Issues and non issues

[susandennis]

There are Press Club tickets available on Seatgeek (a reseller) and I want one. You click on 'buy' and your card is charged but you don't get the ticket until your purchase is accepted. My purchase was not accepted. I tried again. Again reject. This was Tuesday. Yesterday, I tried many times. Different tickets, same result. My credit card shows all the charges and all the refunds.

Seatgeek has no direct customer service. They use social media. So I bitched on Twitter. Waited. Nothing. Again. Waited. Nothing. Finally on the third tweet, I got action. I swapped info with their peops via DM and finally got a service ticket created. Still no joy but at least I have their attention. The tickets are $300 and $400. I have the money. They won't sell me the ticket that they say is for sale. It's a ridiculous situation.

They tried to blame it on my credit card until I showed them all the transactions. This morning, I deleted my credit card and went to reapply it and it will not accept the card OR any of my card. Clearly they got some issues. But at least I have a service ticket. Rather have a Mariner ticket...

And then there is Quick Zip Sheets. I bought these sheets a while back for my bed and I love love love them. The top zips off so easily that changing sheets is fun! I do it often now. And my bed always looks effortlessly nice. But mostly, they are heaven to sleep on.

I finally bought one for my brother's bed. That's when the trouble started. I started getting junk emails from them. I hit unsubscribe and got rid of most of them but kept getting requests for reviews. I reviewed once. That's enough. But still, I got the requests (which contained NO unsubscribe.)

So yesterday I left a review. 3 stars. LOVE the sheets but being hounded via email to leave a review is NOT acceptable.

Today I get an email saying soooo sorry. Just unsubscribe. AND an email saying Welcome!! Please select a password. FUCK ME.

Seriously, I love the sheets but really.

I ordered from Temu yesterday. Their shit keeps turning up in my search results and I keep avoiding them but I finally caved and spent $12. We'll see how long it takes and what the quality is like. My expectations are very low.

And, finally, I got the artwork I ordered from the woman on Twitter. It does not look much like Biggie or Julio but I appreciate her effort and it's kind of a sweet piece anyway. I need to get a frame.



My friends from New Zealand report that it's hot in Houston. hahahah I tried to warn them. They are shocked at no electric cars, plastic bags and forks/spoon, no recycling bins... I tried to explain that it's Texas. Their next stop is Las Vegas. Which is not Texas but... Their updates from the road are such fun. And they keep running into random Kiwis which is a fun for them. One dude lives in Chicago now but was in Houston on business and another was on vacation, too.

Today, there is no game and I have no plans outside of TV and crochet. I'll get onto the treadmill first but then it's a quiet day ahead I think. I do have a Mariners game tomorrow.

I finished up the latest season of Somebody, Somewhere (HBO/Max) which I really like. It's interesting and upsetting and uncomfortable and comfortable and charming.

I'm now finishing up the latest and last season of Never Have I Ever (Netflix). It's just charming and painless.

I started watching Queen Charlotte (Netflix) because I knew I wasn't going to like it and just wanted to taste and move on but I think I got a little hooked. Shonda Rhimes stuff usually just annoys. We'll see.

Audible had a huge sale a few weeks ago and I bought a bunch of stuff. Two books I bought were by Doug Johnstone who is an entirely new author to me. I'm currently in the middle of his "Breakers" which is just good. PLUS the narrator is excellent. And it takes place in Scotland and the accent is delicious. I'm quite delighted in it all and especially because Johnstone is still pretty young, still writing and already has lots of other books published. Yum!

Comments

[white_aster]

I have also been guiltily putting orders into Temu, as A) it's for things that are guilty pleasures to begin with and I really don't NEED more of, even at like 80% discount and B) I feel like I'm getting away with something, with those prices.

