July 23, 2008

• Yeah, obviously, that's not how that was supposed to look. Clearly the nickel allergy is affecting my something brain fingers type.
• Unless your sensitivity to nickel causes you to secrete caustic metal-destroying acid from your pores, I don't see how you could have caused this.
• That's what I'm thinking. Although the paint is peeling from where the frames touch my skin -- the inside of the nose bridge and where the ear pieces rest against my head.
• You had me at "from Sears". Frames are supposed to last one hell of a lot longer than a month. Take them back and ask for a refund. If they refuse, escalate it. And by this I mean something involving gasoline or low-grade explosives. The only thing worse than dealing with a Sears employee is dealing with a Sears manager.
• Eyeglasses Stores are for Suckers Sounds like they are a cheap piece of crap to me. Do you know what country they were manufactured in? Based on a previous experience I had with Sears, I would complain, complain, complain..., and don't let them sucker you into paying for a new frame. What was the outcome of today's visit? Did they refuse to replace the frame the second time around?
• Don't get me started on Sears.
• I mean, really.
• Ralph, you are correct! I had an experience with Sears several years back involving a faulty CD player. I started with the sales associate, then the department supervisor, and finally I asked for the store manager (who was a complete ass - - until I started scripting a fictitious story on-the-fly that got him in a panic). What made all the difference in my case was calling Sears Headquarters directly. They actually listened to me and rectified the situation promptly.
• Yeah, I know. But I don't have vision insurance, and I have a way complicated prescription, and I really just wanted to try them on first. And Sears was cheaper than LensCrafters. The first time I took them back, the lady was great. She swapped the frames out, no questions asked, and said to bring them back if the same thing happened again, and they'd give me a different pair for free. So instead of engaging with Asshole Guy right off the bat, I just left and figured I'd first of all see if he might actually be telling the truth, and second of all call every day until the nice lady answers the phone, and then go back and see her.
• I used to manage a department at Sears. You don't even need to go to HQ, usually just the store manager.
• Umm, Hi, Lara!
• Speaking from the POV of the metals industry, the problem is with the powder coat, and I'm not surprised the second identical pair did the same thing, as the frames were probably all powder coated in the same batch. I'd take them back and speak to a manager and ask them to put your lenses in a non-powder coated set of frames. Preferably ones that are just as cute!
• And at no charge, of course.
• No prisms @ Zenni. :-(.
• I almost always find the POV of the metals industry to be a fascinating read.
• Thanks, Koko -- it didn't surprise me either. Sadly, this being Sears and a second-tier Sears at that, I pretty much got the one attractive pair of glasses they had. :)
• Ralph, Sears totally sucks. That's why I don't work there anymore. But we used to have customers that would bring things back they'd been using for 30 years. We'd refuse to replace them, and the store manager would always refund or replace. This was 3 different store managers, so I kinda figure it was more a company policy. We were taught that a customer was worth tens of thousands of dollars over the lifetime of his or her relationship with the company, and that refunding a few hundred was nothing compared to that. The place has changed a lot since I worked there, so I don't know if that still holds, but I still say go to the store manager.
• Curious George: Are my glasses cheap pieces of crap, or is it just me? So one of the following is a cheap piece of crap: your glasses, or you. Based on your sweet gazelle of a husband, I will have to cast my vote for the glasses.
• My (off topic) Sears story: When I was a noob, I needed to buy my very first fridge. And I was not about to settle for just any fridge, I wanted the American Dream: A fridge with an icebox that made ice automatically. I kid you not. I was dead serious about this. Automated ice. No ice trays. I was ready. It was my time. Auto ice! Nirvana! At Sears, I found the model I wanted. Tall, lean, freezer on top, auto icemaker, not the cheapest model on sale, but close. Fit my budget, fit my dream. I went to buy it. Sales manager lady took my credit card, and suggested an extended service warranty. I politely declined. She then renewed her suggestion, in stronger terms. I pointed out that there was no way on god's green earth that she was going to get me to agree to an extended service warranty, and that if she persisted in suggesting such, she would force me to be rude in my next declination. She persisted. She said that auto ice makers are fraught with problems, that they leak and would ruin my flooring, that they routinely break and are very pricey to service, and that ice itself is an instrument of Satan. She literally refused to sell me the unit unless I took a service agreement. As a favor to me. I took my credit card back, walked out the door, and have never again entered a Sears store. End of tale.
