Ok, well, I know this is a strange title, it is what came to me though! 

Here is what happened, I wake up this morning and perform my regular activities which always end with the bank account. Around 11am I check my bank account and Loon Lake Lodge has overcharged my card for last nights dinner!  So, overcharged you say?  Like how much?  Well, the bill was approx 149.00 and they have taken out over 500!  They hit my debit card not once, not twice…not even THREE times…NO, they hit it FOUR times! 

On the upside……I called and spoke to Chad, one of the managers, and he was very polite and accommodating. He is calling my bank right now attempting to get them to remove all the charges, other than the ONE charge. I give him credit for taking the bull by the horns and trying to make this right without my having to beat him over the head!

Something to keep in mind……….when I spoke to him I was NICE. I did not accuse and I tried to be understanding. We did talk about the fact that this can really make serious problems for people by overdrawing their accounts, but he also pointed out that it was not the restaurant that holds the money, it is the bank.  BUT..it is his server that charged my card 4 times. So, we were both understanding and he is going above and beyond to make it right. I have been in this position before with other merchants and they never made it right. They just said that I had to wait for it to clear and that they were not going to overcharge me in the end.

I like this attitude much  better than the other

   It is a family tradition to take my son in law, Christopher, out to dinner for

his birthday. One of his favorite places to eat is

Loon Lake Lodge. Located on I 69 and 82nd St. in

Indianapolis, Indiana this is a pretty nice place to

eat at. 

When you enter the lodge the first thing you notice is that it is a really old establishment. It is over 100 years old, it is family owned and operated and opened it’s doors in 1888!

You walk into something that could be on Disney property….well, have you ever seen the Country Bear Jamboree? It is not crazy like that, they do not put on a show, but it has animatronics. They are wildlife, like bears and a owl, there are heads hanging all over the lobby. Ya know, heads of animals that have been hunted. Every 20 or 30 minutes the animals come to life,there is alot of wild life noise, it is pretty cool, my granddaughter loves it.

The servers are friendly, the atmosphere is good. The restrooms…yeah, I know!!! LOL  the restrooms are pretty cool due to the fact that they have “sanie sensor” doors!!! I am not sure on the spelling but these are doors that have sensors so that you do not have to touch them to get out of the restroom after washing your hands!!! How cool is that!!!!  Okay, so they get kudos for the restrooms BUT…how can you have such a cool device yet not have it working!!!!! Yup, that is right, it is out of order! Only the ladies room, the men’s room works just fine, not fair!

The food? It is good, it is on the higher end of prices but it is good. I found out tonight that Loon Lake buys their meat from the same vendor as Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse….cool.  The prices are not as high ended as Ruth’s Chris and it is the same vendor….pretty good. You can assume though that the meat that RC gets might be of a higher quality…possibly. This is very good meat though.  At our table tonight we had Sirloin, Prime Rib ( 20.00 I think) , 14 oz.NY Strip ( 28.00) Swordfish ( 19.95) Shrimp ( 16.95 )  and a childs sirloin which was 8.95. There were a few different appetizers but the only one I can remember the price on was the onion rings , it was 11.95.

As I said, the food was good. We had a half bottle of Martini and Rossi Asti Spumante that was 11.00, I believe.

So, my only complaint…..when I made the reservation the girl told me that she did not have the new book for 2009,  she assured me that she would get the reservation in the book after she hung  up with me. I called earlier today to confirm, of course it was not in there. When I called I spoke to a girl who told me she could not figure out if I had a ressie or not to please call her back in a while….give her some time to go check in  the back office.  LOL…okay… I called back about 15 minutes later and was told they did not have the ressie, it was never added but they would make sure we had a table ready for us when we arrived and were very nice about the whole thing.  As it turned out…it all was good!  I just wish it had not seemed so disorganized.

Overall, I give them a A+ !!

OH…they used to have a plane on the roof that appeared to go through the roof…like it crashed! It is gone,   :(  now, the plane just sits on the roof! Wonder what happened…if anyone reads this and knows the answer, please let me know! We all miss the plane!!

If you have read my previous postings you will know already that I have had what could be termed a “bad experience” with a contractor,  who did work at my house (I am going to have to deal with said contractor on some things that have come up so stay tuned to see how he deals with that).

We decided to finish the basement which the previous contractor, in our opinion, wanted too much $$$ to do the finish,  so we said we didn’t want him to do it. Although we were going to pay the price and have him come back and finish it at a later date, until things went awry.

Okay, so Twin Builders is the name of the company that we chose to finish our partially finished basement  I already told you that prior to the job they had promised things that I thought were awesome BUT I was being cautious about the whole thing. I mean, once bitten twice shy, right? I thought it all could be too good to be true!

