Hey Johnny..... I'm Back!

Please don't tell me you didn't miss my comments, ramblings and disgust at the world in general.

It's been crazy.... yeah, yeah, it's crazy for all of us - that's what makes life so damn interesting. So, no, I'm not going to go on at great lengths about just how silly my life has gotten. I asked for it, I got it, I'll live with it and damn well love it!

Speaking of love. Hubby and I went to a post wedding, wedding reception on the weekend. You see, dear Tyler 'the trying with every bone in his body to be a landscaper' got hitched back in November. Alison (his long time girlfriend and live in) and Ty ran off to Mexico to do the deed. I guess someone ticked off the family and friends and therefore had to make it up - with of course, a stupidly expensive 'wedding reception' back in Canada.

Don't get me wrong - it was a very nice event. Well done kids! Now what the heck were you smoking that made you want to part with your hard earned doe to party with the crew of demented friends you have? (yes us included)
I just don't know why they bothered...... another trip to Mexico would have made me happier for them.

I also got even with Staples last week. Yes I did! Well sort of. I'm still stinging a bit about 'the man' and his 'I just don't give a sweet shit about you chicky' attitude.

Here's my update. I go into Staples, yes, the one in Kanata. I need printer cartridges. What can go wrong? I pick up two, because the printer we have sucks ink back. Get them back, go to install and damn it all to hell.... wrong cartridge. The box says it's the right one... There is no arguing with printers - if the cartridge doesn't fit, there is no making it fit. So, back I go.

Oh, but wait, I've forgotten something. Back to the first visit. I get my cartridges, the one the book says I need, go to the cash. The cartridges are $24.99 each. I pay for them and a few other things. The bill seems high, but I pay it.

Now, just as another aside.... a good friend says she always checks her bills because there are always errors. So, I've gotten in the habit and consequently, I'm saving myself a few bucks a week.

So, I check my bill. Well, I'll be damned. I've been charged an extra $20 bucks for the cartridges. I go over to the section, find a nice looking gentleman and ask him about the price difference. Without hesitation he says - come with me. I ask why, he says, 'we owe you some money and I'm going to make sure you get it back.' I get a refund, without having to beg, run in circles or play dead.

Okay, now stay with me.... I've just returned to exchange the cartridges.... no one around to help me. The cashiers watch me walk in with distaste and disgust. Still I get the right ones this time and head to the cash. I explain my plight to the refund girl... she looks at me skeptically and says... 'oh, okay'.

She does the exchange, which btw mean $s coming back to me, my new ones are $18.45 each. Along the way to the cash though, I pick up a $10 item. I figure I owe her money. She however says 'I need your card, your debit card, the one you paid with.... huffffff'. I dig it out, she issues the refund.... yeah baby.

I'm in shock. I exit the store and only when I'm clear, do I check my bill. Well, in all of her huff and puff, she didn't look below the top receipt of 4 stapled together and see what they were all about. Oh no, instead, she works with the top reciept which was for the initial purchase of the the over charged cartridges.

The rest is history. I will never win the battle of Staples.... but I may avoid sticking them in my finger yet.

Have a wonderful Hot Cherry Day. I'll try to get back in touch with you this week.... I have so many stories saved up - it ain't funny!

Hey anyone going to see Larry the Cable Guy? I want to know about this guy... any givers?

I love you!

Well, maybe 'love' is going a bit far..... I so appreciate you! Better? This story has to do with tires, believe it or not.

Mamma got a new set of boots for her truck today. I think the auto manufactures and the tire makers got together and decided that they would just play with all of us who drive trucks. Almost every year a new size of truck tire hits the market. Consequently, what happens is this; the tires that I need to fit my truck are always hard to get and each year they get more expensive. Thankfully getting new tires is only something I need to do once every two years.

As you might have guessed, this was the year. When spending a heap of money on rubbers, one owes it to themselves to shop around. Prices can vary as much as $50 per tire, multiply that by 4 you it means you could get stung. So, shop around is what I did. I made phone call after phone call. As it turned out, the tires I needed were very hard to find and to top it off, there were very few alternatives. Finally I found a 'friend' in JP.

JP owns JP Tire Service in Stittsville Ontario, a 'Tirecraft' franchise. I met JP through a phone call, he looked up the tires for me, checked an order status, gave me a price much less than the competition and told me they would be in by the end of the week. Of course, I couldn't say 'yeah, go ahead' on the spot.... I'm not that easy.

