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A few days ago I wrote about my recent experience with Home Depot. This is the update.

We never heard back from Non Stop Delviery about our chairs. My wife called them today three times, finally she got to a manager who told her that they would be ordering a new set of chairs for us and would advise us as to when they’d be delivered. Unfortunately, there was no email confirmation or even a claim number that they gave us. So, I decided to call Home Depot again.

I got a totally different story this time. I was told that I should have never been told to contact the shipper directly. Well, duh, of course not, I was doing business with the Depot, not Non Stop Delivery. I was also told that they’d do a RMA for me on the spot and could offer me a discount on a new set of chairs. Of course, I have to order them from the online group and they’ll be shipped by the same shoddy shipper as before.

I ordered them and the whole thing will end up costing me about 40 bucks less than the original order, which is nice, but I’m still incredulous.

Here are some things that still annoy me:

1. The first guy at HD that I talked to said his name was Curtis. Curtis told me his agent id was 13. The woman that I spoke with tonight (who was significantly more interested in helping me from the get go) had an ID that was 6 digits long. Curtis needs to get his sorry ass fired.
2. Any business you do with HomeDepot.com cannot be addressed in the store. I asked the agent I talked with tonight if they were two differnet companies. Her initial repsonse was yes. I then asked if they had the same CEO. Silence. Guess they are not two different companies after all. This forced me to do the re-order through Homedepot.com to get my discount. So I’m still looking at 10 to 14 days before my chairs might show up. The original order was on 6 July 2008. I could potentially not seem my order completed before 5 August 2008. That flat out sucks.

I’m going to continue to fight the good fight against HD by making contact with their corporate offices tomorrow. And next time, I’m going to Lowes - or better yet to my local hardware store Clements.

Woke up at 6 when the little man decided it was time to get up. Laid in bed until 7 with him hitting me in the face. Couldn’t stand it anymore, so I got up and made him his morning bottle.

Put together a new bouncy toy that mom got him. He watched. Drank coffee, me not Greyson. Put him in it.

He seemed to enjoy it.

Made waffles and bacon for Taffy. I had some too. They were good.

Put together some potato salad for the get together with the boys in the afternoon.

Good Saturday Morning, I say.

A few weeks ago, we made the decision that it was time to get some furniture for the deck. We had been hemming and hawing on this for over three years (pretty much ever since we moved into the house) and finally settled on a wrought iron set from Home Depot.

Now, since I don’t have a truck, picking up a table and four chairs was going to be a problem. I’ve abused my friendship with folks who have trucks enough over the years, so I decided to cough up the freight costs ($65) and have them delivered.

I ordered them on 6 July. The Depot shipped them on 9 July, from Alabama, via some no name shipper Non Stop Delivery. They finally showed up yesterday, almost. When the delivery got here, I had a table and two chairs. The driver tried to tell me that that was all I ordered. I explained that I’d actually ordered 2 sets of chairs (2 to a box). She called the warehouse, and they said they didn’t have the second set of chairs. So I noted the discrepancy on the receipt, made a copy and took my 2 chairs and table to the deck.

After getting things settled down for the night, I called the Depot’s customer service number. The essentially told me to call the shipper and gave me some phone numbers. The first one went to some dude name Mike’s voicemail. Mike doesn’t even create his own outgoing message, so I assumed that he’d be worthless. I tried the second number they gave me.

I got a hold of someone there who was happy to help me, though at first she told me that the Depot had only shipped one set of chairs. Fortunately, I have the packing slip which shows 2 sets. I told her that I had it and she said she’d call the warehouse.

Two hours later, I get a call back, the chairs are at “a” ware house, but not theirs, in Baltimore. She doesn’t know when they will be at “their” ware house, but when they get there, I will get a call.

So the lesson learned here is, bug your friends for thier truck and save yourself $65 on shipping.

I planted Tomatos on arguably the hottest day of the summer.    It was probably about 6 weeks ago, my how time flies.  They are now about 4 feet tall and the stakes I used to hold them up are struggling.  I had one snap at a “y” in the plant.  I tried to patch it up by splinting it and wrapping it with some cotton string.  We’ll see.  I hope the branch doesn’t die, because it has about 6 tomatos that are just getting going.  I’d hate to lose them.

If I do, I may cut them open and see if I can harvest their seeds for next year.  Or, they might become fried green tomatos….

My basil has been attacked by some kind of insect.  The leaves are all chewed up.  I think I might need to get some lime to put on them to keep the buggies away.

Yesterday I heard the most disturbing report on the radio that I’ve ever heard in my life. A man in Virginia forgot to drop his 21 month old son off at daycare on Tuesday of this week. He also forgot that he had his 21 month old son in his car on his way to work. He left his son in the car all day. His son died a tragic and (I’m sure) horrible and painful death trapped in the car. I’m sure the father is significantly more horrified than I am. However, I have not been able to get this out of my head since I heard it. I’m stricken with grief for the family. There are so many failures in this story its unfathomable. Why didn’t someone form the daycare facility notice that the boy wasn’t there and call one of the parents? How can you forget that you have your child in the car seat behind you? Why didn’t someone notice a child trapped in a car in a parking lot until 5:00 PM?

My mind is so wrapped around the axil on this one that I couldn’t sleep last night.

Nothing good is ever reported in the news. Nothing. I’m tired of hearing nothing but horrible things in the news. So, I’m not listening to the news for at least a week. I’m also not reading any papers, or watching any news casts for a week.

Interestingly enough, we coincidentally recieved a solicitation for a magazine called “Ode” yesterday, which claimed that nothing ever good is reported in the news and that the magazine is a magazine for Intelligent Optimists.

I want to be an optimist.