Week ending 7/27/12

On Wednesday, we stole some time from the day and went for a fabulous mid-week hike.  Calvin was all tired out:

Well probably not that tired, but he did look cute in his bed.

During the week, I had a heck of a time buying the glass tile.  It boggles my mind how so many people across so many fields in the home improvement industry can be so incompetent.  I found an online distributor who sold the glass and as I mentioned before I abandoned my cart during the prior attempt to purchase.  They had a "pick up at a local warehouse option" that I wanted to choose, but nowhere on the website do they list where those locations are.  Since shipping on $20 worth of tile was close to $100, I wasn't going to buy if I couldn't pick up.

After exchanging numerous emails with customer dis-service, I finally did decide to buy and pay shipping since the price was still cheaper than I could get locally and it saved me a trip to the tile store.  When I placed the order, it let me order in an odd square foot amount which would equal about 2.2 boxes.  I was expecting to be locked into ordering full boxes, but since they let me order an odd amount I went ahead and did it.

The next day, customer dis-service emails me and says 1) you screwed up by ordering incomplete boxes, you have to order in complete boxes, and 2) we don't have this tile anyway and have no idea when we can get it.  Ugh, such incompetence.

I got on the tile manufacturer's website and emailed their customer dis-service department to find out if this product was still made and if everyone was out of it or just this one dealer.  Customer dis-service sent me to their "find a distributor" link and said to ask there.  I asked the person to please re-read the email as I already asked my seller and they could not answer.  That was the whole point of going to the manufacturer - to find out if this dealer was full of crap or if it was a company-wide thing.  She again replied with "you need to talk to a DISTRIBUTOR not a DEALER."  So let me get this right - a customer who is ready to make a purchase asks you a reasonable question which you COULD answer but choose not to and then you correct the customers vocabulary?  What are you thinking you moron?

This is why home improvement sucks.  I spend a massive amount of time handling other people's incompetence.

I called a local "distributor" I found on their website and while they didn't have the product in stock, they did have access to it in a ware house in Texas.  GREAT, can I give you a credit card over the phone?  Uh, no, we only sell to industry people like designers and contractors.  Can I give you my contractor's license number?  Uh, well, we don't really do this but if you have access to a fax machine I can fax you a form that you can fill out and fax back and we can make an exception for your contractor.  ARGH!  That is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.  You have an eager customer on the phone who is ready to make a purchase you expended zero effort to get and you say no?  Again, morons.  And yes, they really wanted a fax - I asked and they would not accept a scanned and emailed document.  Seriously, is this 1995?

I came to expect this when the economy was booming, but home improvement is still a really weak industry so I just can't understand why people still treat customers like crap.

I finally decided to buck up and pay the extra to get the glass tile from the local store I've been dealing with.

On Friday, I went and picked up the floor tile and ordered the glass.  Of course it didn't go smoothly.  The floor tile had the wrong stock number on it, didn't look anything like the sample and they couldn't even find the sample board I had taken home and based my order on.  I was there for an hour, and couldn't keep the attention of anyone helping me.  Each time we got close to figuring something out they'd take a call or help another customer.  It was very irritating and I finally had to put my foot down and make the person stay with me until we were done.  I ended up taking what they ordered for me and I am hoping it works out.  I just didn't have the energy to fight anymore.
 

Week ending 7/20/12

On Saturday, we usually take the dogs somewhere for an adventure walk.  This is us in the car with "dog" as the co-pilot.  Danny likes to climb as far into the front seat as possible, so we set up this black canvas barrier to keep him from getting all the way up front.  He still likes his head up with the people's heads though.

I hung this whiteboard Saturday as well, and it lays out the next 1-2 years worth of projects for us.  It's strangely uplifting even though there are so many projects to go.  It's just cool to see that projects that seemed like we'd never get to are now on the horizon. 

Saturday's other project was to lay out the floor tile sample in the bathroom to work on making a choice. 

On Wednesday, we went back to the tile store and it was very draining (trip #2).  Even though we left at 2:00, it was 45 minutes in traffic to get there and it's not very far.  We got the Menta tile ordered for the tub deck (seen in the picture above).  We also got a price on the glass which seems way too high so I'm going to order it on the internet.  We took home more floor tile samples, and feel like we're getting close on picking the floor tile.

On Thursday we laid out the new samples so we could make a choice.  Spoiler: we ended up choosing the one on the black background.  

In the evening, we snuck out and managed to catch an outdoor concert at the beach.  Now that's why we live here!

On Friday, I went back to the tile store (trip #3) and it wasn't as bad.  I found an alternet route and the traffic wasn't as bad.  I got the floor tile ordered. 

Week ending 7/13/12

On Wednesday, I finally started getting materials ordered for the bathtub replacement.  I tried to order the glass wall tile online, but the store I found made it really hard to order.  They had various shipping options, one of which was "pickup from one of our 20 US locations."  I wanted to pick that since it was cheapest, but nowhere on the site was there a list of locations.  There was also no easy way to see the cost of shipping, so I bailed on the order.  Lo and behold, I get an email later saying that "You didn't complete your order, click here to complete it."  Lovely.  I replied with my shipping concerns and got some lame answer back.  FAIL!  Why is there so much incompetence in the home improvement industry?

On Friday we spent 3 hours going to tile store.  It took a long time to get there in Friday traffic even though we left at 2:30.  The first guy who tried to help us was no help, but the second guy was great.  I used this tile store early on in our remodel so I hoped they'd be good second time around and they were (so far).  We took some samples home for the bathroom floor, so we'll test those out over the next few days.  We tried to order Menta (green ceramic) for the walls, but when I looked at the quantities specified by the tile guy they seemed WAY off, as in about twice the square footage (10% for breakage, cutting, etc is normal).  I also tried to order the glass tile but they didn't have a price and the east coast supplier was closed so I couldn't get that order either.  It was disappointing, but we at least got the process started. 

Vacation!

On June 21st, we left for vacation for 12 days.  It was a whirlwind trip ending up in Washington, DC for a few days during the record-breaking heat and power outages!  It was so hot and humid that we had to scale back our plans but we still had fun and got to see most of what we wanted to.  

Here we are at the Supreme Court buidling:

It's actually much more grand, but it there was some construction going on so there was scaffolding out front.  The inside was beautiful and ornate.

We got back on the 3rd, went to a party on the 4th and took it easy the rest of the week.  C got sick so we had to cancel some plans to visit with out-of-town family on the 5th.