• No allergy is going to make paint flake. Maybe your skin would flake if you have an allergy, but not the glasses.
• Well done Ralph. I never get the extended service warranty. I figure: I don't bother to follow up on them + I won't find the paperwork/receipt + by them a new better version will be out + the reason they sell them is because they profit from it (which means I lose) + I think I treat things better than the average user (so I am paying for other people's damages) + if the thing is so likely to go wrong I shouldn't buy it in the first place. Generally, asking them "so you mean this is so badly made it's going to fail a year from now?" discourages them from re-offering it, but it still took me an hour to decline all the extras they wanted to sell me on the last car I bought. Monkeyfilter: caustic metal-destroying acid Monkeyfilter: worth tens of thousands of dollars Monkeyfilter: fraught with problems
• Back when "titanium" powerbooks were all the rage, they had a similar problem with peeling finish. And one of the blame-the-victim games that got played was "caustic, metal-destroying acid from the pores". Having used two identical models regularly for 6 years, one of which has the problem and one of which does not, I would tend to think it's not something I'm oozing. LensCrafters -is- Sears Optical so maybe you can just go to an LC and get the problem taken care of there? When Sunglass Hut (also a part of the Luxottica empire) sold me some actual poop carefully crafted into the shape of a pair of sunglasses a while ago, I ended up doing the repair->replace->refund dance at the local LC.
• Yeah, talk to the nice lady first--that sounds like the easiest, least hassle way to go. If you really want to get all up in their face, be my guest. Sometimes you have to take it all the way to Sears headquarters. Used to be Sears had a great customer reputation, al la Lara, but now they're for crap. Over the years I've bought several appliances from Sears, simply because Kenmore was such a great brand and the customer service was good. Not again. The salesman was a butt with his insistence last time that we buy the extended warranty, but Mr BH flat told him, it's no warranty, or no commission--your choice. He shut his pie hole pretty fast. I've noticed since they've moved into the mall and decided to upscale, lots of things have gone downhill--from customer service to quality on 'hard goods' like the appliances. If you do get them to take care of the situation, you might want to go back and stick it to the little male asshole that gave you such grief. I hate twits like that. They're the type I make complaints about. (I called the phone company the other day to tell them their repair dude was a seriously awesome fella that took several hours but FIXED a problem that had been cutting out our service intermittently for nearly 18 months. The other idjuts couldn't be bothered to do it right.)
• Second Koko's observation that the replacement pair was likely from the same botched batch. The nickel excuse is just BS and Asshole Guy knows it. I bought a pair of glasses at the local Sears a couple of months ago and I'm quite happy with them, particularly since the $250 price was $400 less than the quote I received from the optometrist who did my eye exam. The lady who sold them to me was very nice and seemed quite competent. So yeah, try to talk to the nice lady again but if that fails, unleash holy hell on the once proud company, further up the food chain, being sure to mention Asshole Guy and his obvious bullshit.
• Speaking from the POV of the metals industry... Pfft. Dork.
• So, two other things about Sears. The Service department is actually owned by a different company. And also, the stupid Service Agreements are such a racket. As a sales person, if you don't sell a certain percentage of those, you're out the door. And every week, the lowest performers on Service Agreements are publicly shamed at sales meetings. I hated having to sell them. I wanted to eat, though. I wasn't pushy and still managed to usually make my quotas. But cut the poor people a little slack unless they're being a total asshole about it. Chances are, they don't want to ask you about it any more than you want to be asked. Better to vote with your dollar not to support stores that force their employees to sell those or be out the door, IMO.
• Vendor's insistence on hawking expensive, useless warranties merely pushes more of us to buy things off the web. I used to peruse the computers at Fry's quite a bit, until I accompanied a friend on a buying expedition. The salesman wanted to sell us a $100 plan on a $700 laptop...ridiculous. He pushed it so hard that he almost scotched the sale. Now I just use Fry's as "showroom", and save purchases for the web.
