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Shopping

Saved from my own fecklessness

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This weekend the fates conspired to keep me from spending money.

A week or two ago, while running around town with a friend who was looking for a particular combination of furniture, I came across some dining room chairs that exactly fit the description of the fantasy chairs I imagined would go with the table I bought four years ago. My mother’s kind of Shakery looking chairs work fine with this table, but I’ve always believed that a set of wheatback chairs with wicker seats would be just the ticket. When I got the table, I thought it would be fairly easy to find such a thing, but no! Months and years have gone by, and I’ve never spotted exactly what I wanted.

Until I came across these. They looked much like the one in the picture here, only in a nice medium walnut finish, not painted black; and the design is a little more polished. Perfect: $315 apiece, marked down for a moving sale.

Ohhkay….six of those would come to $1,890, plus 8.3% government gouge equals $2,046. A bit stiff, especially since I’d drained my diddle-it-away savings to buy the sideboard I’ve also been craving for the past several years. Four of them would cost $1,362. And there was some degree of hurry: the store is moving to a part of town that’s a long way from where I live, into an upscale area way too rich for my blood. I hardly ever go there; with the cost of gas where it is, I’m unlikely to venture out in that direction, even to get something I really want. Besides, the sales guy indicated the chairs weren’t about to sit around his floor for long.

So I dropped by on Friday and asked if I could buy just one on approval, to see how it would look with the set. No problem. Schlep this home, and…

Yeah, it looked really, really gorgeous with the table: like they were made to go together. But…

But the dining room is separated from the family room by a step up: the dining room is a slightly sunken room, so you make one step down from the dining area into it. Satan and Proserpine, the previous homeowners, took out the infelicitous wrought-iron railing that further delineated the spaces, creating a broad open area where nothing interferes with the sight line. The family room is the nicest and prettiest room in the house. When I sit at my accustomed spot at the table, I can look across the table into this lovely room with its big fireplace, skylights, Arcadia door, and handsome, simple furniture. I really like enjoying the view of the most pleasant room in my home.

Well, the chair backs are high enough that when you sit at the table, what you see is not the room but the back of the chair across the table! Nice chairs, but not what I want to gaze at while I’m dining alone. My mother’s chairs are low enough that they don’t intrude.

Saved from diddling away $2050 on unnecessary furniture! Back to the store the chair went.

Onward to more unnecessary objects: At Pier One, I recently bought some new dishes, my old set being scratched up and very tired. They’re mostly bright yellow, with blue trim here and there. To go with them, I wanted a set of cobalt blue placemats.

Think anyone, anywhere carries cobalt blue or navy blue placemats?

N-o-o-o. Not a chance!!!!!

After driving from pillar to post in search of a mat to go with the dishes, I finally found the perfect thing at Sur la Table. They had five. I needed eight. The saleslady called the catalog to order me three more: no way. She now suggests I drive halfway across the city to their other store to pick up the other three mats. I decide not.

While I’m walking around The Great Indoors, a repository of some of the most hideous products of the School of Ugly Design available anywhere, it occurs to me that one doesn’t really need table mats. Why use a placemat on a table whose surface is made of reclaimed European warehouse flooring, two-inch-thick slabs of polymerized pine with layer after layer after layer of dark wax rubbed into it? The thing is impermeable! A little water or wine spilled on it will wipe right up.I have a perfectly fine table cloth that can be used for guests.Why do I need placemats at all?

I don’t. Do you?

One less thing to spend money on. One less thing to have to wash and iron and put away.

We have a lot of STUFF in our lives that we think we need because we’ve always had them and our parents always had them and so that must just be the way things are done. Do you find that’s so? What’s in your home that you don’t really need?

“We Value Your Business”: Reaching a person at a company that doesn’t want to be reached

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As we saw in yesterday’s encounter with Qwest, many companies—often those with a vested interest in customer service—do not want to deal with the unwashed masses with whom they are forced to do business. They make it as difficult as possible to reach a human being, because they don’t care about their customers and do not wish to waste time speaking with them.

There are several avenues to get their attention.

You can often get through to a live human by calling a phone number listed at Get Human. This useful site lists telephone numbers and strategies for getting past the punch-a-button maze.

Failing this, try googling the company’s name + “corporate headquarters.” This often will bring up a snail-mail address and a viable telephone number; sometimes a working e-mail also will appear. Invest in a stamp to send your comments or complaint by snail-mail. This was how I got an address for Steve Jobs, during the late, great MobileMe fiasco. I printed out my post, “An Open Letter to Steve Jobs,” and mailed it to Cupertino. Interestingly, an underling in Apple’s corporate offices telephoned me –several times! –to discuss the matter. Didn’t succeed in fixing things, but at least he pretended he cared, which was comforting.

