My 5-year old “Olympic” Swimmer
In her mind, she swims a 16 second 25 meter freestyle. Her butterfly is flawless and she moves through the water like a dolphin. She doesn’t think it’s a big deal at all that she still lifts her head straight up to take a nice long breath (and possibly have a conversation with someone standing nearby), while grabbing the side of the pool, to get ready for another whole three strokes. Yes, in her mind, she is practically an Olympic qualifying swimmer.
The reality is that she is 5 years old and wants to be just like her big sister. She’s not there yet, but her mind tells her she is ready.
She’s not.
Last night, Sassy tried out the 8 & Under program at Big I’s swimming club. We signed her up during the winter for the 6-week spring session. She had started taking private lessons and was doing really well. Enter broken tibia and long cast for four weeks. It was a major set-back. After spending almost four full weeks in physical therapy, she was just released last week. The leg injury brought all kinds of challenges for her. When she finally got back in the water, it was like she completely forgot how to do backstroke, something she was doing just fine weeks earlier. Everything suffered and she fell behind.
Her coach didn’t think she was ready and neither did I. So on Monday, she sat with me and watched her sister swim. She also watched the 8 and under’s practice. On Tuesday she told me that she wanted to try.
So last night, she suited up a good two hours before practice started and packed her swim bag all by herself. She was so excited and determined. When it was time for practice to start, she marched her tiny little body over to the lanes without a glance back in my direction. She got in the water, last in her lane, and set out on a long lap of freestyle. She made it to the first set of flags (about seven strokes) and then lifted her head straight up to breathe. She also grabbed the wall and had a conversation with her coach. She dug right back in and went another three strokes before grabbing the wall again. It was absolutely painful for me to watch. She wanted it so badly, but it was plainly obvious she’s just not ready yet.
She finally made it to the end of the pool and prepared to go back, another 25 of freestyle. This one was even slower, more deliberate, and involved much more doggy paddle and wall holding. The one coach motioned for me to come down. It was over, a valient attempt.
As I made my way to the end of the lane to retrieve her, her coach said, “She just needs to get stronger. I feel so bad because she wants it so badly and she is trying SO hard.” I told her not to feel bad. She had tried and she would come back when she was ready.
I met Sassy at the end of the lane and grabbed her little hands to help her out. I told her she did a great job and that she was all finished. She looked confused. As we walked around the pool, I told her I would help her get a shower and get dressed, and that she just needed some more lessons before starting at the club program. She stopped in her tracks, looked up at me in disbelief and said, “But I am doing it!”
In her head, she’s a mini Dana Torres, and when she is finally ready. . . look out.
Take Another Little Piece of My Money. . . NOT
Lately I feel like the world has been aligned against me. It’s one ridiculous thing after another. First, it was my sister’s wedding and wedding gown debacle. That wasn’t really my own personal issue, but I took it personally. It has since been completely resolved and my Mom has received a check refunding the entire cost of the gown and alterations.
Then it was a ridiculous medical bill. Thankfully, my husband takes great pride in solving our medical bill dilemmas. I swear he once fought a baby ultrasound charge that didn’t get resolved officially until our daughter was like three. We’re nothing if not persistent.
After my insurance denied the use of alloderm in my leg (because they only approve it for breast surgery), we had to pay, out of pocket and up front on the day of the surgery, over $900 for a small piece of donor tissue for my leg. (I don’t understand why he couldn’t have just billed it like it was going in my boob. Lord knows if my insurance company had taken one look at my chest they would have approved that.) We thought the charges were finished, but that $900 some dollars didn’t include the surgeon’s fees to actually “place” the alloderm in my leg. The insurance paid for the screw removal, but they refused to pay for that, despite the fact that otherwise I would have spent my life kneeling on bone. My surgeon sent us a bill for $1800 last week. That’s his fee just for that small portion of the surgery. We felt like we had been punched in the gut.