• As a sales person, if you don't sell a certain percentage of those, you're out the door. I wonder if that explains my Monday. I bought us a Wii on Monday, had to call around to about six or seven stores until I found a Toys R Us nearby that had one in stock. When the baby finished his nap, I threw him in the car and bee-lined it out there. Bought the last Wii they had. The woman asked me if I wanted to drop forty more bucks on an extended store warranty. I've read Consumer Reports about that, so I said no thanks. She gave me this really intense look. "You know, you can only return Wiis for exchange here, so if anything's wrong with it, you can only trade it for another one, and that's only if we have one in stock!!11!" "There's no manufacturer's warranty?" I asked. "Well, yeah, but...you have to pay to ship it to them!!!!111!1!" "Not forty bucks, though, so no thanks." She gave me a look like she was having the shittiest day of her life and handed me my Wii in a bag with a ripped handle.
• You threw him in the car? Good thing hbs's glasses are borked so she couldn't see you do that.
• Turns out he's really bouncy. And kind of a crybaby.
• ...and handed me my Wii in a bag with a ripped handle. More stories should end like that.
• Well, he's gotten to the point where he can walk home if he falls out of the car.
• At least you could buy the poor kid some roller skates. Get the ones with the extended warranty, in case the wheels don't go around anymore.
• I worked at Sears for a time, too, only in the softlines side. If that's anything to go by, what you guys are describing is a natural backlash against a returns policy that was far too liberal for far too long. It was a regular occurrence for mothers to bring in their child's entire wardribe every time it was outgrown - including items with labels for brands we never sold - and exchange it for one in a larger size, or for cash. We were never allowed to put up the slightest question or resistance. we got a bonus for selling Playstation games, but we knew with a 90% certainty that the bonus would be deducted from a future paycheck, because a game that didn't get returned for a full refund within the month was a rare occurrence indeed. Again, any hint of making returns the slightest bit difficult for the customer would get you the sharp end of the manager's tongue. I don;t shop there anymore, either, but it's mostly because of shitty merchandise at an inflated price, and knowing that they treat their ground-level employees like crap.
• Check to see if you have a See Eyewear anywhere nearby. My last pair of glasses came from See, and they've held up really well for the last 4 years. Bums me out that I am in the market for a new pair soon but don't have a See within driving distance since my last move. It is nice to see what you get when you shop out from under the oppressive shadow of the Luxoticca umbrella. Even this long after buying them people still comment positively on my frames (and my wife's cute little black frames as well). now the people who comment on my wife's cute little frame, that's a different matter...
• I had a guy bring back a camping potty (used). We just gave him the money. I also had a guy bring back a router he'd bought in 1969. He'd left it in his garage, in the box, for over 30 years. When he took it out, all the heating and freezing had damaged the motor. He got his money back. It got to the point where we joked people could fish an old couch out of a lake and bring it in, and we'd give them the money.
• Someone help me fish this couch out of the lake.
• Hey, I have that old couch! What about online? I read the comments from an AskMe thread over on the Blue (Green) and since so many were positive, I decided to get mine there. No complaints here, and nearly identical frames that I tried out from Pearl Vision. Would have cost me $700 there, cost me $60 online. For that amount, you can afford a couple pairs. Not to bad for selection. Go to AskMe, search eyeglasses.
• Yeah, I'm about ready to try that, BH, just for fun -- especially if I have one pair that I KNOW will work. I've just been kind of nervous about it because I have a kind of wonky prescription and lots of things look stupid on my face. Thanks for all the help, monkeys. I was home with the bouncing crybaby today (who is, in fact, taking a few stumbly steps here and there, and will be a year old on Sunday) and forgot to call to see if Nice Lady was back, but tomorrow, by God, they'll feel my wrath.
• Re: caustic body fluids causing damage to inanimate objects - I once had a (lowdown, scum sucking, POS loser) boyfriend who was seemingly bleaching my carpeting with his sweat and/or body oils. If he sat on the floor, the next day I would find the carpet bleached in the shape of his hand prints. And not just faded - bleached almost white. (When I moved out of that apartment, I used a crayon to color over the bleach spots and then prayed management wouldn't notice. Amazingly, it worked.) Years later, I figured it out: it had to have been the benzoyl peroxide in the zit cream he was putting on his face. He didn't wash it off his hands afterwards, I assume, and that must have been what was eating the carpet.