So, they claimed they would have the job done prior to Christmas, in approx. 17 days and that it would cost us $10,000 for the basement and then between 2000-3500 for the flooring if we wanted them to do it. So, about $13,500 on the higher end.  Now, with the other guy we signed a contract for a certain amount but he did the standard act for a contractor and the original $$ amount kept going up, so much so that we had to cancel a few major things..like the complete deck and part of the siding!  Anyway, we were prepared to be disappointed if this company turned out to be like the other.

So, you may want to know what happened, considering I am here and the job should be done! Okay, I will not make you wait any longer.

This company, Twin Builders, in one word is PROFESSIONAL! My gosh they are the BEST I have worked with. You may think my only experience is with the other contractor but it is not!! We built a house also, with a different contractor…so we have some experience and these guys are the BEST! If you live in the Indianapolis area, please call them. They are beyond good! I do not think there is a term in the English language that can express how happy we are with the way they performed! PROFESSIONAL.

This company not only delivered on every promise they went above and beyond the contract and NO we were never charged a penny more! That was the first thing everyone we talked to about this asked….how much did they charge you to do that? Nope..nothing. There were just some things that they looked at and said…”hey, you know that is expected” and they did it. Example…a light in the laundry room…framed the hoses, a light in the utility room ( they were not even doing any work in there) a new light on the stairwell ( there was one there but they didn’t feel it represented the NEW look so they changed it out with our permission) the stairwell…it was already drywalled, but they redid the entire thing because it was not as nice as the rest of the room. These things might seem little or to be expected items, but construction doesn’t always work that way, we have learned that. It is the small things that make a company referable..( is that a word?)  Anyway, they are some of the best people to work with. They are polite and fast and good. The work is quality! And they will not leave a job if it does not meet their standards! They do walkthroughs during every stage of the project and do not expect a penny unless it passes the walk through. We paid each time because it passed!  When we did the finale walk through there were a couple of things we did not notice but the manager did….the guys will be coming back out to finish up on these small items. And these small items are like caulking around a vent… and a couple of other  drywall items, but he could not let the job be finished until they were done! He didn’t expect to be paid….but asked us if it was ok to agree they would come back for those minor items and that we could make the finale payment. IF that was ok with us, that would be great, and of course it was!

SO, YES it is done, on time and it did not cost us anymore than stated!!!  AM I happy? Ummmmmmmmmmm let me think…..YEAH!

We love our basement and we are happy to refer them to anyone.

We want to have them come back to finish our deck and build a pool! 

Twin Builders (317)862-4611

7335 Preamble Ct, Indianapolis, IN 46259                                                        

Ask for Jim Kernodle-Tell him Christine Martin referred you! Maybe he will give us a break on the work to come!  :)  You reading this Jim?

You want to follow a construction job from start to finish? Okay here is your chance.

We interviewed a couple of companies for the finish of our basement. The interviews are over and we have picked our company! Now, you know that we have had a terrible experience with a previous contractor so we have been rather shy about hiring someone else.  I am going to let you know what we think from the start and then let  you know how it turns out. Pics and all!

 I will post a pic soon of the way the basement currently looks.

The company we picked is Twin Builders. Not wanting to name names…..as per my policy!!! I will just say that a very nice man came to our house on 2 different occassion and each time said the same things. We met him once and then about 2 months later we met again and asked to go over everything and he was dead on in everything he said the first and second times. One thing that happened with our last experience is that the contractor said things when we met and then they were not in the contract and of course we did not think of them until we were actually NOT getting them. We are being much more careful this time around. We have alos let this company know that we had a bad experience and will be watching them carefully. They had no problem with that at all.

End result is that they won our business and we are very excited to get started. We probably will not start for a few weeks but I will keep you updated as things progress. The entire job will only take approx. 17 days!! We will have it done before Christmas! YAY!  OH and I forgot to mention the price they gave us was 50% LESS then the company that did our previous work estimated for us on the same project. You would think since the last people were doing many, many jobs in our house they would have charged alot less…ya know for bulk work or something! But no, these people offered more work at less cost.

Stay tuned…………………

 Logan’s Roadhouse is awesome! LOL….I have avoided visiting this restaurant because my parents told me that they did not have a good experience here. THAT should havecaused me to visit them and I am addressing that line of reasoning within myself at the moment!   A person who lives to sniff out GOOD or BAD customer service should not be avoiding a restaurant due to someone else’s BAD experience!!! DOH!

Ok, now that I am done with THAT..let me move on.

