So, if you follow my blog you know that I am a fan of this restaurant. Not so much today.

Okay, it is Dec 20th and I, being the brave soul that I am , venture out to go shopping with my daughter and mother! I know…brave or S-T-U-P-I-D!  So, I can tell you that the loss of kindness that I am always talking about, unfortunately, is alive and well!! The LACK of it….

But, That is NOT why I am posting this blog. No, no,no…… today I made the mistake of asking my daughter and mother if we could eat at Logan’s for lunch..what a HUGE mistake. Sorry..but in this particular case the server was pretty dang BAD. I try to be very very fair…really I do!!! But this is so hard, As usual I will not mention names, he knows who he is because I left him my card and if he is reading this it is only because he got the card and knows he served me.

At any rate, he was terrible. We took our seats and waited not to long for him to appear, then off he went for our drinks. He came back speedily and we asked for a appetizer, then he came back for something…oh to bring bread and we asked for another ( my daughter did not like my choice!) so off he goes to put in our appetizer orders. I might tell you here that he was not an unpleasant fellow, not at all. We dubber him MR. Clean, due to the fact that he had a shaved head and a earring! LOL  But, he was much less intimidating than Mr. Clean!

Ok, so he was a nice enough guy. Got it….but as slow as a turtle!!! We got our appetizers and our salads and then we sat..and we sat…and we sat….finally we were not very hungry anymore.  We were going to ask him to just wrap our food to go at this point but he appeared and we went ahead and ate. I had sat so long I was not hungry any longer, neither was anyone else. So, we wrapped up our food anyway. Then he asks us if the bill is one or separate..I tell him it is all on my daughter!!! LOL then I tell him it is 3 checks and he goes away for along time…then brings us back the check, he doesn’t drop it off where we might be able to talk to him he does a drive by dump onto the table! He hits and runs us! We can not catch him once we see he only leaves us one check! hmmm…didn’t i say 3? Oh well, so then he disappears to put in another tables order, we can see what it is that he is doing, v….e…..r…..y….. slowlyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! We finally get together the cash so that we do not have to wait any longer for him to run my credit card and run out of there so fast that I drop my food!!!!

Oh well!

It was cold when I got it anyway and I couldn’t tell if it was any good or not! Now I will never know!

Merry Christmas! 

www.meetup.com/The-Plainfield-Give-to-Get-Meetup-Group/
A group that believes you have to give to get in this life.
We meet once a month to share experiences,goals and
what it is that we do to help enrich the lives of others!
Come check us out!

EGIX..have you heard of them? They are located in Carmel Indiana and are a communication company. In a previous life…LOL I was,and still am, a Realtor, as such I am in need, on occasion to have a call forwarding service. EGIX was that company for me, I have been a customer since 2004 with a break in service for the greater part of 2007 which was restarted again in Dec 2007.

I was pretty happy with them prior to disconnecting my service in 2007. I disconnected because I moved to Florida and was not going to be practicing Real Estate so was not in need of the service. I reconnected the service when I moved back at the end of 2007.  When I reconnected the service I was dismayed to find that they were not acting as though they were the same company.

It seemed to me that I could never get into my voice mail and I NEVER was able to use my Internetaccess. ( in all fairness I did get in briefly but as it turns out they sent me someone elses email username-GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE) I called tech services so many times with no return calls that I just flat gave up! I wrote them repeated emails asking for help, still no reply. When I finally gave up I left a voice mail as well as sent a final email saying something to the affect of…” I have had it! I can not use this service and you refuse to reply to my phone calls or to my emails, I quit, please cancel my service!”  Did they cancel my service? NO! They CALLED ME! Imagine that little twist! haha

It took a few phone calls back and forth but after a couple of months of not being able to use the service all of a sudden I could again…. for about 2 days! Then it was out again and I sent multiple emails and left voice mails to the tech department  with no reply back. Boy nothing like some good old deja vu! I finally sent them a note attached to a bill saying that I didn’t think I should pay for the service and that they should cancel the account. I had changed the greeting on my voice mail to reflect the fact that I could not use the service and that clients should call my cell phone directly. I told EGIX in my note that they could check my message and ..guess what? They did! I received a call one day saying that it was all fixed and that I should change my greeting to reflect that. OKAY, I am not stupid! Really! I checked to make sure that I could retrieve messages ( this was the main problem the whole time) before changing the message back and ya know what? It still did not work, does not work, never will work and they sent me a bill! LOL

