Billie and I had a really bad experience with The Brick recently. I wrote the regional VP of The Brick about it a few days ago, but I haven't received a response. Instead of retyping everything, I'll just copy portions of the original message I sent. Sorry for the wall of text:

I bought a 5-piece dinette set from The Brick and had it delivered to my home on March 10th. Upon unpacking, I noticed two of the chairs had significant damage to their backs, so I called the store and they had two replacement chairs delivered to me later in the week. I understand things like this happen from time to time, so it didn't bother me too much.

When I unpacked the replacement chairs, I assembled them both and noticed one of them had a leg that was about half an inch shorter than the others. As a result, you can imagine the chair was unreasonably wobbly. For a second time, I called the store and arranged to have another replacement chair delivered to me.

The replacement chair arrived a couple days later and I unpacked it. Immediately, I noticed the base of the chair was completely cracked. Not just a little fracture, the wood was broken in half. Frustrated now, I called the store a third time to have yet another replacement chair sent to me. This time, I was told that I had to wait significantly longer to receive a replacement, so I decided to drive to the warehouse myself to pick up the replacement. I explained to them that this was the 4th chair that I was returning, and I requested that the chair be assembled at the warehouse by somebody in the staff. I wasn't about to drive home with yet another broken or faulty chair. The man I spoke with (whom I forget the name of) insisted that nobody at the warehouse was able to assemble the chair for me. I politely explained the story to him, how this was the 4th chair I was returning, how it was an incredibly frustrating experience, but he still refused to help. I get it, policy is policy, right? The warehouse staff isn't supposed to assemble furniture, not even a single measly chair, so I was out of luck. Maybe they just didn't have a screwdriver hanging around. Defeated, I looked over the chair the best I could, didn't notice any obvious damage, and drove home with it in my back seat.

I neatly laid out the individual parts of the chair on the floor. Everything seemed to be there. I had all the proper screws, nuts and bolts. Time to assemble. Wait... What's this? Why won't this leg fit properly to the base? OH! It's because the warehouse staff gave me TWO LEFT LEGS.

Again, I called The Brick and explained the situation to them. This time I had them deliver a chair to the store and had them unpack and assemble it for me. A couple days later I was able to go to the store and pick it up.

I had to return five chairs. Five chairs from a dinette set that comes with four. That is worse than Ikea, the company that is known for selling the most mass produced cheap furniture. Something is seriously wrong there, and during the entire experience, I never heard a single "we're sorry" from anybody at the Brick. Even the regional VP who I wrote personally hasn't been able to get back to me.

If you're in the market for new furniture in the future, don't buy from The Brick.

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I've been meaning to write something about Zune fans for a while, so here goes. They are just as annoying as iPod fanboys.

I recently subscribed to a few Zune blogs in my feed reader so I could keep up with firmware updates (or the lack of them), and it seems most of the Zune related blogs offer nothing but the same tired "can your iPod do that?" arguments and blind praise for seriously flawed software. Makes me wonder if Microsoft is actually paying for this kind of garbage to be written, kinda like this completely realistic review of the Zune car charger/FM transmitter on Amazon:

I'm so glad I finally broke down and bought one of these. It's tiresome trying to find a good song on the radio or burning CD's all the time when you find new music you want to listen to in the car. With the FM Transmitter, you can listen to whatever you want, whenever you want. And couple that with the Zune Marketplace and your listening choices are limitless!

Please.

Dear electronic device owners: If your electronic device of choice works better for you than somebody else's electronic device of choice, keep it to yourself. Nobody cares except other people who use the same electonic device... And even then, you're just annoying a lot of them too.

I am writing this right after reading yet another article praising how awesome the Zune software is, and if you read my blog at all, you already know my thoughts on the Zune software. I immediately wanted to reply, but like most annoying blogs, I had to register before I could even comment. After registering, I posted my comment but it looks like it has to go through some kind of approval process first. Wouldn't want any negative (aka truthful) comments, would you? If my comment actually gets approved, I'll be surprised.

