RE: Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008

Dear Senator,

The aforementioned piece of legislation has just come to my attention, and I am appalled at the potential ramifications that enforcing this bill may have, both for the flailing economy in general and for my family in particular. As I understand it, requiring all products (clothing and toys) designed for children 12 and under to be tested for lead and phthalates could have the unintended consequence of wiping out the second-hand industry as we know it.

I understand the desire to protect our children from shoddy goods imported from China, but this legislation was absolutely the wrong way to go about it. With times as tight as they are, it is unimaginable that the US Congress would allow this legislation to be actually enforced. I depend solely on second-hand sources to clothe my children, and with a third child expected this summer, I know I cannot afford to pay full-price for new children's items.

Seriously, children are far more threatened by second-hand cigarette smoke than by the potential side effects from hypothetical lead in the occasional beadwork on their clothing. Let me, as the consumer, make the choice to purchase items for my family, using my own discretion to weigh the risk of whether I feel threatened by the potential lead content of any particular toy or item of clothing.

If you want to require this testing for all children's products going forward, that would be a more fair way of handling the situation. At the very least, this legislation needs to be revised to apply only to new products being manufactured, and should never apply retroactively to all the goods out there already in circulation. We need much more clarification and revision to this law before it takes effect next month.

My main concern, of course, is with the availability of second-hand items for my family and the effect this law will have on the second-hand industry in general; I haven't even touched on the devastating consequences this would have for small business owners, artisans, craftsmen, and the like, who run their small cottage industries in the best of the entrepreneurial spirit, and who cannot afford to have expensive product testing for their handmade hairbows, aprons, and other goods they sell on Etsy, for example.

I am astounded that this legislation somehow passed without general consumer knowledge. I wish we had had time to lobby about it before it was voted upon, but as far as I can see, the information is just now hitting the blogosphere. Trust me, this thing will spread like wildfire. Small cottage industries, frugal families, second-hand stores, and environmentalists concerned about the impact of trashing all the perfectly good items whose only crime was to be manufactured before February 10th, 2009, will all rise in protest. There will be a huge backlash if this thing goes through. I respectfully request that you be our advocate on this issue and make every effort to repeal or substantially amend this devastating piece of legislation before it is enforced.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Rose Focht

Consumer rant - Omaha Steaks

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a great deal, and signed up promptly. It's one of those you-had-to-be-there-at-the-right-time deals, like combining a great coupon that doubles with a great sale. Basically, if you fulfilled a particular offer with a particular merchant, that merchant would send you a code for a $25 gift card to Omaha Steaks. Then, you apply that $25 gift card to a then-current promotion at Omaha Steaks, to receive not only an order of burgers, but also a free gift with purchase. So far, so good. I signed up, got my gift card code, ordered the burgers and the free gift, received my confirmation email, and waited for my order to arrive.

However. Never having been one to consider spending phenomenal amounts of money for overpriced (and, according to reports I've heard, not really all-that-great quality) meats and other edibles, I've never actually ordered from Omaha Steaks before. Turns out that their Unconditional Guarantee isn't quite so unconditional after all: apparently, you have to spend a certain amount of money on the order before they consider you a customer worth trying to keep. They certainly will never get my business again, and I will recount the saga in hopes of discouraging anyone else from ever risking getting burned by this company with truly abysmal customer service.

The day after placing my order, I received the following email from Omaha Steaks Customer Service:

Thank you for shopping at Omaha Steaks! We appreciate your business and are confident you will be delighted with your order.

We do show when placing this order, a special offer for a free item was combined with the $25 reward card. As stated in all promotions for free items, offers cannot be combined. Your order will ship without the free item.

If you have any questions regarding your order, please contact us at 1-800-329-6500. We would be happy to assist you.

I promptly replied with the following email:

Excuse me??

No, this was never stated at any step of the promotion. My order confirmation includes both the free gift - which rang up with my order, without EVER stating any exclusion - and the gift card. Furthermore, the gift card code I used is a GIFT CARD, not a "special promotion."

If this was true, the free gift should have voided out of my order upon placement. This is the first I am hearing of your so-called rule. You are changing the rules of the offer on me, and that is fraud.

I was promised a free gift with my order, and you do not have the right to change the terms of the offer on me, especially after receiving my payment and personal information.

I will expect my complete order with my shipment.

To which Omaha Steaks Customer 'Care' replied:

Thank you for contacting us. We appreciate your interest in Omaha Steaks and we apologize for any confusion with our special offers.

All Omaha Steaks free item promotions state that they cannot be combined with any other offer. The Reward Gift Card that you received is a special promotion offered through Geico and while this Reward Gift Card did not stipulate that it could not be combined with another offer, the Omaha Steaks free item promotion did state that it could not be combined with any other offers. Therefore, the free item was removed.

If we can be of further assistance please contact us via email or by phone at 1-800-329-6500.

Meanwhile, my shipment arrived sans the free gift. My card was charged for the amount indicated on the confirmation email, the amount that I had calculated would include the extra burgers. Without the free gift, the order was just a bunch of overpriced meat.