So, tonight I am sitting here with a bill and a note from them telling me how nice they are, that for Dec they are waiving the monthly bill! Very nice! IF I HAD SERVICE THAT WORKED I WOULD BE IMPRESSED! Really I would. So, again I have sent a note along to them suggesting that I should not have to pay for a service that I have hardly used due to their lack of CUSTOMER SERVICE!!  and asked what they thought? If they agree…awesome, if not..well, send me the bill and let’s be done with this once and for all. I will pay the bill and they can cancel my account. END OF STORY!

Do they get a glowing recommendation from me?  What do you think? 

AM I GLOWING?!!!

Life is a party! Party on dudes and dudettes! LOL

Oh my goodness, where do I start? Please keep in mind that this is my personal experience with this company and my opinion. If you are the company and would like to reply OR if you are a customer with a similar or different experience and would like  to post a review, I would be happy to post it. Just send me an email at christine@lostartofcustomerservice.com

Let me start by saying that I have avoided writing this review because it is the worst customer service that I have received to date ( the hospital fiasco not included) and I wanted so badly to be very, very fair. I have to write things that are not all positive and I want to make sure that I am not biased. I know no matter how I write this some people are going to feel that I am not being honest or I am exaggerating things. I guess that is why I am avoiding this. Let me assure you, if you believe me, that I will not be exaggerating and I will do my best to be very fair. I am actually afraid that I will not be as hard as I should be so as to save others from making a mistake. But we will see how I do!

I also am going to make this as brief as possible. YES..this is brief! LOL

We interviewed a few different contractors to do a big remodel at our house. Subsequently we hired a company ( if you can call 2 people a company) named Westwood Homes and Remodeling. They are out of Greenwood Indiana. As usual, I will not name names here, if you do some research you will be able to get any answers you want.

When this place was hired they knew we were under certain circumstances that caused this job to need to be done as fast as possible. We had 2 babies being born and without being able to know this would happen one of the babies and mom got very sick and we had a crisis during the end of this construction period. We were really upfront from the start that we needed this done before the first baby was born in April. He promised,per the contract, to be done about 2 weeks after she was due and we accepted that.

I think rather than go over each point and beat it to death, I will just hit the highlights of what happened.

We hired them for work to commence in Feb and end approx April 25th. According to the contract they were to start work approx. 8 am every day  and end no later then 5pm. We were to keep our cars out of the way so that thy could get in the driveway. They would minimize our inconvenience as much as possible while they were there.

Reality-They started the job on time per the contract. The bulk of the job ended in June, but come the 4th of July we were still not able to use our deck and all of the “problems” were not fixed. This was almost 3 months after the date that was on the contract. There was not an extraordinary amount of rainfall this last season to which we could blame this nor were there  major job changes or problems that would cause this delay, we had a bathtub added that was not in the contract but then we canceled portions of the contract, we did not have him put in the retaining wall or finish the stone on the bottom of the house or finish the stairs on the deck. I can not imagine how long they would have been at our house if they had to do the entire job!. They took many days off, they took a week vacation, which they did not tell us about prior to our hiring them. We would not have hired them because of the time issues that we had. They arrived at work between 8:30-9:30am the first few days. After that they arrived no earlier than 10am ( usually closer to 11am) and most days left at 3pm. As it turns out the owner needed to be at home when the kids left in the AM and apparently soon after they got home. They stayed a few days after 4pm and they made a pretty big deal out of it when it happened.  When the owner could not be on the job his assistant was not there either, so the work stopped. During the job his sons school wanted him to do some volunteer work and he went there instead of to our house on a couple of days.

