X-Mas Time!

Christmas weekend resulted in a trip to Dallas and spending time with family and friends. Kochunni was anxious this year to get "shoes that light up" from Santa, though luckily he did not seem to care that we will not be at our home for Santa to come. We made sure to buy the shoes and took it with us to Dallas. Rest of the christmas shopping this year turned out to be easy with online shopping.

Christmas eve had bright snowflakes hitting the ground that by evening turned the whole area into a white Christmas. After some nice dinner we put the kids to sleep and packed up all the gifts and put them under the tree. The older kids woke up early and woke up Kochunni asking him to come check out the treasures that Santa had left behind. Everyone got what they had wished for and then some more. It turned out to be a great day to stay indoors, eat wonderful food and watch a movie. This weekend seemed like the back-to-back movie outing that started out with 3 Idiots at the theater, Wake up Sid, Whats your Rashee and all the home movies.

We also went on a photo session for the kids and as it turns out my son is a teenager already when it comes to photo sessions – he wouldn’t look when asked to, no smiles and make absurd faces that practically made half of the photos useless. But we managed and bought a whole slew of pictures that now I need to figure where to hang them.

In all, a great Christmas weekend.

Merry Christmas!

Who packages these things?

In India, at least until a few years ago the local baniya or nearby general store used to be the place to buy almost everything from dal's to flours, from cookies to spices, from stamps to books, bulbs, scissors, almost anything. The stores are very different from today, in that the shopkeeper would hand out things that you asked for, rather than customers browsing around the shop looking for items. So apart from the packaged brand items like Haldiram sweets or a canned soup everything you get was in loose plastic bags that was wrapped up right in front of you. For example, you could ask for 4 cookies, and two AA batteries. The cookies would be picked out from a glass bottle, while batteries from the shops cupboards. They would be put in little bags for you & you could start to use them right away.

The first time I started encountering individually wrapped items was in US. Apart from vegetables and few other things everything is neatly wrapped away. Not that its a bad idea, but unpacking some of these things needed time, effort and understanding. Its not as simple as opening a cookie box. If you don't check the packaging well you might miss the small text that says "tear here" like on the little ketchup packets and go nuts over not being able to open them while your fries have gone cold.

Apart from this comes the weirdness surrounding packaging. Blub's - a handle-with-care item is packed in little paper mashe while scissors are packed off in this high quality plastic that you would need another high end scissors to open - what if you were buying them for the first time?

Worst offenders now seems to be kids toys.

Last weekend Kochunni got a little School bus from a family friend. She handed over the gift bag to me and today I finally got around to open it. My biggest mistake of course was that I showed the toy to the little guy & he got really exited since he loves anything that remotely looks like a vehicle.


But I still needed to open up the toy from its box- it looked easy enough, just a little cut out box. But I was in for a surprise the bus was held tight with these small hard plastic wires that were twisted around possibly a million times over! Now twisting and turning these 4 wires, held in place with a little green plastic took time and effort. I was glad that honey was holding a now starting to cry baby in his arms. Finally all I was able to do was to remove the bus out of the box and hand off the toy to him with the wires still sticking out.


I guess to remove these would take another 10 mins which I was sure the little guy would rather not wait to lay his hands on his toy. I learned my lesson the hard way, next time open up the damn thing, before I even show a new toy to the little guy!

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Edited to add: Found this Washington Post article that seems to highlight some of the main offenders and the awards that manufactures have won for doing the same!

Duped by whom?

Interesting read based on my previous post! So was I duped by some random cheat or the big bad company?

Hit the Wall at Walmart

One of the best practices here in US is the policy of ‘gift card’. No, I am not talking about offering gift card for birthdays, and other functions, but the practice of stores giving out store gift cards when you return an item.

In theory this gives the customer the option of not only returning the item that they purchased or were given but also to buy something else instead. Now, the store is also pretty happy with the situation as I am sure more often than not, customers will forget about the gift card, misplace them and essentially they got money for an item that never left their store shelves.

I am sure that many ‘wise’ customers are aware of this and take precautions like keeping the receipt and the gift cards at a safe place and remember to make purchase quickly. But what happens when the store did not authorize your card correctly!!!

Here’s the story!

We bought a watch from Wal-Mart right before thanksgiving, along with some other stuff. After a few days, we realized that my mom (for whom the gift was) had a similar one and we decided to return this item. Being a lazy a**, that I am, I sent my dear honey on the errand.