Instead I place a call to hubby. When I couldn't get in touch with him I call my very dear and stylin' friend Paul. 'Hey' I say, 'Need some advice got a moment?' Being the helpful one he always is, he listened to my story. 'You see, I called everywhere looking for tires for my truck, it's going to snow soon eh - so I find them at Tirecraft in Stittsville - cheaper than anywhere else, what do you think?' Right about now he is thinking... duhhhh and replies 'yeah, so what's the question?' 'Well, I was thinking, do I really need to change all four or can I go with two?' Paul asks (you can just see him rolling his eyes), 'how much tread is left, do you need to change them?' 'Well it's like this' I say 'there's about 1/4 inch left', Paul 'to the wear bars?' Me 'what bars?' 'Never mind' says Paul. 'Oh hold on' I say 'I drive a 4X4 to be safe, in snow and on bad roads - why am I going to skimp on safety and only put on two new tires when I need four?' Paul, 'I don't know, why?' Me, 'Okay, I got the point, see ya soon and thanks.'

So, I call JP back, put the tires on order. He says 'could be two days, could be three weeks' I have visions of banks of slippery snow and my beauty truck in the ditch. Two days later, JP calls to tell me my tires are in.

This morning was the day, in for my new boots. What a pleasant experience. JP turns out to be just as friendly and easy going in person as he is on the phone. His 'guys' say good morning and take my keys to put the truck in the shop. They are all polite, friendly and chatty. Wow, I was impressed, still am. I was in and out, bill paid in 40 minutes. Tell me where else you can go and change, balance and install 4 big truck tires in that amount of time.

So kudos today out to JP Tire Sales / Tirecraft in Stittsville. If you need tires, go see these folks. I am not sure if all the Tirecraft stores are the same, but if they are a fraction of what I experienced today, you can't go wrong.

As for lessons learned - it doesn't take much to make a customer happy and get them talking about you. It cost this company nothing more for this type of advertising. Why then, can retail stores not do the same?

If you know of somewhere that excels in customer service, share it with us. On the same note, if some place is revolting, we want to hear about that too.

Oh, and just in case you are thinking that this year, we won't have any snow to worry about - here's a reminder of last year - you might want to consider your options before this happens!

Have yourself a wonderful Cherry Day!

Skype to it!

Okay, yeah - the title could have been better - sorry for that.
Skype - have you heard? Repeat with me, no charge calling to any landline or cell phone until the end of the year, throughout North America. No Charge! Not a penny. No, you don't need to call another computer, call anyone, anywhere.

Now the normal excuses why you are not using it - believe me, I tried them all. #1 I do not have high-speed. Got me there, sorry you need high-speed. #2 The quality of the call sucks. No, in fact the quality is far superior to our crappy copper landlines and always on and always with service, which my cell phone is not. #3 There is always an echo or delay. No, not at all. The clarity of the call though is alarming, which I believe throws folks off. #4 I will have to pay something. Nope, not until the end of the year. #5 My calls will be listened to. No again. Security is actually higher over fiber then over the airwaves of wireless. So unless you are using wireless internet, chances are very good, you are very secure.

No need to listen to me on this one. Check them out for yourself. I can tell you that I am now making my long distant calls using this service and loving it.

Once the price packaging comes into effect in January I may be looking for an alternative. Currently I'm checking out Vonage. Yet another VoIP (voice over internet protocol - aka voice phone service using the internet) product available to consumers. I can't say I've used Vonage, but I do know folks who do and they really like it.

Vonage is working to make it easy to use their service anywhere, any time. They have just released the 'Vonage V-phone'. This is basically a phone that fits on a key chain. A pre-loaded memory stick which turns any computer into your own personal Vonage phone. The 'stick' even comes with head phones... yep, all in this tiny little gizmo. The unlimited Vonage package will run you $39.95 CND per month, with no extra charges - calls to Europe, US and across Canada. The V-phone has a one time charge of $29.95. With all internet phone services, the call quality is superior to most phone lines and the cost is well below that of standard phone companies.

Why am I on to alternatives to our current phone services. Simple. What we use today is a poor excuse on all fronts. Service is horrendous - if I have to listen to 'Emily' give me the run around and stall one more time when I call Bell Canada for a simply query, I'm gonna reach out and touch her. Cost, cost, cost. I run two phone lines, one is a seldom used fax line. We don't 'get high-speed internet out in these parts - so I can't take advantage of their 'cost saving bundles' either. Cell service... what cell service. If you stand in the exact perfect position in my office, your phone will ring, otherwise, no such luck. If you drive by and see my wandering around the yard or in the horse pasture looking like I'm going to be calling the aliens, don't worry, that's just me trying to find signal. Did I mention cost..... in the vicinity of $80 per month, with under $5 in long distance.

Oh and on the topic of quality of service. Hahahahaha! We were told a year ago, 'that's it'. Apparently we used up the last pair of lines on our road. This after my neighbor was being charged for my calls and me his, oh and the return to the party line. On a wet day the crackle and pop is so bad you cannot carry on a conversation. (thank goodness for Skype which I now use instead of the landline on bad days) Did I mention the internet. High speed... heck, there were days we were luck to hit 14,4 very sad. So we switched over to wireless high-speed with Storm internet. It costs a bit more per month, but hey, I get VoIP now too.

