jamesjbigler

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Anger Management Problems

Flew off my rocker too many times today.

The day started off with me using a really bad analogy when trying to help my girlfriend. I was trying to help, but what I said was insulting and wrong. I quickly realized my mistake, but the damage was done. I left the house pretty frustrated with myself.

I rode a couple hundred yards from my house and then stopped at a light. There were two lanes in the road. One is a right turn only lane and one lane is either for going straight or for turning left. I was in the left lane planning to go straight. This guys pulls up next to me half in the right hand lane half in my lane. I try to get his attention, but he pulls up further so we can't make eye contact. So I pull up further and get right in his driver side window. At first he won't roll his window down. He is talking on the phone and pretending not to notice me. So I start waving my hands and yelling at him.

Finally he rolls his window down. He says "What".

I say "What are you doing?" in a very annoyed and confrontational tone.

He says "What do you mean?"

I say "Are you turning left?" (again in a very smart ass way)

He says "I was planning to."

I say "Do you normally pull up on the right hand side of a car in a right hand turn only lane and turn left in front of other cars?"

He gives me a look like fuck you and rolls his window back up.

The light turns green and we both take off but I beat him into the intersection. I cut in front of him and glare at him. Then pedal on my way.

I am proud I stood up for myself, but I wish I could have been less confrontational about it. He is probably just waiting to run over some poor roadie now.

After I got to work, I sent off some shit-o-grams to the customer service people at batteryspace.com.

I ordered some rechargeable batteries from them a couple weeks ago for my commuter lights. The day I got them I tried to charge four of the AAA batteries in the charger I got from them. After about an hour or so the light went from red to green so I went to take the batteries out of the charger. They were much hotter than I would have expected. I would expect that they would be a little warm but they were very hot. I thought this was weird but I assumed since they were brand new it must be okay. I double checked the polarity of the batteries in the charger and tried another set. Again in about an hour or so they light changed and I took the batteries off. The batteries were not quite as hot but i thought a felt some kind of slick liquid on the batteries. I had just finished dinner so I thought maybe my fingers were just greasy. I put a third set of batteries in the charger. When the light went green on the third set the batteries were cold and covered in liquid. There was also liquid in the charger. I was pretty sure this was not normal so I sent an email that day to battery space people.

They wrote back pointing me to their warranty/return page. After reading the page I got a really bad feeling like I wasn't getting any money back. So I wrote them back and told them I would be sending the stuff I bought back.

The guy wrote me back and said he would refund the AAA batteries, but he would charge a 20% restocking fee for the charger and AA batteries I ordered. Also I would have to ship him the defective batteries at my own expense.

I basically sent him a nasty email telling him I thought what he was doing was not fair. I have no safe way of knowing if the AA batteries or the charger are not defective. I also asked if he knew the AAA batteries were defective then why did he ship them to me?

I think paying $7 in shipping to return a $10 set of batteries is not fair.

Anyways I am sure as a customer service person he has to take shit all day so what I did doesn't help anyone. I guess I have too high a level of expectations for customer service from a discount online store. If I want customer service I would be better off buying from a local store and paying full price.

2 comments:

Mark D. said...

I can totally relate when it comes to anger management on the road.
One of my new year resolutions was to try and not lose my cool while road riding.That resolution lasted about an hour.
I'm still working on it but it is really hard to not over react when my life is at stake and people in vehicles could seem to care less.

James Bigler said...

Thanks Mark. Glad I am not the only one.