Apple Computer
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA
408-996-1010

A search for Qwest’s corporate headquarters gives us this intelligence:

1801 California St.
Denver, CO 80202
For general inquiries: (303) 992-1400
or (800) 899-7780
Fax: (303) 896-8515
Customer Service

Investor Relations
(800) 567-7296
email:investor.relations@qwest.com

Qworst’s customer disservice link takes you to another infinite loop, wherein you have to register and reveal private information before you can wander through an off-putting maze in your attempt to get some help. However, in a past experience I learned you can reach a high-ranking P.R. officer by contacting investor relations. So, that’s where I sent a link to yesterday’s rant about the company’s execrable DSL customer service.

When you believe you’ve been treated unethically or actually cheated, think about what regulatory agencies and trade groups govern the offending corporation. For example, banks and credit unions are regulated by a national banking commission. Insurance companies are to some degree regulated by state agencies. The U.S. Attorney General is interested in frauds and scams that cross state lines. The state attorneys general in your own state and the state where the company is based also may be helpful. Even if they can do nothing, management in general does not enjoy receiving a telephoned or written inquiry from an attorney general’s office; often a simple notice from a regulatory or law enforcement agency will spur a response to your issue.

Also consider contacting companies whose employees have to do business with a wide variety of vendors. Your complaint probably isn’t the first; if you get in touch with agencies or companies serve as intermediaries, you may find a way through the maze.Your credit-card issuer, for example, may have a telephone number that will reach a person at the problem company.

It takes ingenuity and persistence to get past the ramparts erected by megacorporations, which are specifically designed to repel all comers. But keep at it: if you can’t get through, try to enlist the aid of an agency that can.

B-a-a-a-d basselope! Frugality 0, Spending 1

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Okay, I fell off the frugality wagon with a resounding thud this afternoon, cleverly managing it at a moment when I probably should be pinching every penny that comes my way. What the heck: life’s short and tomorrow we die.

For several years, I’ve been quietly watching for a sideboard that would go with my dining room table, please my finicky tastes, and not bankrupt me. Right now there’s a console table sitting in the dining room, the sort of thing you put behind your sofa to hold a lamp. That’s what the table’s doing there: holding a lamp. It has no storage, and storage is desperately needed, given that the former homeowner’s kitchen remodel was beautiful but short on cabinet space. So I’ve wanted something with shelves and maybe even a couple of drawers.

Today a friend and I headed out in search of a desk to fit a small space in her house. After several hours spent traveling across the city, exploring many new stores we had never visited, we ended up at the Crate and Barrel, which is having a summer sale. And what should we see but…ta-DAAA! Not just “a” sideboard on sale, but THE sideboard, marked down $550.

At $1190, the price was still a bit rich for my blood, but I do have it in my diddle-it-away savings. True, it will drain Diddle-It-Away to zero, but why does one have diddle-it-away savings if one does not intend to diddle them away? It is incredibly gorgeous. It’s also set up to serve as a media center, so if I have to move to a smaller house in the future, it’s versatile enough to adapt to a different purpose.

Even though I’m sure I could have acquired something cheaper, this is well made with solid wood and mortise-and-tenon construction, and it’s exactly what I’ve been looking for. M’hijito will get the console table — also a very nice piece of furniture — and I will now have a place for serving items presently stashed in a back closet and in the garage. So I guess I don’t feel too guilty…after I get over the sticker shock, I’m sure I’ll be very happy I bought it. Especially if I don’t lose my job….

Celebrate America: Shop Local

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Did you realize that for every two jobs a huge national retailer brings to your town, three jobs are lost? Yes. As local businesses, unable to compete with WalMarts and Home Depots and Applebees, close down, more jobs are lost than gained.

Have you ever noticed that megaretailers raise their bargain prices once most of the local competition has been driven out of business? Check prices at your nearest surviving Ace Hardware (you’ll have to drive a ways to find it)-you may be surprised to find Home Depot’s prices are actually higher on many products.

A study of the effect of chain stores on the economy of Andersonville, a suburb of Chicago, showed that for every $100 in consumer spending with a locally owned firm, $68 remained in the Chicago economy, but only $43 remained from $100 spent in a chain store. The same study showed that 70% of residents preferred to shop in local stores and 80% preferred shopping in traditional urban business districts to big boxes. Nationwide, experience has shown that chain stores drain tax revenues through ill-considered subsidies, leave shopping areas blighted, and actively work to drive local companies out of business. Meanwhile, the carbon cost of pointlessly hauling food and other goods around the world continues to skyrocket. And as we know, we no longer can trust that our food is safe, nor our pet food, nor our children’s toys…

It is past time to fight back.