We had a few issues that occurred because the contractor had not measured things correctly. Example: we bought special order mirrors ( yes..they were expensive) when we bought them we called him to verify the measurements and then we bought them. When he went to put them in they would not fit. He did not feel badly or take responsibility for this, it was just the way it was. We still have those mirrors. They were special order and if we returned them we would have taken a hit on the restock because they were special order.  We kept them and decided that we will find a place to use them.

In the end I had to hold onto the last check to get him to come to our house and make things right. We had serious blemishes, actually they were much more then blemishes, on the casements throughout the entire house and he was going to leave them there, saying that that is just the way they are. I had to push him and after much pushing he brought the supplier to look and they agreed it was a problem and had to be replaced or fixed. WHY did I have to push so hard? That should never happen. I can not even begin to explain how poorly they hung drywall in our addition. They were to hang it and my son in law, who is a drywall finisher, was to finish it. My poor son in law had to work so hard to make it work because of the terrible job they did hanging the drywall. He actually had to fabricate parts of the ceiling because when they hung it they tore the drywall up and it didn’t come together in many areas. We talked to the contractor about this but he pretty much ignored us and would not comment. Then the paint throughout the house was wiping off each time we had to clean it. He never fixed that. After much debate he took like $300 off of the $100,000 PLUS bill.  Did I say thank you? That was money off so that WE could repaint the house ourselves.  Can you even imagine paying someone over $100,000 and having to repaint the house yourself? I couldn’t.

I could nit pick this to death but am not going to. I think this is sufficient to show that I should not have hired this contractor. OF course this is my experience and my opinion.   I am in no way telling anyone else what to do. Can I endorse this company? No, but it is as always your decision.  I can say that the assistant made the comment to my husband that this was the largest job they had ever undertaken and that they will never be doing so again. So, maybe they do great work if the job is small? Who knows! Maybe they do. 

As I have said I will not name names but stay tuned and I will have a review on a new company we have hired and how they do. They will be finishing our basement and hopefully I will be hiring them to finish our deck, put an in ground pool in and build a new garage. They have said when the job will start and when it should finish. The job will take 17days!!!!!!  This is to finish a basement. YES, I said SEVENTEEN! OMG!! What a difference a company makes.  Stay tuned.

  We have a Justice for girls in Plainfield. I have visited the store a few times, the customer service is OK..I would not say it is great. These girls need a little supervision. There is something to be said for managers that hire young people, train them and leave them alone to run the store. Maybe they are assistant managers at this point but come on people! Do you really think these young people, these young inexperienced people are going to represent you and your good name the way you expect them to?

Well, let me be the one to break the sad, sad news to you, they are not!!! These young people like to talk…talk..and talk…and guess what? They are not usually talking to your customers, NO, they are talking to each other! And guess what they are talking about? YOUR business! Yup, we customers sometimes get a earful of what you are saying to your employees behind the scenes. I am going to go out on a limb  here and assume ( I KNOW) that the reason you had that meeting with your employees after hours was so that we, the customers, are not privvy to the conversation.  If I am wrong, then I apologize!

Oh and then there are the young power drunk employees that decide in your absence that it is OK to be rude to your customers. I mean, YOU did make them the person in charge while you were gone, didn’t you?

Okay, I have gotten off on a tangent here and will get myself back on track.

Justice…Justice IS a great store, customer service aside. They have some cute,cute clothes for girls. They also have shoes and accessories AND Webkinz! OH and if you want a good price for Webkinz then go to Justice now, they are on sale and you can get them for as little as $7.00!!! YAY..my granddaughter is going to be so happy!

To sum this up, go for the clothes and deals but do not expect great customer service. But what do you expect from a business that lets young inexperienced kids run their stores?

We went to Nashville Indiana to view the turning of the leaves! Well, the leaves had not turned too much last weekend, it would be much better to go this weekend.

We enjoyed ourselves nonetheless! If you have never been to Nashville, it is a quaint little town in Southern Indiana, near Bloomington. It has rolling hills and tons of trees. It is beautiful. We make sure to go to Nashville a few times a year. We go on our anniversary and stay at a cabin that we rent through Hills O’ Brown Realty, and then we go in the Spring and again in the Fall.