• lowdown, scum sucking, POS loser Fairywench: Perhaps it was the evil coming out? HBS: Well, I'm sorry to hear that TUM was such a pill--oh, wait, you're speaking of little Swamp Monster. Sorry. You go, girl. Good luck.
• I know you've all been chewing your nails to the quick worrying about this, so: Discovered Nice Lady has moved on to greener pastures, went to a different Sears, dealt with a much nicer guy. He gave me the same story about nickel allergy or acidic sweat or whatever, but the upshot was, the frames only had a 30-day warranty anyway. However, he said he could sell me the $20 extended warranty retroactively, and that would get me a new pair. I figured that was reasonable. And I picked out plastic frames this time. Also, I'm considering bottling my sweat for sale -- through Sears, of course -- as an eco-friendly paint stripper.
• Husk Musk? (youtube)
• Ms. Swamp! So nice to see you. Of course I am authorized to give you a free replacement pair of frames. But why not buy this worthless retroactive warranty so that I can earn commission! Seems like a win-win, right?
• Good for you, HBS. But I have to say that my experience with Sears has been nothing but positive over the years. Mind you, these were Canadian Searses, and I think they're a touch more upscale than the Yankee ones. And buying appliances at The Bay is teh suck, and buying appliances at Eaton's is no longer an option. And my glasses do most definitely not come from Sears. I've got a guy. Nice guy from Zanzibar, who always treated us right, just for the fun of haggling with my Dad. Buddy more than made enough money off of the ritzy suckers in the neighbourhood to make up for it. Mind you, I don't think he ever lost out on a deal, but Dad could cut him pretty close. What were we talking about?
• Yeah hooray for HBS woo! I recently got these glasses from a nice Jewish man right across the street from The Bay, and they are the Coolest Glasses Ever and are awesome and I love them and they have the clip-ons which are polarized and were expensive and I'm worth it.
• Not as cool as my bad-ass frames from these guys, which I had picked up for me in London after there being an attempt to severely dick me in Toronto, and then I had the frames lensed-up by my guy. Glasses good enough to make me give up on Mikli. Two years later, and I'm still getting compliments from strangers. Mother Renault just got herself some good ol' cat-eyes from them, too. We're both respectively ultra-pleased. Even if we couldn't afford the buffalo-horn jobbies. Which are totally sweet rides.
• My glasses being more or less these, except not sunglasses, and the frames being green. Green front, striped-green temples. Tres cool, if I do say so myself.
• OOooh! I like them, Koko. My new ones look very much like that, actually, only red. No clip-ons, though. And RTD, yeah, I know, but the 30-day warranty was long gone, and it was just not worth the pain in my ass to save $20.
• I recently got these Mikli glasses. Very happy with them, though I was a bit shocked at the price.
• At the rate you guys are talking in small text, I'm gonna need new glasses. *squints*
• Specky gets.
• Placed my order at 39dollarglasses this morning.
• Never found 'em, eh?
• My glasses turned up in the second trailer for the new Bond flick -- the sunglasses version I linked above. Dominic Greene is wearing them. I was impressed by my own vicarious coolness.
• I have some 39dollarglasses. They have plastic frames and they warped kind of quickly. Then #2 and his dad had a try at heating them in steam to reshape the plastic, but the steam took the anti-scratch coating off the lenses and left them all fuzzy on the inner edge of the lenses. However they fit great! I wear them when I play netball to save my $600 glasses from flying off my face and being stomped on, which has happened twice.
• Never found 'em, eh? Nope. But if there's anything my life has taught me, it's that replacing something that's missing is the quickest way to find it. And then I'll have the cheap ones as a backup.
• I got some purportedly "titanium" frames six or seven years ago for 80 or 90 euro. These things have been through the wars but can always be pressed back into shape. A car ran over them once (my son had grabbed the glasses from my face and thrown them into the road); the lenses smashed but the frame was just mangled and could be fixed with a pair of pliers. I still use these glasses for garden work, playing with the kids, running, painting and decorating, etc.
• What is is with kids grabbing the glasses off your face and flinging them?? Don't they know we need them to LIVE!!??