Last week I got these two pictures that're great additions to the walls of my game room (sorry about low photo quality, the photos were taken with my cell phone camera):


http://img360.imageshack.us/img360/8056/sspx0015gk2.jpg (yeah that's an autograph)

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1908/sspx0016qw5.jpg


In other news, last weekend I ordered some exercise equipment from Sports Authority. On Monday they called, and we set up a 1pm Tuesday delivery, though they told me depending on traffic and how the day goes it could arrive as late as 3pm. So then Tuesday, by 3:30 I haven't heard from them at all, and call the phone number they had given me. No answer. So I leave a voice mail. Try again at 4:30 and 5:45pm. Still nothing. If you read my blogs back in like May 2007 when I was starting to furnish my new home, almost every time I had a delivery of some sort there was some kind of mess-up in it. Sooo frustrating when it happens every time.


So I did what I think most people would do in my spot, and drove to Sports Authority with my receipt and asked to cancel my order. They looked in their schedule book and saw they had me written down for 10/29/08 (Wednesday), but I'm sure that is not the case. I am 100% certain that the guy I was on the phone with had said either "tomorrow," or "Tuesday," and that "Wednesday" was never mentioned or that "the 29th" was never mentioned (it's tough to confuse Tuesday for Wednesday, and if he had said the date I would've certainly asked what day of the week the 29th was or had to look it up on a calendar cuz I don't often know what the date is). They tried to keep my business by offering me half off my delivery/assembly fee, but my principles cannot be bought for that little since I was genuinely pissed that I wasted the whole afternoon sitting around doing nothing/starting nothing because I didn't want to get engaged in something and then have the doorbell ring.


Also, WTF with a $230 delivery/assembly fee? I'm curious to see if this is standard for expensive exercise equipment. My view is if a customer is spending a lot of money on a product of yours that they probably cannot get home on their own, this type of thing should be a courtesy (or a small charge) and not some outrageously large fee. Like, between drive time and assembly, it could take no more than 1.5-2 hours tops, right? $230? I remember when I got my pool table the delivery/assembly of that was comped -- which, in my opinion is the best thing to do for customer relations when you are dealing with an expensive purchase. Or like how a few days ago I was at the Mall of America shopping in "Field of Dreams" (where I got those two pictures above) and asked about their autographed Michael Jordan "Wings" picture that is 7'x2' and costs $3500. My question was, "Do you guys do shipping? I'm thinking about coming back here some other time to get that Jordan picture, but I know it's not going to fit in my car." Their response: "No we don't normally do shipping, but since that's a pretty expensive picture, we can drive it out to you if you just throw us a few dollars for gas since gas isn't cheap these days." Very reasonable. $230 shipping/assembly fee? Not so much. I'll report back about if this is the norm after I find another exercise store to try my luck with.

Gotta get going now. Tonight BK, Pickett, Dave P and I are going out to dinner in St. Paul, and then to the Wild game (which us four have season tickets to). Go Wild! Hopefully they can bounce back after last night's first loss in regulation of the season.