You have to understand that for the past three years, we have been paying my medical bills for three surgeries, many MRI’s and bone scans, and months of physical therapy. It is not cheap. It has been a huge burden on our family. Mr. BBM called our insurance company. He asked them, if they had approved the charge, how much they would have actually paid the surgeon. The amount was $267.
$1800. . . $267. Not fair.
So, he called their office and asked to negotiate. Their first offer was pathetic. It was a $400 reduction, not enough. Their second offer was a lot better. . . $400. I dropped the check off last week and my medical bills (until I give birth, of course), are now paid for in full.
There was a collective sigh of relief through the BBM household.
Then I checked my business checking account for my Miche Bag business (I sell them and ship and they make fabulous Mother’s Day presents-just saying). A service I had refused had been charged to my account anyway. Despite the fact that I verbally and via email said I did not want to use their PCI compliance provider (you don’t have to understand PCI compliance-just know that it’s all BS and another way to skewer small business and if I ever see Barnie Frank and his posse, I will tell them so), nor did I want the $129 fee taken from my account.
They took it anyway.
I called them and had a fit. They eventually relented and told me they would refund the money. It didn’t happen when they said it would happen or nearly fast enough so I disputed the charge through my bank. My merchant company then notified me that they would be refusing to refund the money since I had disputed it. That makes a whole heck of a lot of sense.
So today I canceled my merchant account with them. And while I was in the process of doing so, the guy happened to mention, very quietly and quickly, a $295 early termination fee. Uh-uh, I don’t think so.
I told him to rewind a bit. I told him that I signed no such contract, that in fact my quote said, “no contract, no early termination fees and no commitment.” Otherwise, I wouldn’t have signed.” He talked back to me the way my 10-year old does sometimes, and I shut him down. “I’m emailing you the copy of my quote now. Do you have it?”
“Uh, yes, I’m going to need to put you on hold and review this,” he said.
“Yeah, you do that,” I told him, and then sat here swearing like a sailor while he blasted craptastic music in my ear. It took about two minutes for him to come back.
“So, we’re going to cancel your account and we will not be charging you a cancellation fee, as per your quote and contract,” he said.
I told him I needed an email with that in writing before I signed anything. I also told him I’d be needing my $129 refund. He confirmed that it was already processing.
If I wasn’t smart, if I didn’t have documentation and major will power to deal with these losers, I’d be out $424, which is roughly the commission I made on my last party. Many people do not like confrontation. I don’t either really. I just happen to be pretty good at it when I have to be. Can you imagine the number of merchants who get totally screwed over by these people on a daily basis because they just don’t want to fight? This world is full of people willing to take advantage of you and rip you off. Raising smart and respectful kids is not enough these days. You need to raise them to be savvy and intuitive and persistent too. Without the necessary skills, it is easy to see why so many people get duped, ripped off and flat-out taken advantage of. . .
I’m glad I’m not one of them.
How to Get Results When You Have a Consumer Complaint
Two weeks ago, my sister’s wedding was called off. That is her story to tell and not mine. A few days after this happened, she asked my Mom and me to go to the bridal shop to pick up her wedding gown. She didn’t want to do the final try-on or pick it up. We agreed. When we got there, the seamstress almost seemed annoyed that she wasn’t there to try on her gown; so I told her that we were picking it up because the wedding had been called off. Could she please just bag it up and get it ready to go? My Mom and I never unzipped the opaque bag to look at the gown, assuming everything would be ok. We were too distracted by the fact that my bridesmaid gown had been shipped to California instead of the East Coast. We got that straightened out and drove home.
Four days later, my Mom wanted to see if a shawl she had been knitting for my sister, would have matched the gown. She unzipped the gown bag and the dress had been hung inside it, backwards. That seemed odd, but my Mom didn’t anticipate any problems. She gently pulled the one side back to look at the front of the gown and she saw a huge gash in the center of the dress, right under the bust. She immediately called me in a panic and I told her to get off the phone with me and call the store. They asked her to bring the gown in, so a week ago, my Mom and I drove another hour back to the store to show them the gown.