That said, I've been pretty pleased with the experience so far! I've generally gotten things within a week of ordering them (which, really, is about as fast as Amazon sends me things since I don't have Prime). Quality has been better than expected on some things and about the "cheap" you'd expect on others. But then, I've only been ordering things where I can tolerate getting what I paid for. I've ordered a metric ton of stickers and gel pens and stationery whatnots from them, and been pretty pleased with the quality. I've ordered some random household things (little hanging baskets, some hanging garment bags, plastic boxes to store the metric ton of stationery whatnots) - all fine, and about the quality I'd expect from buying the cheapest version on Amazon (I mean, let's be honest, these are likely the same suppliers providing Amazon's cheapest tier stuff nowadays). I dipped my toe into clothes and was even reasonably pleased there - I didn't try anything that needed too-careful sizing, but I did succeed in getting some elastic waist casual summer pants that were exactly what I was looking for.

I do recommend that you keep an eye on your personal promotions, if they send them to you and you want to use them - a lot of time, they have very short expirations, obviously trying to get people to come back quickly and make another order within a day or two. I get the impression that Temu is selling a bunch of things at a loss and is trying to get people hooked and trusting them, thus the perennial free shipping and the generous coupons. I expect those things'll go away eventually which'll make the overall cost of using them go up. In the meantime, though...I'll take their money...and their stickers...and their art supplies...and....

(Also, they will send you a lot of emails initially, but they very much respected my clicking of the unsubscribe request to knock it off.)

[susandennis]

How interesting! Thank you for all the detail. Now I'm a little excited to see what I got!

[white_aster]

It's a bit like christmas when the bag comes! ;P

[msconduct]

I've ordered stationery for journaling from Temu and the stuff was fine (same products as I get from Aliexpress, in fact, just cheaper with their opening special). It came quickly, far faster than from Aliexpress, and over $NZ30 postage was free. I'd use them again.

Yes, Kiwis are like cockroaches, they get everywhere. On one day in London I bumped into someone I had just done a trip to Russia and Scandinavia with, someone I went high school with, and someone I went to university with. I've unexpectedly met people I knew in airports in Australia, Singapore and London. And I got a private small plane (yes, I am fancy) from Xakanaxa airfield in Botswana (basically a bumpy field in the middle of nowhere where you have to shoo the gazelles away before you can take off) and the pilot was a Kiwi.

I'm not surprised your friends are shocked by their Texas non-recycling experience - plastic straws and shopping bags are just a memory here now and we're just about to lose produce bags. I've seen things change quite a bit in parts of the US over a few years - suddenly all the takeout places were using cardboard boxes in San Francisco, for example. But it's still a very different experience. I remember getting delivery in New York and it came with seventeen ketchup packets. That would be frowned on here as wasteful. There's a really obvious culture of abundance in the US, from stuff like that to the size of the meals.

[greghousesgf]

Looks like a Disney movie.

[zoefruitcake]

I've liked the stuff I got from Temu and it's so cheap and fun :0)

The picture is nice but doesn't really scream your cats to me

[rsc]

The Red Sox switched this year from making season-ticket holders sell excess tickets through StubHub to making us sell through SeatGeek. I haven't been particularly impressed with their interface. (I also had a long and rather frustrating interaction with their customer service trying to arrange things so I could fix an (essentially inconsequential) error I had made in setting up my account; I eventually succeeded, but I was surprised and annoyed at how difficult it was. Well, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, but I think I was right to be annoyed.)

[susandennis]

It's not just the Red Sox it's MLB that made the switch. last year StubHub fucked up massively and MLB removed them from their ticket transfer options and struck a new deal over the winter with SeatGeek. You can, of course, sell your tickets in a variety of places, but from your ticketmaster account, now, SeatGeek is easiest because of the partnership.

[cdayzee]

Definitely post about your experience with Temu! Although I see from the comments above me that others have been pleased with their orders! I have ordered from Shein, as has my daughter. It does make me nervous coming from China because I've had experiences where other companies have taken my money happily then I wait forever for delivery, sometimes not receiving it at all; other times the end product not being as described. But Temu is giving me hope. Perhaps I should check it out lol :P

Ah yes - visitors to the US from other countries can sometimes be disenchanted with the 'land of plenty'. I've been disenchanted myself lately. It makes me want to go elsewhere.