We walked around a bit and then went to The Nashville House for dinner.

The Nashville house is located at the corner of Van Buren and Main St in Nashville, Indiana. It was built in 1859 during the Civil War as the first Hosltery in Brown County. The original building burned down in 1943 and was rebuilt with no guest rooms. It was built into a country store and restaurant.

The restaurant is not fancy but does have alot of history, if you like that kind of thing. The country store has a few interesting things in it as well as Apple Butter and other home made preserves.

The service in the restaurant can be better, when we walked in we waited about 5 minutes before we even saw a employee. By the time someone finally came out of the kitchen there were a few of us waiting. We were taken right away to our table with red checkered table clothes on it. There was apple butter sitting out on the table, which I did not find too appetizing as there were a few flies in the room as well! I am pretty sure they were enjoying the apple butter before we were!

This restaurant is known for it’s fried biscuits and aforementioned apple butter! As well as their unique “savory” cole slaw which I LOVE!  These items were delivered after a bit of a wait and lived up to their reputation. We had arrived during a shift change which could explain the service not being spot on.

Within about 20 minutes we had ordered our meals. 2 fried chicken meals and 2 roast beef. All of the food was good and much more then we could eat. The service could have been better throughout, especially considering there were only a couple of people in the entire restaurant!

This place is a tradition for us, we usually go alone as our friends can never justify paying so much for a regular meal, nothing special  The meals run around $17.00 each! 

And the bathrooms? They were OK…nothing special and old. Now check out my Indianapolis airport review for a great bathroom!  LOL

Ok, I thought the promotion from Ruby Tuesday’s was that they were leaving the 70’s and heading into the 21st century?

Well, we went to the restaurant on 38th st in Indianapolis ( west side)  the other night. Let me just say that my husband made the comment that the restaurant resembled his mothers home in the 70’s. Does that tell you anything? Did I misunderstand the commercial? I think I must have.

Regarding the food, I have always liked this restaurant. I wanted a salad as my meal this particular night and I was disappointed to find that they do not have specialty or signature salads. I am sure this is due to the fact that they have a fresh salad bar which includes basic salad ingredients as well as some pasta and potato salad sides. In my opinion the salad bar is not too imaginative, they do not even have soups.

 I went wanting a salad as my meal and then when I saw no salads other than the bar I decided that I would just add a soup to my meal and would be very satisfied. BUT, they only had 2 soups, a broccoli and cheese and a white chili……  I did not want either of these. Again, disappointed.

I ended up having a steak, which was good and came with the salad bar. This was fine but did not take away from the disappointment that I felt about the lack of speacialty salads and soups.

Now onto the service, I was disappointed in our service as well. We arrived after 7pm and the place was busy but not overly crowded, we were immediately seated in a booth. I left and went to the restroom ( YES..clean!! nothing special but clean is good) came back and sat for about 2 minutes and then asked my husband if our server had taken our drink orders. YES, but they were not there yet and they did not arrive for at least another 5 minutes or so.  We were discussing why this was the case as there didn’t seem to be too much of a crowd. After our server brought our drinks and before she took our order the room almost emptied and we were among her few guests left, at least as far as we could see.

Our server had a bad problem with disappearing and not returning for along time. She left to get my husband a refil on his drink and didnt come back for awhile. It left my husband wondering what happened to her.

Overall, the restaurant was not offensive LOL….it was ok. Would I go back?  Maybe…maybe not.

At this moment I can not think of anything that would cause me to return.  Well, if my husband wanted to, then I would!

The MAN in question is Dr. John Sparzo the VP of Medical Affairs at Hendricks Regional Hospital. I just wanted to write the finale update on our terrible hospital experience.

On Aug 29th this Dr. wrote me a letter and sent it registered, basically telling me the trail was cold and nothing he could do nor cared to admit to in the way of lack of care for my daughter.

He cared enough to send the letter registered, OH wait, that was probably not for MY benefit as much as for HIS and the hospitals, right? I am SO naive!

Okay, so I received the letter which, as I said, really said nothing but he did end it with the very KIND suggestion that IF I was not happy with his letter I could go jump in a lake…no, kidding! I could call the Health Department and he gave me their address! Was that so kind of him? Yes, I’m sure.