When we arrived at the shop, one of the employees went to get the manager. When she finally emerged from the back of the store, I could tell things were not going to go well. She was scowling at us before she even approached us. My Mom explained what happened and showed her the gown. The manager did that quick head nod thing that people do when they want you to just hurry up and get on with it. She combined it with pursed lips and an evil glare. When my Mom finished talking, she took the gown, hung it on the seamstress’s rack in the back of the store and said, “You’ll need to talk to her. She’s the last person who touched the dress.”
My Mom looked at me and whispered, “passing the buck.” We knew things were going downhill quickly.
The seamstress came to the front of the store with the gown after we waited a good 15 minutes, all the while getting evil glares from the manager. She looked at the gown and then accused my Mom of intentionally cutting the gown with scissors. She wasn’t quiet about it. My Mom, an honest woman who thinks “sucks” is a bad word, was obviously in shock. She held up her hands and said, “No, no, no, I’m not accusing you of doing anything to the gown. I’m wondering if maybe, when it was being bagged up, if it got caught on a hanger or something and ripped?” The seamstress repeated her accusation and it was time for me to step in.
“I don’t think you understand,” I told her and the manager. “My Mom is not here because she wants her money back. She simply wants the gown either fixed (if it can be) or replaced. This dress is neither wearable or salable at this point. That’s what she wants so what’s it going to be?”
The seamstress stormed away with the dress mumbling that she would try to fix it. The manager continued to give us evil glares. At this point, I asked the manager, quietly and politely, if I could please have the name of her boss and phone number. I said I would also like a phone number for customer service at their corporate office. She screamed back at me, “What do you need my boss’s info for? I didn’t do anything!” and I politely told her that I needed that info because she was being extremely rude. She wrote down a first name for me, not her name, and handed me a piece of paper. She seemed extra annoyed when I told her I would also be needing her name.
About three minutes after the seamstress stormed away with the dress, she was back, with a sewing job that could have easily been duplicated by my 5-year old daughter, while blindfolded. My Mom, always polite and kind, actually thanked the seamstress for the hack job she had just done on the gown and zipped it up. I told my Mom we weren’t going to get anywhere with these women and mentioned loud enough for them to hear that they had screwed with the wrong person.
The hour drive home was brutal because I had steam coming out my ears and my Mom was on the verge of tears. Never, in her entire life, had anyone treated her so terribly. They treated her like a criminal and she was devastated. I told her I would fix it when I got home. I don’t get sad; I get mad (and even).
Within seconds of walking in my house, I was on the computer. I worked as a recruiter for five years. I can find the name, phone number and email address of anyone in the business world within minutes. And that’s just what I did. . .
Step 1: Find the highest person to contact possible. Don’t waste your time screaming at the local manager who is simply a parrot and possibly a jerk too. Look for a CEO, President or VP; top executives are key. They are the ones who make things happen. Websites like manta.com can help. Within seconds I had the name of the CEO. I also knew from an article I found that he took over the company from his parents, who started it. Even better. A quick browse through google revealed the bridal company’s root email system. They are frequently things like firstinitiallastname@company.com or something similar. I believe I had the CEO’s email in about three minutes flat.
Step 2: Craft a professional letter. If you start out with a rant, you’re a “crazy consumer” and they don’t want to hear it. It’s easy to dismiss you. If you start out with a compliment, you have them hooked. I started out by telling them that 12 years ago, I wore one of their bridal gowns and it was gorgeous. My sister loved mine so much that she wanted to wear a gown from that company too. I told the story about how we drove over an hour each way, many times, to try on gowns, choose a gown, and have alterations done. And then I explained my experience in vivid detail. A complaint letter is nothing if it doesn’t start out with honey, explain the complaint and then say what you want. I spelled it out: either replace the gown or fix it (this option didn’t seem possible after what happened). I also mentioned at the end of the letter that I had already filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. I mentioned that I have written a blog for over five years and then mentioned the many places where I have been syndicated and published over the years. I told them I’d be happy to share my experience with my readers across the state, the country and the world. I also provided a link where other negative reviews of that store had been posted. I told them I wasn’t alone and that they had a real problem in that store. And then I thanked them for their time.
