Why We Are Doomed--pt 3

SEARS

Before Home Depot, before Lowes Home Improvements Centers, before franchised hardware stores like Ace, there was Sears, the most trusted name in home appliances and tools as well. For years the Sears tool section made it possible for countless men to accompany their wive shopping, secure in the knowledge that there was a place for them to wait that would actually be useful. The Sears and Roebuck Catalogue clothed and furnished the pioneers on the Prairie. It was something that you could count on.

We have several appliances from them, all on service contracts, including a washer/dryer unit for our rental apartment; we are understandably desirous of adhering to the requirements and specifications of said contracts. They insist that their own technicians handle installations and unhooking existing units for a move. Okay, great. When were they coming out? I'd make arrangements for someone to be waiting for them.

If you really hate someone, find a way to make them call Sears. Their suffering (and your revenge) will be total. First of all, you never connect to a human, not without first wading through endless robotic voice menu options. It is possible to short-circuit the system with meaningless responses that eventually produce a real human, only to be soundly chastised for interrupting them when clearly they aren't the department you need. Then they hook you back to the voice menu.

But I persisted, and finally scheduled a maintenance call. My 20 year old daughter was home that day, and when the technician arrived, he took a quick look around at the thee different units and said "I'm the wrong guy, I don't do this," and left.

Back into the world of endless robotic voices I ventured, this time emerging with a real phone number to real people who actually scheduled real visits from other real humans. Someone would pay dearly for letting such highly classified information fall into my hands, particularly since I used it and found someone who I could ask "What the heck happened?"

The lady with whom I spoke was horrified that the scheduled service call had gone so badly and was at a loss to explain, but, not to worry, we'd just go ahead and schedule another for next Saturday and everything will be fine. Worked for me.

Wednesday night I get a call from a robot: HELLO. THIS IS TO CONFIRM YOUR MAINTENANCE VISIT FOR TOMORROW, THURSDAY...

Now, I knew it was a robot. I knew it didn't hear me. I knew that yelling as loudly as I did would not only accomplish nothing, it would make me miss the rest of the message. But I didn't care. The message was already crap.

So, once more I dialed up the soothing robotic voices. The final result was that we had not one, but two visits scheduled, one for each of one appliance, on different days, with the third lost in the shuffle. It took two hours on the phone to reach the current solution: all scheduled calls cancelled, and yet another scheduled for the following Saturday.

Have a great day.



THE POST OFFICE

All you need is the heading to this section to know that things will go badly. But even I was unprapared for a screw-up of this magnitude.

After our move, we noticed quite soon that we weren't getting any forwarded mail. Several pieces with our new address arrived, but nothing with the official forwarding sticker from our old address.

As it happens, the guy who bought our old house isn't living in it; in the Spring he's going to tear it down and build apartments. He was quite amenable to us dropping by from time to time to see if we had mail. We did. Also, if you read pt. II of this saga, and recall the undelivered equipment from Dish Network, you'll appreciate my reaction when the first thing I noticed when I went back to the old house was several "We missed you!" notices from, you guessed it, UPS. Well. One mystery explained.

I opened the door and found a layer of mail approximately 3 inches thick on the floor beneath our door. Clearly, we'd gotten lost in yet another system.

So I waded through the various levels of telephone access until I at last found myself talking to a human, the manager of the Post Office in question, actually. She was very polite and even sympathetic, but, no, we weren't in their computer and there really wasn't anything she could do about it. We'd have to resubmit our change of address card. No, we couldn't do it over the phone, we'd have to come into the Post Office. No, she couldn't fast track it. It would take 5 - 10 business days. However, she would place a hold on any more mail for us until the forwarding notice took effect.

Annoying? Sure. But surprising? Not a chance. I took care of business and settled back to wait. Three days later I called to check if we had mail waiting for us to pick up, and, of course, no one knew anything about a hold order. So I went back to the old house and removed another layer of mail.

Around this time, I began to notice that we weren't getting any mail at all delivered to our new address. Not really a cause for concern, not that many people knew it yet, and the accounts that we'd updated probably didn't have bills for us. Yet.

Then we received our first forwarded mail. Interestingly enough, it all came with not one, but two stickers. One sticker was the forwarding address. The other was an interesting little sticker that said "No forwarding address. Unable to deliver. Return to Sender." These stickers were all dated three to ten days after the forwarding address. Then I noticed a couple of letters that had our new address, but also the "No forwarding address, return to sender," nonsense.

Could it be? Were we the victims of not one, but two Post Offices? Afraid so. We began to get phone calls from friends who'd sent Christmas cards, to the new address, that were returned. I shudder to think what bills might have gotten lost in the mess.

I won't bother detailing the difficulty I had in actually tracking down our carrier and asking what the hell he was thinking. Suffice it to say that his command of the English language made it impossible for me to understand what lame excuse he was offering.

Now... let's clarify this situation, shall we?

1. They don't forward my mail.
2. When they do forward it, they don't deliver to the new address.
3. When it's addressed to the right address, they send it back.
4. Competant carriers like Fed Ex or UPS are banned from delivering first-class mail.
5. No one is allowed to compete with this organization.
6. There are no avenues available for anyone seeking to report gross incompetance.
7. Thus, we must conclude that as a matter of normal State policy, we're screwed.

I confess, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the enormity of this SNAFU, and when I do, I'm going to make some noise. I don't know how yet, but trust me, someone's going to get real sick of hearing from me. Count on it.

__________________________________

So what's it all mean? Is this just the raw material for a bad sitcom on one of the networks? Could be, but I don't have the stomach to write it.

There's a painful lesson here: we don't do anything right any more. We've tinkered with our education system to the point that we're turning out functional idiots who can't grasp the simplest routines, or the most basic of social skills. To compensate, all the customer service departments are being farmed out to third-world nations where their operators are given a crash course in English idioms, a few talking points on a note card and turned loose with names like "John," "Bob," and "Wendy," but with accents like Achmed, Won Hung Lo, or something unpronouncable. I don't begrudge them the work. I lament that we are incapable of providing even a crude imitation of what used to be high standards. In a nation of consumers, the idea that the consumer has rights has quietly been overturned. Simply put, we, as a nation, don't care. And if we do, we're not competent enough to do anything about it.

In fairness, I must say that not all aspects of this journey turned out badly. My new internet hook up costs me one-fifth of my old DSL line and is between 5 and 10 times faster. I can enthusiastically endorse Road Runner cable internet as the best tech deal going.

I've got a satellite dish again, and a flashy new DVR which I'm having lots of fun with, and it's costing me about half what my old contract cost.

And not everyone I encountered was a slob, an idiot, or a sociopath. The moving crew was on time, worked their butts off and did a first rate job.

And the contractor that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece has proven worthy of all my trust. He and his workers have delivered unerringly on every point: good price, exceptional craftsmanship and on time.

Oh yeah: the movers... they're all from Ireland, just recently, judging from their accents.

And the contractor? He's from BanglaDesh, as are all of his workers, except the ones from Mexico. His electrician, a guy named Farouque, dropped by the other night with a gift basket from Starbucks and a Christmas card for us. Truth be told, he still wasn't quite on top of this whole Christmas thing, but somehow he managed to get the right idea anyway. In fact, I'd say he's got the right idea about the whole experience of living and working in this country.

I can think of a couple hundred million Americans who could learn a lot from him and his many cousins.