Let's be clear on this. The free gift showed as shipped. The confirmation email showed it as included. There was never any question about the use of a gift card voiding out a free gift offer. It was not until a day later that I received an email informing me that the free gift was going to be removed from my order.

Clearly the response to this offer was overwhelming, and some dolt in Customer Care decided that the best way to cut their losses would simply be to reneg on the terms of their offer, re-define the Geico gift card as a 'Rewards Promotion,' and tick off hundreds (thousands?) of customers instead of accepting the loss of their loss leader advertising. If that's how they do business, they probably won't be in it very long.

Stuff and nonsense

Last week I came across this website, and have been mulling over The Story of Stuff ever since. It's about a twenty-minute video, and well worth watching, although I don't appreciate the political potshots which the narrator takes toward the beginning.

(I don't necessarily agree with her assumptions about the limited amount of resources or 'our fair share' of the planetary pie. I guess it comes down to a fundamental difference in worldview - an atheist/evolutionist will see things in the light of chance and survival of the fittest, in which we'd better play the best with the cards we've been dealt, while I believe that God gave us this earth to take dominion over, and provided the resources needed to sustain life in His image. So I'm a little irritated by her trite statistics about the percentage of polluted waterways and the square miles of Amazon rainforest chopped down every day. Treating the water supply and the forests as a finite resource, the draining of which is exacerbated by a growing world population, instead of as a renewable resource that simply needs to be managed better, is a typical alarmist cliche. I am sure that there is irresponsible logging going on out there, but coming from Oregon, where the logging industry is a mainstay and the loggers, realising and respecting this fact - and not wanting to work themselves out of a job - consistently replant at or above replacement level, I tend to resent the all-too-common assumption that cutting down trees is synonymous with trashing the planet.)

Back to The Story of Stuff. Once I got past her alarmist propaganda, I found the rest of the video gripping and enlightening. I am astounded by the notion that our current economic model of rampant consumerism was a deliberate scheme, concocted and constructed according to plan. Apparently the economic advisers of the Eisenhower administration, in drawing up a blueprint for the American economy coming out of the post-war boom, envisioned a long-term model of ever-growing prosperity and expansion, industrialisation and consumption. They developed a shift in the consumer mentality by the precise implementation of planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence.

Planned obsolescence is when things are designed to be thrown away, so the consumer always has to keep coming back for more. You can see this principle at work with the obvious disposables such as paper goods, diapers, and the like. (Prior to WWII, disposables were almost unheard-of; cloth diapers, personal care and linens were the norm.) Nowadays, we've moved so far away from that notion that we even have such ridiculous 'convenience' items as disposable mops, toilet scrubbers, and, apparently, BBQ grills. (?!?)

More subtle is the planned obsolescence of poor quality goods purporting to be reusable but so cheaply made that they will break often enough to keep the consumer buying and buying again. It's all a cleverly orchestrated balance between having the goods break quickly enough to ensure a steady demand while lasting just long enough to ensure that the consumers will not lose faith in the product. Our expectations have been re-programmed, and we no longer hope for the durability and quality from long-term goods that were the norm a generation or so ago. Hence the very true expression, 'They just don't make them like they used to.' No, and it's no accident.

Perceived obsolescence is simply the cultural pressure to buy a new one, even if the old one isn't broken or dysfunctional. This is the driving force behind fashion, sleek newer cars, bigger houses, and the like. Surely some scientific improvements come with time, but for the most part, the need to buy new stuff is merely imaginary.

The whole thing is very, very annoying to me.

Redbox rocks!

A few weeks ago I gave Redbox a try for the first time. I'd read about it online and heard great things about it, but when I finally got around to trying it out, I was less than impressed. The 'free' code I'd been proffered didn't work, and the customer service rep with whom I spoke seemed ambivalent about solving the problem for me and even suggested that the code malfunction might be a common problem. I wrote a very thorough email to customer support, listing my perturbations and suspecting them of pulling a bait-and-switch by deliberately offering free goods/services which were merely designed to lure new customers in.

Customer service responded in fine style. I received a very courteous and apologetic response, explaining that the glitch with the code was a temporary issue, that Redbox really is in the habit of offering absolutely free rentals, and giving me two free codes on the spot as a goodwill gesture. Their reputation properly restored, I gave them another chance, and now commence to sing their praises. Both codes worked like a charm, and I became hooked.

Redbox, in case you haven't heard of it, is like a vending machine of new release DVDs located in various popular locations such as Wal-marts and McDonalds. Check their website to find one near you. The cost is usually $1 a day, but there are so many free codes emerging that you can pretty much get one for free any time you want.

It works for Redbox, because if you are late returning your DVD, you get charged $1. Still, that's not much for a movie rental (and hey, last I checked, Blockbuster was charging $4.29 for new releases!) So far we have always been prompt about returning our movies on time, and the location is very convenient. We are definitely fans.

Consumer rave - Publix

Here is the why and wherefore of this post.