Yes, I am sick and tired of getting the run around and paying huge dollars for poor service. As consumers in Canada we have always been 'stuck' having to go with our one regional phone company. There has never been competition. Now, with high-speed and wireless internet the phone company is not even close to being a good deal.

You would have thought that this would have prompted them to upgrade services and standards. No, wrong again.

You owe it to yourself to check out the alternatives. Including VoIP phones and wireless high-speed.

I have one or two other observations/questions maybe you all can help me understand (nothing to do with this entry) - Why do the trashiest brides wear white and celebrate it not giving it a second though, while far more decent and reserved brides fret that they 'are not good enough' to wear it?

Is Jim Cuddy better on his own, or with Blue Rodeo, or do we care?

Have a wonderful Cherry week! Not sure what we will be on about tomorrow - tune in to find out.

All tied up

My day actually started off with a left over from last night. Little did I know that it was going to happen this way.

It all began when for some reason (step in technical email server answer person to explain this to me) I managed to spam myself. That's correct - I sent out a couple of emails, cc'd myself on them so I'd have a record. At the point when I made the call to tech support for my email, I was downloading a new copy of the email(s) every 3 minutes, for a total of 30 emails. Someone had to make it stop.

I'd tried everything within my scope. I was headed to my webmail to see if I could gain access to the mail server. (let me clarify, the spam email was through my personal email, no one in-house could help me To log into my webmail, I would need my email password.... yeah right. After I tried multiple combinations, aka guesses, I gave up and called my ISP.

I think they were a bit baffled too, but made a couple of suggestions on how to fix it. #1 reset the password so that I could have access and #2 purge the email accounts. I could see no other solution - so we did both. What I was not told was a change in password would mean that I would not be able to log on to my network.

I worked away for another couple of hours, without problems and with the spam email stopped. I shut down and called it a night. Happy of course that I had done something to solve my IT problem.

Little did I know. This morning I went to check email and launch a browser...nothing. I waited until I knew someone would be answering the phones in support at my ISP and called. Lucky for me, I ended up with 'Gary'. Little did Gary know that he would end up with me at 7:30am.

The connections were checked and sure enough I had signal into my tower (Oh, I neglected to mention, my ISP is 'Storm Internet' - we are outside of any major area so we utilize high-speed wireless) and it should be working. Then I mentioned my problems of the night before.

Gary had the solution, 'did you change your password in you router?' Of course I didn't, the chap the night before didn't tell me I would need to do that. I was informed that I would have to do that first and then everything would work. My next question, you got it - How?

Now let me start by saying Storm Internet does not 'do' routers. They provide me with signal, what I do with it and how I split it up is my doing. Gary however, was willing to help. You see, I could not remember the password for the router either.

45 minutes later, Gary had me connected again. (I've now written my password down in three different locations, perhaps though, I should write down the locations of the passwords as I'm likely to forget if I ever need them again) I did have to call him back one more time to fix a small bug with one of my email accounts, but that took nano seconds in comparison

The point of all this. Gary and Storm Internet did not have to help me out with the router password. However, by doing so, they helped to get me back online. I am therefore eternally grateful and very, very happy. So much so that I'm sharing my story with you now.

Had Gary and Storm Internet towed the line and sent me on my way to figure out things on my own, I wouldn't be writing this now. When I did get back online though, you can bet that I would have a scathing report to share with you.

Bottom line - what did it cost my ISP to help me out? It's not as if I call for support often, once every 6 months, maybe. What does it cost services, stores etc. when they won't help out or at least attempt to share some knowledge?

Here's the numbers. On average, if a person has a favorable experience, they are likely to tell one other person (now some folks like me like to share), but, if a person has a frustrating or bad experience, they are likely to tell ten (10) people. In this case, that is a very bad thing!

Advertising is expensive and can be hit and miss, with a undetermined ROI. Word of mouth, referral and buzz marketing however, costs very little and has a tremendous return on investment.

Now, I'd like someone to tell me why 'retail' doesn't get this.

So to Gary - tech guy at Storm Internet - Kudos to you. I sincerely appreciate your help.


Have a wonderful day. As always, feel free to share you thoughts, finds, reviews, kudos and gripes with all of us.

Return of the White Shirt

As promised, a follow up on my 'white shirt return'. Sarah Goyer, store manager of Winners at 3657 Richmond Road, Ottawa, Ontario - Way to go girl - you have some excellent people on staff at your store.

I called yesterday and spoke to Erica, who told me 'no problem' and to ask to see Jennifer when I arrived with the shirt. When I went into the store, I spoke to Jennifer, who was aware that I was coming in.

In no time flat I was wandering through the store, looking for a replacement shirt. No problems, no hassles, no grumpy managers threatening to refuse to take the shirt back.
The result - one happy shopper.

If you are in the Ottawa area - stop into this Winners location and say hi to the girls - tell them Hot Cherry Review sent you!