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Keith pointed out to me today that my last few posts on Twitter have been nothing but complaints about Microsoft products. It started off with a red-ringed Xbox, followed up shortly by disappointment resulting from an upgrade to MSN messenger (it is really ugly, please don't upgrade). I've complained heavily about my Zune before, but my frustration with their software resurfaces whenever I try to sync a large amount of songs. To my surprise, my complaint about the Zune software on Twitter today was somehow received automatically by the ZuneFAQ Twitter account. It was surprsing because requests to any kind of Microsoft support system usually result in a series of automated replies. The last one I recieved denied support to me because it somehow assumed I lived in the UK, where Zunes are not sold. I think the guy (or gal) behind the ZuneFAQ twitter account expected me to reply with a fairly trivial support problem, because after replying with 4 major flaws that I've found in the Zune software, I did not receive a single reply in return. Nice.

In the past, I've attempted to register my Zune online in order to request it be sent in to fix a battery problem, but I was unable, due to a horribly broken request form. It asked me to fill in my name and address, but the address fields were both disabled and required. Submitting the form just brought me back to the same page, telling me that I needed to fill out the entire form. Maybe if you would let me, I would. I ran into a similar problem when I tried to register my recently broken Xbox online to see if it was still eligible for warranty. I went to the registration page where I was told to fill out a form, but there was no form. Just a header saying "Register Your Console" and a blank page. I guess they figure the harder they make it for customers to request repairs, the less they'll have to spend fixing their own mistakes.

Microsoft, if you are reading this, I am going to pirate Windows 7 just like I pirated Windows XP and Windows Vista. I am going to pirate it and send it to my friends so they can use it for free, too. You don't deserve my money.

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Color me surprised. After sending an email to the Tim Hortons website, expressing my frustration with their staff and attaching a photo of my burned bun, I got a call today from the corporate office with an official apology. The lady on the phone was very polite and informed me she would be contacting the specific Tim Hortons that sold me the burned sandwich, and that she will follow up with me in 2-3 business days.

Stay tuned as the story develops.

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When I started my blog, I made a promise not to post any long winded rants, and I don't intend to break that promise today. I just want to share a few stories. Okay I might break it a little.

Just over a year ago I started an Excel sheet called "why i hate tim hortons.xls" where I documented every single screw up that Tim Hortons made while ordering food from any of their locations. Unfortunately, with most things I start, I never really dedicated myself to it and I stopped keeping track of their mistakes. My original plan was to send a copy of it to every nearby Tim Hortons location and one to the corporate offices, letting them know the frequency of screw-ups that they make, and point out that these are just my documented incidents. The number of unreported mistakes would probably be tenfold. I was reminded of this again today when I ordered a toasted chicken club sandwich, and the bun wasn't so much toasted as it was black as coal. It smelled like it was in a fire. It bugs me that somebody there saw it and was like "Yes, this is acceptable as food". I made the effort to return it to their manager informing them that I did not care to eat their bun. I didn't expect anything in return, I just wanted them to have their bun back.

As much as I love living in the 21st century, one of the things that bugs me the most (besides kids these days) is how completely indifferent people are towards mediocrity. It's almost become accepted. I long to live in a time when an establishment would go out of business if they consistently produced shabby products or services. I suppose it still happens with locally owned businesses, but it saddens me that places can create a name for themselves as being below average, yet still thrive. People just accept it.

I pride myself in boycotting places that are consistently poor in service or quality of products. I know it probably doesn't make a huge difference to most places, but at least I know my money isn't going into their managers' pockets. I stopped going to a particular Subway because the staff consistently took 20-30 minutes to make a sandwich when I was the only person in the restaurant. I stopped going to a particular Starbucks because their wonderful barista told me I should speak clearer next time they screw up my order.

Today also marks the day that I begin my campaign of sending one email a day to Microsoft, requesting that they include support for disc number tags in their Zune software. A feature so basic that it should have been included in version 1.0 of their software, but still isn't included in version 3.0. Instead they add a clock and game support. I guess I could play Sudoku while my albums play out of order.

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