Step 3: Find more executives to contact. I sent the letter within an hour of being back home, but the next morning, when I got home from work, I hadn’t heard from anyone yet, so I looked for more executives. You can find these names on business websites, in press releases on the company’s website and in news articles too. I emailed a ton of them but I pasted all their emails inside the BCC area. That way, with a header like “Dear Owners, Executives and Employees,” they have no idea how very far-reaching your email happen to be. It compels them to want to quiet you and fix the situation.
Within 15 minutes of sending the second email, I had a phone call from someone at corporate who oversees that store. It was approximately 16 hours after the original incident. My email had been forwarded to her from the CEO. The CEO wanted it taken care of asap, and had already involved many executives at the corporate office. After I accepted an apology on her behalf from the CEO and the entire company, she told me how she was going to fix things. She discussed how those two women are not good representatives of their company so therefore, they were going to be dealt with; and she also said she would replace the gown and have it shipped directly to my Mom’s house.
A few hours later, I had another phone call. This time, she offered a full refund for the gown and the alterations. This is unheard of in the bridal industry; but anything is possible when you have a valid consumer complaint and you stay professional about it.
Step 4: Follow up. Continue to follow up with the contacts you gain and are given until the problem is solved. This is crucial. If you start the process, you don’t want to stop until it is over. Last Friday, I emailed the woman and said my sister had thought about it and wanted the refund instead of the replaced gown. Monday morning, I followed up and told her she can expect a phone call from my Mom so that the refund can be processed. Today, I sent her another email.
Over the years, I have received everything from free meals from McDonald’s and Wendy’s (for forgetting to give me sauce or giving me the wrong food in the drive-thru), to free portrait packages at places where I was treated rudely and made to wait long past my appointment time with a temperamental baby. Everything is negotiable when you receive poor service, as long as you’re talking to the right people. The key is good investigation, persistence and professionalism.
It’s Real Now
For the past seven weeks, I’ve had moments where I wondered if this pregnancy thing is truly a reality. In the beginning, you feel so miserable and I did, trust me. But other than the green exterior, there are very few other physical signs to say “it’s real.” On Monday I had my first midwife appointment. Before it, I was nervous. When I was pregnant with Sassy, at my first appointment, they couldn’t find a heartbeat. It was a Friday so the earliest I could go for an ultrasound was the following Monday. I spent the weekend, entertaining weekend house guests and feeling miserable. I’d burst into tears frequently. It was a horrible wait. I worried the same thing would happen this time.
As soon as I saw my midwife, my nerves eased up. She always had such a calming affect on me. She was always so supportive and there for me whenever I had a question or was stressed out. During the birth, the other midwife who I didn’t even know that well, picked up where she left off. The birth experience with Sassy was amazing. It was hard and painful but yet relaxed. It was a completely different experience than when I brought Big I into the world.
The whole time I sat there on Monday, discussing my birth choices and how I’d really like to avoid induction and have a birth center birth this time, I was sort of in disbelief. Am I really doing this again? I was finished, or so I thought.
And then it was time to find the heartbeat. My own heart pounded. This is the moment you find out if it’s real or not. And there it was. . . instantly. . . 160 beats a minute. My midwife smiled and said that was one active and healthy baby in there. The relief that washed over me was instantaneous. The reality hit. Sassy heard her sister or brother’s heartbeat for the first time (and insisted there’s more than one in there). The midwife thinks there’s only one though (talk about more relief). In six weeks we’ll have an ultrasound and it will be even more real. I am getting so excited. . .
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