Dude, Really!!!

As you all know by now, I'm into the Oriflame thing. I've been having problems with them lately because their call center is filled to capacity in the first week, week-and-a-half of the month. After that you may get your order placed, but many products are sold out (specially the offers), however the shipping takes so long it's as if Vikings were carrying it from Stockholm. The last weeks you have no trouble placing your order, your package arrives in a few days, but there's barely anything to order. In those days it has happened to me that nothing on my list was no longer available, and I ended up asking the dude at the other end: "What do you have??" To say it's annoying would be an understatement. Problems have been happening so often lately that I'm on the verge of calling the entire thing off. Just... forget Oriflame, continue my life with make up and cosmetics available at the stores, and tell my clients that due to logistic problems I'm closing the business.

Well, it happens that I have a quite large order placed since last week, but the goods didn't arrive. Two days ago the postmen called me at 7 pm saying that they were lost, and the assured me they were in front of the building (I have them delivered to the office, because that's were I am during the day), and argued that the guard refused to receive the package. Yesterday I asked the guard and he said (though not convincingly) that the postmen refused to give him my name and didn't want to leave the package with him. I talked to the postmen and they said the would deliver ther package yesterday, but they didn't. So today I called Oriflame to demand about the whereabouts of my order. A young lady returned me the call (that's how it works), and the first thing she said was:

"My God! You are harder to locate than the President of England!"

Ok. After this, I believe I have nothing else to add.

Shoes and the Issues With Them

The idea of "shoes" seems nowadays, to be one of those things so very "women's turf"-like, so iconically "female love and concern" they almost defy the whole gender. A woman and her shoes are like a man and his sports, a man and his beer, a man and his buddies. If anyone were to ask a woman about how many shoes does she have, she would probably answer "Not enough". There were a man has from two to five pairs of shoes, a woman owns at least 20, with no limit to the number she might end up having at one point of her life or the other. Then, like any male-brained woman, I didn't have that many shoes (around 26 pairs) but above all, I didn't think much of them. Actually, most of my shoes usually tended to fall into that unsightly "uncared" type. I just wasn't that much interested in them. I didn't spend hours shopping for them, they didn't seduce me, and I didn't dress for them, but I simply put them on. Recently, however, something terrible happened to me.

I was happily picking my clothes for the next day, thing I do every night before a working day, in order to save myself the pain of fighting with my closet for clothes to wear. I put up a nice ensable and the finishing touch was to wear to it some black shoes. That was simple, because I happen to have an overstaffing of black shoes. However, as I sat on the floor of my room, before my open closet, shoe after shoe emerged from the boxes, some so old and dusty I even forgot they existed, but all of them were broken. Broken soles, worn off heels, holed soles, ripped, worn, battered noses and straps.

I felt so hopeless! Was I going to be forced to wear pink, green, brown or red shoes because I had no black shoes left? My outfit simply couldn't have gone with other shoes. They had to be black. I gathered a plastic bag and started throwing away all the broken shoes cheking them before, saving that one or two pairs that maybe could be saved by a shoemaker miracle.

It was Monday night. I had to throw away five pairs of black shoes. The onslaught continued yesterday with four more pairs. Another one put on hold, but it seems it will meet the depths of a wasteland soon.

I'm not really up to spending on shoes, as I have had a few "major" expenses recently, and I want to start cutting back, saving and paying out debts, but this is an emergency, a real one. Today I have only 3 pairs of black shoes, and soemthing around 12 to 16 pairs of shoes in total, including three pairs of boots that need to be fixed and other three pairs of shoes that also need an intervention to survive. So, left out of choices, I went yesterday to Best Brands, a shoestore known for good shoes, good styles and good prices. Well, first of all, I saw three amazing pairs I simply had-to-have. The prices ranged from $3 to no more than $15. A bargain? You bet! Well, I believed that would solve all my problems.

Yeah, it would have. Two beautiful, stylish pumps I could use at the office, and one pair of short boots (or whatever they call them, they reach up to the ankle) simply perfect to wear with pants. And they were in 7, my size. Oh well, I'm a 7- 7 1/2, but 7 usually is fine. Yes, the key word is "usually". I don't know where do they do the shoes, but those 7s looked on me like Daisy's shoes. I put on the shoes and I still could stick two-three fingers in the gap. I tried the 6s, the 5s... and there were no 4s. Needless to say, I walked out without any shoes.

