2010 July

	2010, JULY

July 30

A little something from the old mailbag:

JC Penney Optical.com

To Whom It May Concern:

If I ever get the glasses I ordered from the local JC Penney, I doubt very much that I will be asked for my opinion of the experience. But that will not prevent me from sharing.

I went into the JC Penney store in West Covina, CA on a Friday to order new glasses. I was initially told that I could not get progressive lenses in Transitions with my prescription because my correction (a 3.25 cylinder) was too strong. When I pointed out that I had had no such problem with the pair I bought at Sears, which uses the same lab as Penney’s, the manager was nonplussed. He phoned the lab and learned that it could be done, but Express service would not be available.

It took a week. A week and $271, which was a good deal more than I had expected, but that’s another story. At any rate, I was pleased when Archie called the following Friday and I rushed over to pick them up. My pleasure lasted until I put them on.

Remember the cylinder? It so confused Archie that he forgot to put it in the order. Looking through glasses with one eye properly corrected and the other off by 3 diopters is an interesting experience—you should try it.

Archie was properly apologetic and rushed to the computer to enter the correct prescription. I went home and Archie went on vacation. I called periodically (I never quite trust people who say they will call me when my order arrives) over the next week and a half. Finally on Monday Amanda told me the lab said the glasses “had been shipped,” but when I pressed her she admitted that there were no actual records and “they have been shipped” essentially means nobody could find them lying around in the lab so they must be somewhere else, i.e. “shipped.”

On Tuesday Archie returned from vacation. He called your lab in New Jersey and then informed me that my glasses would be ready in 48 hours. That is, they would be finished in 48 hours, and then shipped to California. Now you and I both know that from the time you take the blanks out of the drawer to the time you fit the lenses in the frame and wipe them with your tee shirt is on the order of 30 minutes. So what Archie was telling me is that after your people screwed up initially, nobody did anything for the next 11 days.

I’m still waiting. In another day or so I will either have new glasses or a refund. In either case, I’m sorry Penney’s doesn’t have a feedback form. Sorry, but not deterred.

Sincerely yours,

EPILOG:

The next Friday Archie called to say the glasses had not arrived but would POSITIVELY be here Monday. When I told them he could keep them, he offered me 40% off, which I accepted. On Monday (Archie’s day off) Amanda called and said “Your lenses have come in.”

“Lenses?” I said. “What about the frames?”

“Oh, did you order frames, too?”

July 21

Sorry I'm late: I've been otherwise occupied.

Why do they sell fruit by the pound? It might make sense for something huge, like watermelon, that you don’t eat all at once. But when you buy plums, whether they are big or small, you eat one plum. The unit of interest is the piece, not the pound, and it seems to me the unit of commerce ought to be the same.

Groceries do this for some things, but not in any logical way, or even with any consistency. Sometimes you buy bell peppers by the piece, sometimes by the pound. Likewise with cucumbers, although neither of them is ever consumed by the piece. Lemons? You may use a whole lemon, or a half, but what recipe calls for a pound of lemons? Lemons are kind of a special case though, because of recipes. “Juice of 1/2 lemon” is pretty meaningless: I’ve seen lemons that look like yellow walnuts and lemons that could be mistaken for grapefruits. I prefer recipes that call for a specific volume of juice, but that won’t help the grocer. I guess he sells those by the pound by default.

On the other hand, you can buy lettuce by the head, same price regardless of size, when pricing by weight would make a lot more sense.

Cereal companies make a big point of selling by weight and not by volume. It says so in big bright letters on the box, so you won’t think you’re being ripped off when you open the box and find it half empty. Wouldn’t it make more sense to know what you were paying per bowl? Who cares how much your Cheerios weigh?

Grapes go for so much a pound, but nobody eats a pound of grapes. Nobody eats a specific number of grapes either, though, and I guess selling them by the grape would get a bit unwieldy.

July 8: The Unformation Age

I lost a phone number the other day, but I remembered the person’s address, so I went online and entered the address in the “reverse directory.” It’s the first time I’ve tried this, so I was pretty jazzed when it came up with the right name and gave me a number. But the number turned out to be not in service.

As I thought about it, I realized that this is pretty common. The technopundits tell us every day that the World Wide Web has put all the information in the universe at our fingertips. It’s the Information Age, right? Except that there is no way to determine (short of dialing the number) whether the information is accurate. And frequently, what I get from the Web is inf-err-mation.

I waited two months for a book from Amazon.com before they finally admitted that they couldn’t find it. And Amazon does this often enough that I wasn’t surprised. They are happy to take your order, but reality does not necessarily accord with their “in stock” status.

I was looking for a tool on the manufacturer’s website after reading rave reviews. The tool was listed on the site, but only when ordering did I find out that it was unavailable. Seems all the four-star reviews were wrong, or biased, or fictional. They were certainly no more accurate than the price quoted by the reviewers, which varied by as much as 50%. The tool had to be taken off the market and redesigned because it performed so badly. Maybe this information was out there, too, but I never saw it.

The internet is pretty cool, and can be incredibly useful. But it seems to me I managed without it before. I’m beginning to wonder if getting the answer easily is worth it if it’s the wrong answer 10% of the time.

July 3: Home Depot. You can do it. We can help.

In the interest of honesty in advertising, they have changed their slogan to: “Home Depot: You can do it. We can’t help. Well, maybe we could, but we’re not allowed to.” I was in the store the other day, asking about something—I think it was how to anchor a post to concrete—when the Home Depot “associate” informed me that he was prohibited by company policy from actually offering advice.

Probably just as well; it’s unlikely than anyone knows any more than I do about, well, anything. Once upon a time, there were old guys working there who had some actual experience and knew how to do stuff. Now it’s all teenagers who couldn’t get hired at McDonald’s. “Where can I find tension pins?” “Uh, what do you use ‘em for?”

All of which is by way of saying I am now a do-it-yourselfer again. Not exactly by choice. My balcony is about to devolve into sawdust by dry rot so I called three contractors recommended by neighbors. One came out, looked the job over, sent me a bid, and then went on vacation. One came out, wanted to do his own baroque design on my decidedly un-baroque house (pot-bellied wrought iron was the best of it), and never submitted a bid. The third took two weeks to answer my call, then came out and discussed possibilities, but I never heard from him again. So when I got the Homeowners’ Association approval, I called the first guy, but he doesn’t answer his cell phone (or his emails) while on vacation.

The economy must be in better shape than I thought.

So I started tearing off the damaged parts myself. The damage seems to be not as bad as I thought, so I think I can handle this. As soon as I recover from the injury. Amazing how much damage a hammer can do when it falls off an 8-foot ladder onto your foot.

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect--well, yes, come to think of it, I guess they do.

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