Stalking the Local Merchant

I was pleased to find a fight-back weapon here in my state: a coalition of businesses has come into being to foster local commerce and to encourage people to shop locally. The retail landscape here has become so homogenized it’s hard to find local stores. Most of our wonderful independent bookstores were hounded out of business years ago, people mysteriously developed a penchant for taste-alike restaurants, our fine local hardware shops closed their doors within months of Home Depot’s arrival, and now Phoenix, like every other major American city, looks just like every other major American city. Cookie-cutter commerce has brought us cookie-cutter cities full of cookie-cutter people. And so, it is excellent to come across an organization that will tell you where to find local shopping.

So far, I haven’t located a national clearinghouse or umbrella organization for such groups, but a little googling suggests they’re all over the country. As you might expect, smaller municipalities, recognizing that chain stores threaten their job base and the very character of their towns, are resisting vigorously. Taylor, Texas, for example, has a lively shop-local movement; there’s one in central Illinois and another in Cape Cod.

But larger cities are also starting to join battle: Salt Lake City’s Vest Pocket Business Coalition complements Utah’s statewide organization. New Orleans urges citizens to patronize local businesses, and Brooklyn has an active shop-local movement.

No doubt there are many more. Visits to just these few websites will show you the endless good reasons to buy on the local economy as much as you can, and most of them list locally owned businesses. Try googling “shop local” and the name of your city or state.

The Costs, the Benefits

Does shopping local cost more? Possibly, since megacorporations have no qualms about undercutting local competition-at least until the competition is gone. But we’ve already seen what abandoning our local economies for huge box stores has done to the quality of life in our cities: we have lost what makes our towns our towns, as every city in America has come to look alike. We’ve lost jobs and wages. We’ve lost nearby shopping and quality neighborhoods. As the cost of fuel has risen, the cost of flying and trucking food from far-away megasuppliers is making the most ordinary food items unaffordable. And now, in the era of globalization ushered in by vast corporate interests and their political allies, we are enjoying unsafe food and toys, engineered obsolescence of big-ticket items, less and less choice and variety in the products offered to us, longer drives to fewer stores…to say nothing of carefully orchestrated corporate invasion of our privacy.

Penny wise and pound foolish, with a vengeance! Some things are worth paying for. One of those things is our way of life.

I for one intend to start shopping local whenever I can reasonably do so. I hope you’ll all join me at your local merchants’ stores.
It’s simply good for America.

2 Comments left on iWeb site:

BeThisWay

Excellent article!We just discovered our local Ace Hardware, and it’s less than three miles away!Husband and I both enjoyed browsing their shelves, and the prices were sometimes lower, sometimes higher, and sometimes the same as the Big Boxes.The customer service blew the Big Boxes away…

I much prefer the local farmers market to the big grocery stores, even though they are pseudo-local.Local, neighborhood restaurants are often sooo much betterthan the chains.I think people like to eat at chains so they know what to expect.Levels of cleanliness and quality are assumed to be good.

Sometimes I have to choose price, but when they are comparable I’m going to make the effort to shop locally whenever possible.

Jeff

I agree!This is a great article and highlights the most important reason to shop local and support American businesses … because it keeps jobs, and our money, in the States where it belongs.

Shopping: Saved from myself

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A friend and I shopped the sales at an upscale Scottsdale mall last week. I was saved from spending much by the fact that in all those acres and acres and acres of women’s clothes, there wasn’t a darn thing worth buying.

I’ve never loved shopping. But now that I’m a grown woman and, as one over the age of 50, a stranger in a strange land, I hate, loathe, and despise shopping. Mass-produced clothing is not made for adult women.

Understand, I am not overweight. My weight and BMI are comfortably in the ideal range for a woman my height and age. But nevertheless, if I find something that’s not ugly or trampy-looking, it doesn’t fit. If it fits, it’s plug-hideous. If it fits and it’s not ghastly, then it has to be dry-cleaned.

We live in a place where temperatures range upwards of 100 degrees for five months a year; the rest of the time, the weather is comparable to what most people think of as spring and summer. I am not going to be made to dry-clean something that fits up beneath my underarms or that looks like you’ve slept in it the minute you strap yourself into a seat-belt. Nor, thank you, do I care to bathe myself in dry-cleaning chemicals even if an item doesn’t have to be cleaned every single time it’s worn. If an item can’t be washed, I don’t buy it.

So. During the winter, Talbot’s carries good-looking tailored clothing, much of it washable, that actually fits. In the summer…ah, the summer: Talbot’s buyers go stark raving mad. For the past three years, every summer outfit in that store has been freaking bizarre! Purple polka-dots, flounces, and silly-looking patterns that belong on an eight-year-old. One whose parents have no taste. They still have pants that fit, and my friend bought a couple pair. But I don’t need pants. I need a summer dress or skirt that’s easy to get into and easy to launder, and I need some shirts that will dress up the Costco jeans I habitually wear to work.

