Good and Bad Customer Service Experience AND Counting my blessings

I am not going to name this institution because why bother.

It is Saturday and I am trying to make a hotel reservation for a relative who needs to be near their sick relative.  I go to the website of a hotel my family has used since the 1970s and there is a phone number to make a reservation.  I do that, good doobie that I am and for 45 minutes I am on hold "32 callers ahead of you" "31 callers ahead of you" "21 callers ahead of you" etc.  

I lost patience since I was on our road trip with dodgy cell coverage so I decided to hang up. Mind you I had been on hold for a while, and my relative was waiting to hear what hotel I had booked so I called and got through to the front desk.  

The person at the front desk could tell that I was frustrated and did the exact wrong thing "Ma'am I cannot talk to you with that tone in your voice" and hung up on me.  I was gobsmacked.  We have been staying at this hotel for 50 years and had never had anything but stellar customer experience.  I empathized with him knowing that COVID and PTSD has hit us all including me. AND I was frustrated and angry and impatient. 

I called back the same number I had just been on hold for 45 minutes with.  Why did I keep trying this hotel?  I am a loyal person and our family has used this hotel for over 4 decades.  I got "32 callers ahead of you" etc.  I waited 25 minutes this time.  I finally got a live voice and requested the room.  

It was so painful to give her my personal information to rent the room and the personal information of my relative.  Multiple times she repeated back the wrong name, number or letter.  AND just as she put me on hold right after getting my credit card number and security code she said "I am going to put you on hold to get your confirmation number........" 

Wait for it, the line went dead.  

You can ask Murg but I could have had a heart attack right then I was so frustrated and angry.

I called the hotel right across the street from this one and made a reservation in 10 minutes.  The two experiences were night and day.  I know this is a first world problem and I lead a very privileged life and in the grand scheme of things this was not a huge deal.  My relative had just had a stroke and it was unclear how bad it was.  This put my own life in perspective.

A few days later I called the original hotel back, explained the situation and the Manager was excellent.  He said they had rooms that night and the process was for the front desk person to make a reservation. He reassured me he would address it and gave me his email address.  I felt much better and might stay there the next time I am in that area.

My learnings,

• In the grand scheme of things it was not such a huge deal that I insisted on making it
• The person at the front desk, and the person on the phone deal every day with impatient, demanding, angry people like me.  YIKES I cannot imagine implementing all those techniques I taught so long ago in customer service training.
• COVID has effected me and most of the rest of the world
• I have a choice about how to react to things and do not have to wind myself up the way I did
• I am human and will make mistakes AND hopefully learn from them

Breakthrough - the name of my latest quilt

I tend to quilt for a variety of reasons.  However, in January of 2015, 19 months ago, I decided to do a block of the month quilt.  The company sends you the pattern on the first month and then monthly for 10 months you received a packet in the mail with the next month's fabric and more detailed instructions.  I was really good the first few months, or so I thought.  I finished the big part of the block, but there is piecing around each of those big blocks and I decided to wait until finishing future blocks to finish the small piecing.  This was going to be a huge challenge since I would have to be more precise than I normally am, and I would be learning a lot of new patterns, and the color arrangements would be a challenge.

In retrospect this was a big mistake but not really.  In the middle of the 10 months, life got ahead of us as we sold a house, downsized by 2/3 of our material goods, bought a condo, had a wedding, went to another wedding, had 5 English visitors, blah, blah, blah.  Life got ahead of us.

Of the 10 blocks, last December 4-9 were finished, but there were those pesky first 3 blocks unfinished.  I literally did not roll out my sewing machine from December until last week.  I was incredibly stuck on this project to the point where I could not even fathom working on another easier project.  It wasn't that I don't have a stash of fabric, or ideas of what I want to work on next.  Every time I opened the closet where my rolling sewing cart is, and thought about figuring out how to proceed I was flummoxed.  I probably tried 3-4 times to actually figure out how to proceed by laying out those pesky 3 first blocks.  Nada

Last week in a flash of "Oh heck how hard can this be just start somewhere and proceed, and BTW, it does not have to be perfect.  No one knows how the quilt is supposed to look in the end and when has that every bothered you anyway?"

At the same time I am working through some past trauma which is painful and predictable.  As I worked through some of the pesky issues of the quilt blocks, new insights about my past popped open.  One quilt block at a time I started placing them on the floor and sewing them together, and squinting and observing how I liked the layout.  A few times as I said "Close enough!" it felt good to move on.  A few times I looked and said "No way" and out came the seam ripper.