I gave him a call or 2 regarding the letter and had to leave voice mails, I indicated to him that I would love to talk to him and that he could call me back but he never did. 

Oh and by the way, the way it went was, I wrote a letter, he called and left a voice mail on my phone numbers ( 2 numbers) and I called him back within a few minutes after the second voice mail, I had to leave him a voice mail. I called again and left him a voice mail telling him it appeared we were playing phone tag but I would keep trying if he returned my call and I missed it again. Ummmm he never called me back AND he says in his nice registered letter that he left me 2 voice mails but does not mention the fact that I returned his calls both times and he dropped the ball.

 After I wrote this letter my daughter had a procedure at his hospital that we subsequently canceled, ( we could not go through with it at that hospital) and in his latter he makes reference to it because he visited the surgery area to meet me.

Oh, one other thing I forgot to mention, he did say “thank you” to me! No, nothing to do with my daughters lack of care and how he was happy that I am not a sue happy person and just wanted them to know what happened…..No, he thanked me because HIS Ambassador at the hospital which took down our complaints apparently did not do her job and deliver the survey to the department head or anything…she just logged it on the computer and forgot about it. Thank you he says for allowing us to see the “gap” in  our service recovery efforts.  Well as you all know I am all about service recovery!!

 You are welcome Mr. Sparzo

If you spent $2000 on a product and that product, since about the 3rd month of use has not worked properly, what would you expect from the company with which you bought it from?

Would you expect the company in question to replace the product? Or offer free maintenance on this product, as long as the repair was not due to negligence? Maybe you would expect a refund?

Okay, all of the above seem reasonable to me.  Let me ask you this…would you expect the company to do nothing?  Would you expect the company, every time they come to your house to repair said piece of crap….opps…sorry!!! said product to charge you for the service? BUT not only to charge you but to charge you $139.00 per hour as well as a trip charge to come to your house to fix the product that you paid $2000 for and has not worked properly since 3 months after it was installed?

This is my opinion and it is how I was treated. In my opinion Kinetico does not agree with the above atatement. As far as I can see, Kinetico is in the business of making a bunch of money off of me by repeatedly doing repairs rather than fixing/replacing a piece of equipment. At least that is this customers experience. The way this is going we will have to pay to have this equipment fixed multiple times a year for as long as we have the equipment.  WE HAVE ALREADY SPENT TOO MUCH MONEY ON IT!

What about you? Are you a Kinetico customer? Have you had similar experiences with them? If so I would like to hear from you. Please comment this article.

And you know what else I really hate? When ever I call them, I get switched over to the repair department and it never fails, I tell my story to some guy and when I am finished there is a deafening silence! I do not get it. Do you guys train your service reps to ignore the customer when they call with a problem? Seriously, there is always total silence until I finally think they have hung up and ask if anyone is there and they are always like….”yes, give me a minute.”  WHAT, is it too much to ask that you interact a little with me so that I know you are still there?

Okay….I’m climbing down off the old soap box now. If any of you business owners would care to comment on how YOU would like it if a company treated you or your family this way and what you would, personally, expect from a company that you do major business with, please feel free to comment!

What do you think about a company that says one thing and does another? What does it say about a company that has a policy that they do not practice with any consistency.
Does it speak of a companies integrity if they do not stick to their own policy?

Okay- I suppose you are dying to know what in the heck has gotten my feathers in a tizzy! ( remember….metaphors…cliches…)

Here is the story-

So, I walk into the Krogers grocery store on Main St. in Plainfield, Indiana. I do my shopping,everything is going pretty well, as it usually does while I shop, not too long later I find that I am DONE and ready to check out!

Here comes the good stuff!

I approach the check out stand area, where there is a whole row of these stands, just like any other store, BUT there is not one cashier at any of them!!