 I will start with the bathrooms, you know me, I love to check out those bathrooms and see if they are usable for all of us girls who like a CLEAN bathroom! The bathrooms at Logan’s are not anything special, BUT they have doors that swing both ways! At least at the one I frequent they do. I LOVE doors that swing out and these doors swing both ways! WHOOHO….I love them! The bathrooms are clean and as I said nothing special but cool doors.

You want to know just how good the customer service is at this restaurant? Our first visit was last Wed Oct 29th and we have been back 2 more times since then! We must really think they are great. And they are. 

Our first visit was, as I said, Wed around 5pm. They were moderately busy. We were seated immediately and our server was at our table within a minute. She was very efficient and very personable. She kept our glasses full and the food on the table. She talked to us about the menu and just enough about other t hings to be interesting but not intrusive. Midway through our meal a manager approached our table and said he heard we were first time visitors, we said we were and he welcomed us and gave us a “come back” card for a free appetizer when we return ( YES, we used it on Sunday) he was very nice. When we finished our meal another manager approached our table and welcomed us and offered us another card, we enlightened her to the fact that the other manager had already gave us a card. She applauded our honesty and welcomed us to come back and visit them again.

Our 2 subsequent visits have been just as good and the servers have been just as good as the first. We had different servers each time.

Would you like a recommendation? I am not a big steak person, my husband is, but I had the Onion Brewsky Sirloin and it is THE BOMB! WOW…..if you like onions with your steak this is your piece of cow! The Buffalo wings are very good too.

Go visit them, they are great! Customer service at its  best!

Tell them Christine sent you!

Yesterday was the day of the service call from Kinetico. I was scheduled for a visit somewhere between 1-5pm. Fortunately I work from home so that is ok with me!

Around 3:15 or so Kirk from Kinetico arrives at my house and we head downstairs to look at the Sulfurguard. He takes it apart and while he is doing that we have a nice visit. I explain everything to him about the way the techs on my previous calls didn’t appear to really want to help, I don’t think he was really listening ( he WAS busy) because a few minutes later he tells me that the only way they can fix the equipment is if WE CALL THEM and tell them it is acting up!! Which is a very valid point to make except in my case I DID call and was told that they would not do anything to help me other than come out AGAIN and charge me AGAIN at which point i said…FORGET IT!! I have had enough! And I do not need to go over that story again…..you all have heard it before. I did set Kirk straight though and tell him this to which he said that is not the normal way things should be handled when and IF there is a chronic problem with a piece of equipment.

According to Kirk, when there is a chronic problem HE should be notified at which point he will get involved and see what the problem is. They do not like to have to repeatedly go to customers houses to repair the same thing over and over. That makes sense to me.

Well, he went over everything with me and hopefully we have it all straightened out. He did not charge me, he acted as though they never said they were going to charge me, he said my service slip said ZERO on the bill. But, they told me on the phone that there would be a charge of $139.00 per hour. He confirmed that this is the amount they charge but he would not be charging me. Okay. Thank you.

As you can see, Ms. Miner has left another comment letting us all know that Kinetico stays on top of customer opinions and it must have been a Google Alert that lead her to my Blog post.

I am beginning to wonder if Ms. Miner is a robot?! JUST KIDDING…..if you are a person, I apologize, I’m just playing! I like to try and use a little humor in these blogs, sometimes that is harder to do than others!

Bottom line- Kinetico got involved to help recover a customer service issue. That is all I am asking for!

Sometimes I take a long time to write a review. But hey! I still have not wrote the one up about my home remodel!!! I will..I will…it is just when it is controversial, I think it needs some time to lapse between the service and the review..to get some CLEAR perspective! If ya know what I mean!

But that is not the case with this review! I have just taken my time cuz I….DID!

What can I say about Kathy Moore and The Blog Shoppe?

First and foremost let me say that Kathy knows how to give great customer service!! You will not be disappointed in the service at all!

Beyond that?
Well, I just love her! Really! She helped me with this new blog and the Forum! She helped me with the whole redesign of my site. I am sure alot of you out there know….a website redesign can be a daunting task!

I found Kathy through a referral on www.mommymillionaire.com . The referrer had many good things to say about Kathy and her work. I e-mailed her and after a slow start we really got into things and stuff got to moving.

Now, let me say the “slow” start was not Kathy’s fault! I do not blame her in the least!

When I originally emailed her I told her I was talking to a few different people and needed to figure out who would be best suited to help me. She really was waiting on me to make a decision. Once I did we were off and running.

I really enjoyed working with Kathy. She is very patient and creative, I LOVE those qualities in a person!!! She listened to me as I tried to figure out exactly what is was that I wanted for my new design. Let me tell you I have a file of emails that amount to well over 50!!! We were burning up cyberspace!

