Cat!

Baby, our cat, is on her last legs, losing weight, with her kidneys slowly shutting down. She is approaching that "big sleep" after a 15-year run in which she outlasted three dogs and hundreds (conservatively speaking) of mice, chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits (and, I suspect, probably a deer or elk or two, I don't know), after having personally dispatched and, in most cases, eaten them. Galina and I love this animal, but there are times - such as right now - when she annoys the stuffing out of me.

This feline has developed an uncanny ability to meow continuously for upwards of... well, I really don't know, as I've not been able to stand it for more than a couple of minutes. Also, in the middle of the night, she will climb up on my bed and s-l-o-w-l-y make her way to just next to my head, where she will then softly put her paw on my cheek and flex her claws, ever so slightly. If I happen to be asleep when she does this and open my eyes, my field of vision is filled with cat, doing nothing but thinking about... something, probably musing about what alternatives are open to her now that her claws are resting on my face, which is pretty disconcerting.

Keeping the bedroom door closed doesn't help. It's not soundproof, either to her meowing or to the sound of her claws ripping away the veneer on the door. Of course, then there's that veneer...

So, that's why I have been up and about since 3:23 am. I should probably simply live with it and nap later in the day.

* * *In other news, the email is back, and my mind is easy about a number of files that arrived "in the interim," so to speak. For now, if I'm not going back to bed for a while, it seems like a good time to start a load of laundry and perhaps tidy up the kitchen.

Cheers...

Buy.com, where "clue" is out of stock...

Last Saturday, I took advantage of what looked like a super deal at Buy.com, a Verbatim 1 GB "Store 'n Go" U3 Smart USB drive for $70. I decided to pay an extra $5 for two-day shipping, and figured the item would go out on Monday and arrive on on Wednesday.

It didn't quite work out that way.

On Wednesday, after nothing showed up, I checked my account at Buy.com. It showed the status of my order as "Processing," where the other two possiblities are normally something like "Sent to warehouse" and "Shipped." Weird, I think. No indication that the item is out of stock, no emails telling me there's any kind of problem. I'm in limbo.

I found no customer service phone number on the site, so I sent them an email using their automated system. It was a simple query, asking what the deal was with my order still being in the processing stage. I got the following reply:

This is an automated response to your email to Buy.com Customer Support.

Thank you for emailing us. Your email will be read and answered within 10 hours OR your email will be escalated to our corporate headquarters for claims, refunds, and policy exceptions. Please allow one or two business days for us to process these kinds of requests.

We'll notify you by email once we've worked on your order.

We can also email you our phone number if you're in a hurry to reach us. We really appreciate your business.

Now, simply from a marketing perspective, why not simply commit to a response within 10 hours (if not sooner) and drop the malarkey about escalating email to HQ? If the latter is necessary, tell the customer about it in the response! Anyway, the following day, I sent the following message:

It's been nearly 18 hours since I got your email, and I've heard nothing. I have to tell you, I'm pretty disappointed in you people; I feel as if I'm being treated with complete indifference.

Not only have you not shipped my order (for which I paid a premium for you to deliver on a two-day basis), you haven't made any attempt to explain why. If I had known on Monday that, say, the item was out of stock, or had heard *anything* from you about a delay, I could have tried to get what I need from somewhere else. As it is, I'll be leaving on a business trip this weekend, without the hardware I need, thanks to your poor service.

If you cannot fulfill my order *today* and send the item *today* via overnight courier (at no additional cost to me), then please cancel my order and delete my account and personal information from your databases.

To which I received, in reply... you guessed it, the same boilerplate from the Buy.com "Customer Care Team." I fumed for a few minutes and then sent the following email:

Thank you for your automated response. We've been down this road before and it is most unsatisfying. Please do email me your phone number as I am in a hurry to reach you.

What did this get me? All together now... the same boilerplate response!

I learned later that a few years ago, that Buy.com actually charged customers $10 to talk to a customer service person, can you believe that? In fact, I also read enough tales of horror to make me want to distance myself from these clowns muy pronto. In my mind, I could see them sending me some other product and then washing their hands of me, as they had with others who later posted their stories on the Web.

So I go to the site, get to the page with my order on it - still "Processing" - and cancel the order. The response I read on the final screen of the procedure was chilling:

We'll email you within the next business day to let you know if your item has been cancelled.

Sure enough, my order's status now read "Cancellation requested." Apparently, it's somehow possible for the order to be released to the warehouse, packed, and shipped before anyone associated with the process can let 'em know that the order is cancelled!

At about this point, I'm figuring these people are doing everything at their facility by copying information from the screen and transcribing it to wax tablets using sharp sticks, and then using carrier pigeons to relay orders - and cancellation "requests" - to warehouses scattered over really long distances. Criminy! In any event, on Thursday, a little over 24 hours after I cancelled the order, I get the following, apparently in response to my "18 hour" message (as it's quoted in the email):

We apologize for the delay. We have submitted your cancellation request to our fulfillment center for approval. Please remember that this is a request only and your order still may ship while this request is being processed.

You will receive an email confirming or denying the cancellation request for this order within the next few business days. Thank you for your patience. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Frankly, I'm curious about this "approval" that's required from the fulfillment center. It implies my request could be refused. In any event, now I'm also wondering, are they responding to my cancellation at their site, or is this cancellation their way of saying they can't/won't fulfill the order? I figure it's the latter, so at least I have two "torpedos in the water" to blow my order away.

So what kicked off this rant? Well, among the emails that I didn't get to see during the extended outage at fastmail.fm was one that arrived yesterday evening, in which, nearly a day and a half after asking for their phone number, and almost as much time after cancelling the order, they send me the following:

Just a note to let you know we have not forgotten about your email and we are working on your situation. We will get back to you as quickly as possible. If your situation is urgent, please telephone us at 877-780-2464.

The way this is going, now I get this feeling that my order will not actually go away, so maybe my only real recourse is to call Amex and tell 'em not to accept a charge from these bozos.

Cheers...

P.S. As of a few minutes ago, the status of my order was still "Cancellation requested."