You Should Get On Board

First off, Happy New Year! The fact that I'm blogging again is not because of a New Years resolution.  In fact, I'm not going to talk about resolutions at all. I'm going to do what I do best and complain. I have a running totally of people (and by people I mostly mean brands and companies) that I have felt wronged by in the past and have thus shut out of my life. I have it in my head that being vindictive and refusing my patronage will hurt theses companies (in reality I know they don't actually care or miss my business all that much). And believe me I can hold a grudge. Living Social is a recent addition and let me tell you Groupon has never seen this kind of business from me, simply because they are the competitor.

I've added two more to my list this holiday season and I'm going to recount you with the tales of why I feel you too should get on board. First up Sirus XM Satellite Radio.  In theory Sirus was a good idea when it first came out in actuality, I found out, it's a scam.  And they scammed me good.  A car purchase at the beginning of 2012 got me a free three month trial. At the end of that three months a good old Sirus represtantive called and offered me a six month membership for $20. Not a bad deal. The membership, she assured, would not be automatically renewed and would simply end if we didn't call to continue. So I went about my days listening to the same songs over and over again and about the same number of commercials I could get on the free radio waves. When the holiday music started I thought it strange the stations were still working but I wasn't going to say anything.  That is until I finally reviewed the last two months credit card statements in full. Not only had they recharged my credit card for a much pricer renewal they had also started charging again for my husbands radio that we had cancelled six months before. Long story shorter, when I called to complain I was informed all memberships have automatic renewals, there was no note on the account and, even tough it was their mistakes and misinformation that caused the problem and they were in fact charging my for an account that was cancelled months ago, they would not refund any of the charges. In the process of canceling both accounts properly, the representative had the AUDACITY to offer a "special holiday rate" to continue service. To which I said something along the lines of "I'm not f***ing falling for that again and you can kiss my patronage forever goodbye."

Best Buy was a bit less dramatic, and to be fair i visited a location in a town known for universally horrible service, but still they have stupid policies. I went to exchange a gift for a different color. Same product, same price, different color. They charge me $11. Because the original, purchase had been made when the product was on sale and the product no longer was. I could have walked out with a black one but not a blue one. And no amount of reasoning that the black and blue are the same exact price and thus they would be loosing the same amount of money no matter the color could convince them. So I threw eleven dolla dollar bills and peaceful out.

Kohls, however, in the same city, won my loyalty.  Not only was their customer service superb, they let me use a $20 coupon that had expired the day before. I'm going to Kohls for everything but toilet paper and bananas...name that movie!

-E