Out of the Mouth of Babes

Miles is having intestinal issues.  He says he feels fine, and is happily eating a bowl full of ketchup, along with a couple of still-frozen fish sticks, but his intestinal tract shows otherwise.  After his fourth or fifth trip to the toilet, Miles exclaimed, "Oh, my bum is on fire!".  Yep.

Ski Day

Yesterday I stood on the ski slopes at Brighton in jeans and a sweatshirt.  It was a balmy 46 degrees in the mountains.  I took Jonathan and Miles up to ski.  Jonathan had a great half day skiing whatever runs he wanted to... since he was skiing solo, he didn't have to take turns choosing runs/lifts, etc.  I put Miles in ski school.  He loved every minute of it.  He thought the chair lift was awesome.

He started the day with ski clips/buckles...

but by the end of his lesson, he officially graduated to "clipless".

Miles loves to go fast; he brakes at the last minute (usually not until he's tailgated the kid in front of him and Miles' skis are inside the other kid's wedge).  At the end of his lesson, I asked Miles if he was done skiing and wanted to go in the lodge and play iPod, or if he wanted to ride the "magic carpet" and ski some more.  He was not done skiing.  So together we rode up the magic carpet, and down the mini-hill he skied while I ran down the hill (purse in hand) chasing him.  He had so much fun that he asked if he can go to "ski class" again on Monday.  Since there's no school tomorrow, that's a real possibility!

Customer Service???

In the past 48 hours, I've had 2 customer service episodes that have left me wondering where we've gone wrong.  Being a customer service person isn't anyone's dream job (I'm assuming), but I wasn't an "angry customer" so I was surprised to have encounters with a couple of people who were puzzling.

Story #1
Yesterday I had to activate a new phone for Nolan.  His antiquated 1960's flip-phone screen broke so he couldn't see who he was calling, who was calling him, or read or send texts.  Yes, the phone still worked, but all the deluxe features that made it better than an attached-to-the-wall rotary phone didn't (other than the fact that his phone wasn't rotary or attached to a wall).  I splurged and bought him a new $10 1970's flip-phone... this one has video capability!  Well, the new phone needed to be activated, which could have been done via the internet except that I wanted to transfer his minutes and his phone number, so I called the 1-800 number for Tracfone and talked to Cindy.  The experience was less than pleasant.  Cindy was rude.  She seemed to be annoyed that she had to do her job.  Cindy started off by asking me what the number I wanted to transfer was.  I gave it to her, she typed it in wrong, then told me I gave her a incorrect number.  I restated the number, and on we went to step 2.  Cindy then asked for the phone's serial number.  I gave her the number next to the letters "S/N".  I assumed that "S/N" meant "serial number", but no, she rudely told me the numbers I gave her were not the serial number, and the numbers she wanted were next to the letters "IMEI".  Why didnt' she give me that hint in the first place?  Moving on... we had issues with the SIM card number; she asked for my zip code and evidently it didn't match with the zip code on file (because I gave her Lindon's zip code instead of Pleasant Grove's), then I didn't know which email address she had on file, and she couldn't help me with that, so I started rattling off possible email addresses, and finally said that if the address she has on file is a Juno email, then I don't use that provider any more (and, of course, it was a Juno address).  Anyway, in the end, Nolan's "new" phone works, his number was transferred, and everything worked out.  But Cindy was not nice.  Cindy made the whole process much more difficult and complex than it should have been.  Grrrr to Cindy.

Story #2
During the time of the United States Quarter Craze #1, I traded "D" mint quarters for "P" mint quarters with some guy in New Jersey.  He wanted an insane number of quarters... I think it was 4.5 rolls of each "D" mint quarter.  I only wanted 1 roll and 6 individual quarters of each state released by the "P" mint.  Since it cost the same to mail 1 roll of quarters as it did to mail 4.5 rolls of quarters (thanks to flat rate envelopes), I received a lot of "P" mint quarters.  They've been living in my night stand cabinet.  On Tuesday, I decided that I was tired of having all these quarters, so I took them to the bank to trade them in.  All the quarters were rolled.  Most were still bank wrapped.  I had 122 rolls of quarters.  I took them to the PG branch of Zion's bank where the teller told me that she couldn't take them.  She claimed that the bank would only take 9 rolls of quarters per day, unless I wanted to pay a 10% service fee.  Really?  A fee for swapping denominations of US currency.  I wasn't trying to do a foreign currency exchange; I was just tired of having a lot of quarters.  It seemed to me that the teller was making things up as she went along.  Her story-line wasn't smooth and she seemed to be doing a bunch of quick thinking in her head as she tried to get out of doing a transaction she didn't want to do.  Well, I wasn't about to pay a service fee for turning quarters into paper money, so handed over 9 rolls of quarters for 4 $20's and 1 $10, and left the bank.

Realizing that it was going to take me 14 business days to play the "9 rolls per day" game, I decided to go visit a few nearby branches of Zion's Bank and unload some more quarters.  I visited the American Fork, Lehi, 8th North Orem, 13th South Orem, 10th North Provo, and 200 N Provo branches of Zion's Bank, who all accepted between 10 and 13 rolls of quarters without question, and most importantly, pleasantly.  (Okay, I didn't try  hand off the remaining 113 rolls of quarters at any one location, but no one tried to claim they'd have to charge me that 10% service fee since I was off-loading more than 9 rolls of quarters).  I also visited the American Fork, Lehi, Pleasant Grove, and Orem branches of Bank of American Fork, and they all took 10 rolls of quarters without hesitation.  I visited 11 banks on Tuesday, and only one person at one branch (Zion's in PG) had an issue with the rolled quarters.  To that teller, if you don't like helping people, get a new job!  By the way, after visiting 11 banks on Tuesday, I still had 8 rolls of quarters to off-load. Yesterday, I went back to the PG branch.  Tuesday's teller wasn't there.  I had no issue trading in the last 8 rolls of quarters.

Honestly, I don't think my requesst in either situation were particularly extreme.  Perhaps the volume of my quarter swap was a bit unorthodox, but a casino in Las Vegas would have been accommodating.  In the end, I got everything I wanted from both situations, but I've been left with a bad taste in my mouth.  I've never loved tracfone, and I'll be looking into other cheap options for a non-contract provider for Nolan's phone.  As for Zion's Bank, I've been a customer there for 20 years.  Last May, new accounts were opened at a competitor, but those accounts haven't really been used.  The quality of service I've received from Zions has steadily declined over the years, and I think I'll be switching over the direct deposits to the competitor and using them as my main bank.