Today I'll give it another shot, and hopefully this time the price will be right, the style will be right, and for the love of Pete, make the size right too!!!

Annoyance

If you are in my mail list from one of my yahoo.fr addresses, then you may have received a copy of the mail I sent to the people of Adam Hersh Posters. You may wonder what's the story about it. Well, simply put, I have fell in love with this poster made by Theophile-Alexander Steinlen known as "Tourné du Chat Noir". It's not only iconic of Paris, but also of the Parisian boheme, artist life. Today is the Birthday of a dear friend of mine and I wanted to give him something beautiful, something special, and all the meaning that this poster has, our shared love for cats, our love for art, for the creative and artistic evolution of mankind, as well as many perticular aspects of ourselves regarding our environment that are so similar to the story, the meaning of the Chat Noir Café, well, it made of this poster the perfect gift.

I went to Amazon, as always, selected the poster sad because Amazon was not selling it directly, but confident that someone with 4,5 start of rating would deliver the items with the usual Amazon efficiency. I ordered two posters because, well, I wanted one for myself too. Then came the first shock:

Posters: $5,98.
Shipping and handling: $9,97

Okay... the shipping more expensive than the items themselves. But then I booked it under the fact that, me being a Prime Rate Member at Amazon, I was no longer used to shipping and handling rates. I ordered two books from Amazon from the same date, and which hit Miami two days ago and are on the counter here today. I was going to pay a faster shipping for the posters so I would make only one trip when I realized this seller didn't have that option. Deception No.2. When I checked when the items will arrive to Miami, it was for tomorrow, Feb. 1st. That wasn't good either, but I thought my friend might not mind the delay on his present.

I tried to pay the purchases with my Raiffeisen card, but Amazon seems not to like my debit cards, so it smacked them back that same day. I, naturally, in order not to delay the delivery, put the purchases, ALL OF THEM on one of my credit cards. As soon as I received the e-mail that my purchases were shipped, I ran to check them to prealert them at my local courier company. That's when I realized that my books were sent, but the posters were not being shipped. So I went to check on them and the delivery date was moved to Feb 2nd-Feb 5th. Okay, that was LATE for me. I mean, my friend's Birthday is TODAY, Januar 31st, and waiting to get the poster on Feb 5th as the latest in Miami, and then wait 1 to 2 days to get it here was not doable. Yet I believed that with a lot of smiling I could manage and explain my friend that it was not that I forgot his present, but that the perfect present was delayed by the seller. I was Pissed but I could live with it. Deception No.3. I wish ti would have been only up to deception No.3, but Deception No.4 was waiting around the corner.

At the begining of this week I checked on the posters again and the delivery date was delayed yet again. This time it was Feb 5th to Feb. 8th. Well, I was not going to take that, would they delay the delivery of the posters until Christmas? Absolutely not. I wrote both to Adam Hersh Posters and to Amazon requesting to cancel the order since it would not be delivered on the originally offered date. Amazon immediatelly jumped up to help me, sending the cancelling e-mail from my part, since at that point that was all they could do. (So Adam Hersh Posters go TWO e-mails where I cancelled the order.) I received the confirmation of reception of my mail from Amazon, but nothing from the seller. Little later the seller sent me an e-mail telling me that my order was ready to be shipped. They do not listen. Deception No. 5. I wrote the again letting them know that I HAD cancelled the order. No answer, no answer and then, TODAY, two days AFTER I told them again that I wished to cancel my order, and that I had e-mailed them about it, as well as Amazon has told them about it, the tell me that my order had been SHIPPED and furthermore, some lady from the Customer Service Department sent me a mail telling me that my order couldn't be cancelled since it was already processed. Deception No. 6.

Now you may understand the upset (an therefore terribly mistyped) e-mail I sent them promising them I would let the world know what a piece of shit they are.

So please everybody, remember the name, Adam Hersh Posters and stay away from it, and let others know. Or recommend it to people you hate. ^_^