Neither of those resided at the Scottsdale Fashion Square Talbot’s.

Ann Taylor had some dresses in the style I coveted: all dry-clean only.

Bloomingdale’s had a perfect outfit from Eileen Fisher. The price would have consumed my entire clothing budget, and I needed more than one item.

Macy’s: an ocean of clothing, all of it hideous. Macy’s assaults you with loud, annoying Muzak that hurts your ears and distracts you from the job of sorting through rack after rack after endless rack of clothing in search of something that will fit and not make you look stupid. Salespeople are unhappy at best, unpleasant at worst. Not a place where one wants to spend much time.

We went into J. Jill’s. The J. Jill’s catalogue usually has several attractive outfits designed for grown women, but for some reason the store has next to nothing. I picked up a couple of long, swirly skirts. As I was standing there trying to get a saleslady’s attention to let me into a dressing room, another customer walked by, stared at the choices I had in hand, and pulled a horrified sour face.

That really made me feel like trying on clothes.

I did buy a shirt to go with the jeans there, though. It’s just O.K., nothing special.

At Banana Republic we found tons of cute clothes, all of them designed to fit anorexic 18-year-olds. But bought another shirt, not very different from the J. Jill shirt, except for the bracing price tag. Just O.K.

So I didn’t spend much money, which was just as well. But my wardrobe is still threadbare and dominated by twenty-dollar dungarees. Frustrating.

A$k nicely, and ye shall re¢eive

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Truth to tell, I didn’t even ask at the Safeway yesterday.

I dropped by on the way home from work, not feeling on the top shelf and absolutely not feeling like cooking anything elaborate. There wasn’t much in the house for me to eat or anything at all for the dog to eat. Thought I’d buy a porterhouse (3 or 4 meals for me) and an Idaho potato, along with a couple of other minor necessities.

All the T-bones and porterhouses were sliced paper-thin, the better to persuade buyers that the breathtaking prices were still buying them a nice steak. You can’t grill one of those things rare, and I don’t like shoe-leather meat. There was a nice, thick ribeye, but I really wanted a porterhouse, which would yield enough for several meals.

So, I picked up the ribeye to keep my hands on it, since it was the only steak cut thick enough to grill the way I prefer it, and then stopped by the butcher and asked if he could slice a porterhouse a little thicker than a quarter-inch, like…about the thickness of the captive ribeye. All the steaks in the fancy meat cabinet were also cut thin. He said he would, but another customer was ahead of me with a large order, and then he’d have to take his saw apart and refit it with a different blade. If I’d like to wait a while, he would be happy to slice a respectable porterhouse.

Tired and distinctly under the weather, I said no, I could make do with the steak in hand. He then – get this! – offered to cut the price on the ribeye!

Yes. The ribeye was already marked down. He marked it down even more, for no other reason than goodwill.

And with that gesture, goodwill was exactly what Safeway got! Not only that, but the checkout clerk was actually polite to me. You couldn’t pry me away from the place now.

Thought for a moment I’d stepped through a time warp: who would think we were in the 21st century? Wish other retailers would remember that customer service = business goodwill = customer loyalty = higher profits.

3 Comments left on iWeb site

Mrs. Accountability

Safeway employees are always extremely polite, helpful and friendly. I only buy sale items from Safeway, but their great personalities would more than make up for the higher prices.I would like to apply for a job at Safeway just once to see what their hiring procedure is like. I mean, they MUST do a personality test on people, to make sure they are “people” persons

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 – 07:47 P

Mrs. Accountability

Oh, and the other thing I’ve noticed… in the less affluent neighborhoods the steaks are sliced paper thin. In our little town they are 2″ thick steaks, much thicker than I would ever like. How many ounces of meat do you eat at a meal to make 3-4 meals of a porterhouse?! Guess I’m a pig! I can eat a whole one myself

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 – 07:49 P

Funny about Money

LOL! I eat a lot of veggies, grains, and salad, so the steak is just a small part of the feast. A typical meal is fish, meat, or poultry; rice, potato, or pasta; and salad or cooked vegetable. Plus fruit for dessert if there’s anything good in the house. Plus wine or beer if I’m not on a diet.

Old age helps, too. In my callow youth I could easily polish off a whole porterhouse, and did so every now & then. These days I don’t seem to want to eat that much. Not that I don’t want to eat or don’t enjoy eating (it’s one of my favorite pastimes), but that much smaller portions seem to suffice

Wednesday, July 23, 2008 – 08:40 P