Wait…wait..what is that I see over there? Ahhhh a lone cashier!!! YAY! OHHH wait, it is a EXPRESS lane…15 items or less! now I do not know about you, but I for one take signs in stores relating to their policy very seriously! In this particular store there is a BIG sign saying 15 items or LESS….not….”15 items or less unless there is no one else around to help you, in which case you can bring all of your items to the express lane”! No, it clearly says 15 items or LESS.

Okay, so I, being the law abiding citizen that I aspire to be, do not go to that cashier..oh NO, not I! I walk around a bit and look, wait and wonder…wonder you say??? Wonder about what? Glad you asked, I wonder about the phenomenon known as the “gathering of the bored employees who become blind to guests needing HELP!” phenomena! I have seen this in other stores, I have read about it in the newspaper, it is said that this phenomenon is manifesting in more and more businesses across the country!! And here it is right before my very own eyes!!!

WOW~ they are all gathered back there behind the one register that is working, YES the EXPRESS LANE..they are all chit chatting. Now, I did not want to startle them and cause them to scatter, I have not read up on what happens if you actually disturb the “gathering” of bored employees….maybe they would stampede and I would become injured?! Who knows, I do not want to take any chances here, so I nicely stand by the register lane looking lost and in need of help. I am hoping that someone might ask me if they can check me out. No such luck! Okay, let me walk up and down the isle a bit and see if one of them might notice me…..yes, yes, I think I have the attention of one of them!! BINGO!! YAY….he sees me..he sees me…

Okay, I relax and try to remain calm, he says they can help me at the open lane here…YES, THE EXPRESS LANE!!!!!!!! I am confused..for there is that BIG sign that says 15 ITEMS OR LESS! I surely have, 50 items OR LESS! I exclaim to them that I can not break the rules to which the cashier says ” I guess when there are no other cashiers available you can use the express lane regardless of how many items you have”

OH MY GOODNESS! I am shocked! I tell her that I would not have thought to go to the EXPRESS LANE, since it says- 15 ITEMS OR LESS! maybe they should put a sign up for us law abiding citizens…or did I say “aspiring” whatever!
The cashier just laughs…yeah, maybe we should!

So much for policy!

I wonder if that says anything about their integrity? What is my motivation to continue to be a law abiding ( DARN…ASPIRING) citizen??

I am so confused!

This is a letter that I wrote to the VP of Medical Affairs at HRH and copied it to a few others. (It is in regards to the post entitled Hendricks Regional Hospital and Paula Stephens-midwife)

Enclosed please find a posting that I wrote about my daughters hospital stay at your facility. Rather than rewrite it I decided to send it to you as is. You will get the full feeling behind her stay and what it was like for our family. (I am surprised we have not heard from anyone, we told a Ambassador before we left how bad the care given to my daughter was, she was taking a survey, so your hospital has the info)

My intention is to let you know how horrible the experience was for us and, hopefully, make sure it does not occur again. Unfortunately, my daughter has to be at your facility again on Aug 22nd for another procedure. I pray that this experience goes much better than the last.

As I stated in the posting, I would rather not have to entrust my daughters care to your facility again. I realize that living where we do we might not have much choice. At this point if it is within my power we will all go to Clarion West. My daughter had a procedure there after her stay at your facility and it was like night and day the way she was treated at Clarion West. I felt very good about leaving her in the hands of the Dr’s and nurses at Clarion; I cannot say the same about HRH.

I actually felt I needed to cancel a trip we had planned, so that I could be with my daughter for this upcoming procedure when I found out it would be at HRH. It is a pretty simple procedure and there should be no problems, unfortunately, we have little faith in your facility. I pray all goes well.

I hope that you read the enclosed and take it for how it was intended, a plea for better care when we put our lives in your facilities hands, not just for my family, but for all of the families in our community. Some very basic things were mishandled during her stay. I am sure some of it is probably just a family not knowing what is happening and a lack of communication on the part of the mid-wife, some of it though, indicates a very definite problem.

I do hope to hear back from you.

***UPDATE***As of today, Aug 22nd, I have received a call from the VP of Medical Affairs at HRH. We are in teh midst of a game of phone tag , but I hope to talk to him soon. His message was very pleasant and his exact words were that he wished to “chat” about my letter. I will keep you posted!