****************************************

November 15, 2007



Publix Super Markets Corporate Office
ATTN: Consumer Relations
PO Box 407
Lakeland, FL 33802-0407

To Whom It May Concern:

This letter is to report on a recent satisfactory exchange with your consumer relations department, and to commend you and your employees on an excellent level of customer service, both at the corporate and at the store level.

To give a bit of background, on a recent shopping trip I found a flyer at my local Publix (Store #xxx) with a great coupon inside. It was the last flyer on the rack, but the coupon, matched with the then-current sale, provided such a good deal that I asked at the customer service desk whether there were any more flyers in the back. The gentleman at the counter could not find any more, but told me that they should be getting more flyers in a week or two. He voluntarily offered to write me a rain check for the sale price, since the coupon, when it arrived, would be valid for several more weeks.

Over the next few weeks, I checked back, but never saw any more flyers in the store. Finally, this past Monday, I returned to the customer service desk and asked whether any more of those particular flyers had come in yet. I was told that the new frozen foods flyers had already arrived, but those were not the ones containing the coupon. It appeared that that flyer had not been replenished.

After I returned home and reviewed my copy of the flyer, I decided to call Publix Consumer Relations and see if they could offer me any assistance in determining whether there were any more copies available. I explained the situation to the representative handling the call, and she took my name and number and told me that she would look into it. I regret that I did not note her name, but she was very gracious and professional.

She was very efficient, too, because I received a message the very next day from Mr. xxx, the manager of my local Publix store. He stated that he had located one copy of the flyer in question, and was attempting to track down more copies from other locations. He left his name and number, asked me to call him if I had any questions, and assured me that he would see that I was informed when and if the other copies became available.

The next day I received a follow-up phone call from xxx at the local Publix. He verified that he had one copy of the flyer in hand, and stated that Mr. xxx had succeeded in locating a shipment of the flyers, which were being sent in from the Florida office and should be in the store the next day. He asked how many I needed, and said that I could come in the next day to pick them up.

I have been extremely impressed with the prompt and exemplary handling of this situation. My inquiry was immediately addressed, and all parties involved went above and beyond what might be considered routine customer service to provide outstanding assistance. The location of the extra flyers and the delivery of those flyers to my local store was an extraordinary courtesy.

This experience only serves to reinforce my positive impression of the level of service and courtesy I have experienced with my local Publix store. In previous interactions with the front desk staff, whether it be over a sale price, a returned item, or a rain check, I have always been met with competence and a sincere willingness to solve the issue at hand.

I write this letter to commend your employees on a good job well done, and to express my appreciation for a company where such a high quality of customer service is valued.

There are some things that money can’t buy. Publix has cemented its good reputation in my mind, and I will continue both to shop there and to recommend it to my family and friends.

Sincerely,



Rose Focht

Consumer rants and raves

And a word spoken in due season, how good is it!

I believe very firmly in speaking one's mind. (Well, aside from the convention of social repression where you don't blurt out your every thought. There are times when I'm a firm believer in the value of keeping your mouth shut.) So when something comes to my attention which demands address, I generally go about addressing it.

If I have a problem with a business or a product, I will take that problem to someone who should be informed, and who might be able to ameliorate the circumstance. I have generally had very good results with this course of action, as most companies have great PR standards and are sensible enough to realise the incalculable value of a satisfied customer.

By the same token, I want to make sure that I am properly acknowledging the brilliant success of Good Business, so I've long made it my habit to point out and commend instances of excellence. This is almost more important to me than the complaints department, and though not so personally lucrative (a concern/complaint about a product/person/situation usually nets me a free replacement/coupon/gift card by way of apology/please-don't-ditch-our-business), it's very emotionally gratifying.

I've read that humans tend to express negative feedback and positive feedback in a ratio of nine to one, and I'm not surprised by that statistic. From working in operations, one of the more thankless lines of duty, I've learned that people don't tend to express the good (mostly because it drops below their radar screen) but they will express the bad. (For instance, you would never get an email gushing about how well the toilets are working today and thanking you for all your hard work on the keeping-toilets-running front, but you sure as anything will get a lot of feedback if one of the toilets isn't working.)

So, to counteract this worldwide conspiracy of negativity, I've made a point to follow through with my opinions, both bad and good. I've always been an avid letter-writer, and the results have usually been satisfactory. And my latest resolve is to post these letters as occasion merits, for two purposes: to punish the evildoer, and to reward the good.

It's really just an expansion of the word-of-mouth principle, where a good reputation is priceless. If something is mishandled, and the situation is not satisfactorily resolved, then I need to carry through with my threat to discredit the foolish, short-sighted, penny-wise-pound-foolish manager who is unwilling to concede the point in order to retain a satisfied customer. And when something is handled exceptionally well, then I want to spread the word so that others can enjoy the same quality of service and satisfaction. Of course, there is no ulterior motive in publishing my experiences, and you may rest assured that I am not getting paid by any product or company to badmouth or compliment. All thoughts and opinions are expressly my own, independently arrived at, etc. etc.