She did a redesign and made a banner for my site..see the GURLZ?? I love them! She found me hosting and did all the techie stuff!

I just sat back and said…”yes, I love that”……”uh, no, not that” ” ummm, could you change the colors?” “oh, could you change them back?” “Oh, one last thing, can you add this”? “Kaaaaaaaaaaaaathyyyyyyyyyy, did I say, one last thing”???? “Kathy,Kathy,Kathy,Kathy,Kathy…..” I bet she is glad this is done!!
And she did it all with a “virtual smile” on her face. I know she was smiling, I COULD FEEL IT!

If you need someone to help you with a new blog, Kathy Moore is your GURL! www.theblogshoppe.com

Go see what she can do for you and tell her that Christine sent you……or maybe you should not to mention my name??? LOL Ahh what the heck, live on the edge!

We dined at Bonefish tonight and as usual it was a wonderful dining experience!

If you have never been to Bonefish then I have only 2 words for you…..OR maybe a picture is better than TWO words!

IF you do not recognize this picture let me enlighten you.

The above picture is only one of the BEST appetizers in the world! Bang Bang Shrimp! YES….ask anyone about Bonefish and if they know of it they know of Bang Bang Shrimp!

We go to Bonefish just for this appetizer, well, my husband goes for the steak as well and the gorgonzola butter! He loves it although tonight I think they went a little heavy on the blue cheese rather than the butter.

The location that we frequent, now that the Avon location has closed, is the one in Greenwood Indiana and the one in Orlando! Just to back track here a little, I cannot imagine what would possess the powers to be to close the Avon location!!! Crazy! The place was always busy when we were there. I talked to the manager about it and she would not say, this was the manager at the greenwood location ( maybe a assistant manager) she would not say but said she hoped we would just visit them instead. She seemed rather uncomfortable about the conversation..whatever! If anyone out there knows why they would shut the Avon location, please let me know!

The Greenwood location as well as the Orlando location are great. We have always received excellent service while visiting. The food is always good. The restaurant gives you a nice night out if you want something a little bit higher ended then Applebee’s or LONGHORNS! HA! You knew I would work Longhorns in here somehow………. we are talking about FOOD aren’t we?

The restaurants are clean and the staff is always friendly. Maybe a little too efficient tonight. We were not finished with one course and then another one would come out. It would probably have been better if they slowed down a bit, but the person who brought out my salad ( not our server) said he would take it back because it appeared that maybe they were rushing us…no,no…that is ok, maybe you could just get us some silverware?? LOL

Other than that one fau paux the evening was perfection. The steaks were excellent as was the Bang Bang Shrimp, as IF it could be anything but perfection!

OH and the bathrooms?? YES, clean!! And very nice. Thank you!

So eat bang bang shrimp and be merry for tomorrow they might shut down your favorite location without any good reason, at least one that they will share with you!

Yes, that is right! I have gone and done it again!

I have spent another Saturday evening grazing at Longhorn Steakhouse!! You knew I would…didn’t you? Yes, you did!

Okay….I always have nice things to say about the service and food at Longhorn Steakhouse BUT that is all gonna stop right here and NOW! I can not say anything nice about the waitress that we had tonight!!!!!

Ya know what she did??? huh? Ya wanna know??? I ordered the Chocolate Stampede for dessert, she says very innocently ” OH that is my favorite”!!! Okay good I say, then it must be excellent!!! We have an endorsement!! Then she brings it out to the table and
BAM!!!!!!!!! I almost fell over! As a matter a fact, my exclamation was so loud that everyone around us started offering to help me eat it!
She could have warned me that it was a dessert for TWO!!!!!!!!

Of course I am kidding!!!! Don’t get your panties in a tizzie!! Have I ever shared with you that I tend to mix my metaphors and cliches??? I DO!! Stick around, you will start to notice. I am NOT dumb..I’M BLOND!

Okay…the service was impeccable, the food was good and I am stuffed!
DID I eat it all??? HECK NO! The other half is in the fridge!

Good eating and GOODNIGHT!

OH-YES, it was fantabulously scrumptious!!! YUM!

I was surfing the web looking for some interesting things on customer service when I found this video.

I think  it is interesting…..
I have posted one review/rating on my site about Starbucks and it was not favorable! I have to say that it was just the particular Starbucks I was in at the time. I frequent a Starbucks in Plainfield, Indiana and I have nothing but good things to say about them, really…they are great!

Sorry for the bad review for the Starbucks in the Belterra Casino and Resort but that girl you have working for you should not be serving guests!! She is not happy! Or could be she just had a bad day, but it was bad..that is for sure! She was mean to a sweet little girl and I dont like that! Okay I will hush now

So on with the video!