a great distance, I wrote her very infrequently, perhaps just handful of times per year. I also got a few updates from her family every year as well. I understood from the beginning that my donation wasn’t going straight to my sponsor child. My money is pooled with other donations and spent in the region in which my sponsor child lives. It can go to projects like better schools or better sanitation. I know that money helped many children, not just my sponsor child.

In the last two years or so, the letters I got from the family started to be written by my sponsor child’s cousin. From what I could tell, my sponsor child was no longer living in the same region as before and was now living with some different parts of her family. I really had no idea how far she had moved or if this was a temporary thing. I was just pleased to read any updates I could get.

I checked my mail this afternoon and I got another update package from the charity. I have been assigned a new sponsor child. I was told my previous one had moved out of the region in which the charity provides assistance, so logistically they no longer qualified as a sponsor child. I have no idea if they moved again or if this was the same place they’ve been in for the last few years. In any case, I wish her well.

The charity prefers that donors keep an arms length of separation between them and the sponsor children. I totally understand that. Like I mentioned, my money isn’t going straight to my sponsor child’s pocket, so my connection with them falls on the superficial side. Also, I didn’t adopt this child. The more accurate way to describe this is that I donate to a charity that helps kids and they pair me up with a pen pal.

So I have a new pen pal now and I hope I can continue to help more kids with my humble donations.

My A/V receiver arrived via a crappy shipping company today. Let’s just say it wasn’t FedEx nor was it UPS. This piece of electronics had an eventful journey to get to me. I originally thought it would be a straightforward path to Vancouver since I realized the shipment would begin somewhere in California.

It turns out it would start from Los Angeles. Then my tracking info said something about Cincinnati. I thought that might have been a mistake but sure enough after it left LA, it did indeed arrive in Cincinnati. It traveled nearly across the continent in the wrong direction only then to cross back again in right direction to get to me.

Now let’s be clear, I’m not saying this sort of weird routing makes a shipping company crappy, FedEx and UPS do this as well for their packages. I’m pretty sure that Cincinnati is some sorta central hub that is better suited to perhaps handle packages that need to cross borders with customs and such, necessitating criss-crossing the continent. I get it but when you plot it out on a map, it looks weird.

On the weekend I tested myself with a rapid antigen test. It was my first time being tested during the pandemic. Two years in and I got my first test. The test indicated a negative result. These tests are not as accurate of the PCR tests and they only paint a picture of your status at the moment that you did the test. So while it did indicate that I was negative, my status could have changed in the next hour.

The great thing is these tests seem to be readily available where I am located and I have nine more in my possession. If I were really baller, I’d take a test everyday, just for peace of mind. Some people do have that luxury but I currently do not. That’s ok though, because I don’t require daily tests.

I find these cheese slices disgusting just on their own, so I’m not sure how he was able to eat all 100 in less than five minutes.