At the store, of course (even with the receipt) they drilled him and entrusted a gift card as they (according to the salesperson) could not refund directly to the credit card as the purchaser (moi) was not present.

My honey came back with the gift card. Diligent that I was, I safely put the card into my purse. This Monday I finally got around to the shop to buy a few items. I double-checked that I had the gift card to ensure that I use it up.

After shopping (and I would add, for more items than the amount on the gift card) I reached the counter. Now the shocker! The sales person tries the card a couple of times and she get the message “Card not authorized”. Mind you, it does not say “no balance amount” or something to that effect. Not wanting to hold up the line, I purchase the items and move to the customer service section to ask them what the issue might be.

I explain what happened at the counter, and like clockwork, the salesperson tries the card one more time and gets the same message – Card not authorized. She asks me if I have the receipt of the receipt (the receipt that they give when the store gave me the gift card as refund) Ok now I am getting frustrated! Of course, I don’t have that. Sorry she cannot help me and informs me that she will call the manager.

After a few minutes, the manager arrives. Any guesses what she does after she heard about the issue – try the card – get the same message and ask me about the gift card receipt. I explain that I would not think about keeping the receipt after I have been provided a gift card by the store no less. She informs me that I will need to call the store manager the next day, and she will try to look me up with the help of ‘store web cams’ and provide me the refund!

Being pissed off helped me not to laugh at this outrageous comment! Can you imagine, a store manager on a call from customer going through various web cam pictures to figure out what item was returned and its price. How do you confirm the person on the phone is one and same? Have a web cam chat?

So long story short, the money on the card is lost plus the additional money (and time) lost in trying to get something else for the gift card amount. You would really think, I should return the new items that I purchased and try this all over again!!! Maybe this time follow the wise-geek advice to “ask the cashier to check the number on the card against the bar code … make sure the correct amount is on the card you purchased.” But then again when a VP of the company is caught up in gift card fraud, it makes you wonder will safety tips work?

Boo!

I ordered a Sesame Street Giggle Medical Kit from Amazon last weekend along with a few other items. This particular item was sitting “To be shipped” status for the past 5 days. I finally emailed them today AM about it and the response:

Updated Delivery Estimate: February 29, 2008 - March 3, 2008. Please approve this delay by Jan, 18.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

This is totally depressing! This means now I have to drive to the mall, park someplace far, walk in the cold, look for the toys, stand in line and drive back!!




(Picture courtesy of Microsoft office clip art)

Online "Window Shopping" Anyone?

Amazon.com is a great website – I love it! Great products, at good prices. Having bought tons of things from it, it’s become one of my first stores for online shopping. Now here’s the issue – I never, that is until last week, gone on a shopping spree at Amazon. Unfortunately, I have realized with this Christmas shopping spree Amazon is not built for window shopping!!!

Here’s why (I hope someone from Amazon reads this!):

I am looking to buy something for Kutie – I don’t want to spend too much, but might consider buying a couple of items (more boxes under the tree) for him. I go to the toy department at Amazon. The big banner says “Deals” – Ok that’s good, it caught my eye and I go for it! Now here’s the problem. Sorting by age does not work! (Ok go ahead try it, I know you want to. Try Age 2 – 4 and you get a bunch of items that for “Recommended for 4 – 6 years”). I guess the engineer did not do a good job at filters. Of course its age 4 thats throwing it off, but come on I am sure there is some complex algorithm to fix it!

Another quibble, is the limited amount of pages that gets displayed, I cannot jump around! Maybe these are the effects of using Google for everything, but wish Amazon did the same. Only 3 pages displayed the first time, and then if you hit next its not 4, 5 & 6 but just 4!

Sorting by price may or may not work (I think I have figured out that it’s because of the category that you fall into). But when it works, it displays some crabby doll for $1 (this might be just me, but what do you do when genders dictate that I get cars for boys!); and when you want to move some pages ahead, you can’t – because it doesn’t display it!! Also, could you please tell me how many pages are there in all? I want to know ahead of time, if I need to go through 10 pages or 20 before I get to the last item!

Arrgh!

Of course, the argument against all of the above needed features is to give customers less options. But when filters are not working, and no end is in sight I would prefer to be given the choice of choices. Thank You!

Shopping

T minus 7

Only a week left for Kutie's big day ... so much left to do - goodies bag, candles, decorations needed to be bought for the party. Of course, we are still looking for a house as well. It was a busy day today.

A lot of things got accomplished - I am happy. Hopefully something will happen on the house hunt as well

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7/7/7 -- NICE DATE? Wonder if marriages, births are on an increase?