A few days of this with the quilt laid out on the floor, I am very close to the end of those pesky 3 blocks.  There is one section that remains in disarray.  I may have to settle on good enough for that section or I may put the quilt away again to approach at a later time. There is no deadline for this quilt, just like there is not a deadline for when I have to finish this examination of past traumas.

I can say that on both accounts, the unfinished quilt and dealing with the trauma, I feel so much better than one week ago.  As my brother George says "You have to go through it rather than walk around it!"  Literally I have to walk through the middle of the quilt laid out occupying one big area of our condo.

There has to be a better experience than this

No one likes poor quality, however, sometimes what you have is worth dealing with versus changing when you don't know for sure that the new product or situation will be better.  As well, with time our expectations of service change based on what we have.  As an example, my first wordprocessor only saved 1/2 page in memory, and my Yahoo mail account used to have a storage limit.  I had to actually delete emails to get below the storage limit.  Same with my work email.  This would be unacceptable in today's email environment.

We bought Coniston, our house in Vermont in 2008.  It is in the boonies of Vermont and for a few months we went without Internet.  We quickly decided that we needed to add some technology to this paradise of quiet.

Rod did quite a bit of research including having one provider come visit the house for a microwave dish, but they could not find a signal.  We ended up with a local provider Wild Blue which provided up with a satellite dish and very very very very slow speed for browsing, reading mail, searching google, etc.  We stuck with it since this is not our primary residence, and for the last year we have been considering Fairpoint, a DSL through the existing phone line.  NO, we are not putting in a land line although for billing they had to give us an unworkable one.  Our last dozen visits we have used the hot spot on Rod's iPhone which was faster than the satellite dish.  This is just unbelievable that an iphone has faster connectivity than a huge dish.

We brought the Fairpoint wireless modem up with us last night and after one call to tech support, we installed the wireless modem.  Ipads, iphones and my Mac are all connected.  We do not even have to have a computer hard wired to the modem.

The difference in speed was unbelievable.  It is not painful to browse websites and check mail, and make casebook updates about the impending birth of our granddaughter.  We immediately got on the phone to cancel Wild Blue.  I do not want to pay one more cent to them for inferior service.  We have choices about what we use for service, but I feel like they are not being competitive and their prices is high for the service we get.

What I do not understand is why it took us so long.  We complained a lot about the speed.  When Chris and Meg lived here they installed Direct TV because of the slow speed and never updated iTunes or any other updates on their phones or iPad through the Internet.  They went to Starbucks for that.

The learning for me is to listen more quickly to that inner voice which says, "there has to be a better quality experience for me available for less cost".

I have had a similar experience with another professional lately.  I went to her for 3 years and after most visits and that amount of time, and that inner voice saying, "there has to be a better experience", I switched to a different professional.  The experience is 100 times better.  Again, why did I wait?  Inertia, loyalty, stupidity, lack of knowledge, comfort.

So Wild Blue, you lost us as a customer because you refused to upgrade the speed of the satellite dish.  Yes, we are in the boonies, but I am telling everyone I know about this experience, including this blog post, which might tell people I don't know.

Learning to free motion quilt through frustration

If I were like my husband I would not be as frustrated right now.  He once said that he does not golf because he wants to know how to play before he gets to the golf course.  I laughed quite a bit saying "How will you ever learn then if you won't go out until you know how to play?"  I am eating my words and fabric right now.

Over several years I have pursued learning how to free motion quilt.  I stipple quite adeptly, however, I want to refine my quilting skills and not just do the same easy stippling every time.

I took a class, I browse a website, observed others quilting, bought some tools to make it easier to quilt and I have a practice piece that I have been working on, that is not a real quilt, just a test piece.

So today, I took a REAL quilt, and started to do some of the new techniques that I have practiced, read about, and studied.  I thought I was ready to pursue a big quilt.  HA HA HA!  Wait, I need to go to this step in order to learn.

However in my endeavors, I have made every mistake possible.  I continued to quilt with a loose bobbin causing puckering, I quilted double layers of quilt for an entire star design and I am doing designs that are too complicated for the square I am putting them in.  This is how I learn, by making mistakes.  My most recent mistake is a rookie one but boy is it a big mistake and a big learning.  I have spent about an hour ripping it out.

Fortunately I did not start this project on a quilt that I really care about otherwise right now I would be in tears.  This quilt will be my sampler of learning free motion quilting.  That is what samplers are after all.  They are for practicing.  How will I ever learn how to better free motion quilt if I do not practice?  I could continue to send my quilts out to be quilted but I want to take my quilting skills to a new level and I know I will be happy with the results.  That does not mean I won't need my seam ripper or that this quilt will be given away.  No, it will be hung in my sewing room to remind me of my learning style.  Off I go to rip out some more......