[excerpt from the Globe and Mail]

This week, The Fan 590, Canada's leading sports radio station, offered
a "Give Dad a Divorce" contest as a Father's Day promotion. "It's the
perfect gift for the man who has everything, and doesn't want it,"
reads the cheeky copy posted on the station's website.

Have we as a society really sunk this low? Read the full article here.

Sadly, The Fan, tried to defend this promotion:

"I don't think we are trivializing [divorce]," says Ruth Winker,
promotions manager of The Fan 590. "We're accepting of it. It's a
reality."

Making a mockery (even if it's meant to be tongue and cheek) of something that rips families apart?? No... nothing trivial in that at all!! (heavy sarcasm).

I am beyond tired with the subpar service that is thrown at you left, right and centre. I feel I could rant endlessly about a myriad or woes I've had with things that should have been straightforward and simple.

Scenario 1: our Grey Cup tickets.

• mother-in-law bought them for us for Christmas
• mother-in-law goes on trip to the USA
• Grey Cup organizers screw up printing of souvenir tickets thus requiring them to send them at the last minute by Purolator -- they should have been sent regular mail as is always the case with Ticketmaster tickets and then we would have had no problem as my sister-in-law was taking in the mail while my mother-in-law was on vacation.
• Purolator will only release tickets to purchaser (my mother-in-law) who is out of the country
• Wasted a night trying to sort out the problem with Ticketmaster (1 whole night I will never get back) -- had to get rather pushy and bitchy to even get close to a solution.
• End result: my sister-in-law has to "break into" (she had a key) my mother-in-laws house and open her mastercard bill so that we could get the "card number" used in the original purchase. Ticketmaster credits my mother-in-laws card and we charge the tickets to our card thus allowing us to pick up our tickets in TO... not the nice souvenir tickets, mind you -- reprinted Ticketmaster tickets. (we did eventually get our souvenir tickets after the game)

End result: Customer is seriously inconvenienced due to the stupidity of Grey Cup organizers.

Scenario 2: Ordering dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory Post Grey Cup.

• It should be noted that this restaurant was within easy walking distance of the game -- and this restaurant should have taken staffing on a game day into consideration -- they seriously should have known better.
• We wait for someone to take our order... we wait... we wait... we wait....
• When someone finally comes, he can barely speak English...
• It takes a longish wait for our drinks to come... Neil gets a Rickards's Red and the server brings him a glass of red wine -- again, he didn't understand English
• Turns out the restaurant was so strapped/short staffed our server is a dishwasher who is NEVER out front serving customers. We felt bad for him -- it's not his fault right?
• Overall -- our service was TERRIBLE. Yet, we felt compelled to tip?? Where is the justice in this?? You don't want to punish your server when it is not wholly their fault but -- terrible service is terrible service, no???

Scenario 3: Christmas shopping online -- I did a lot online in the last two weeks -- 4 online orders to be exact... all but one has arrived. Here is the correspondence I sent out to the CFL store -- date ordered: November 28.

• Sent yesterday:

• Subject: Re: Cflshop.ca/Jersey City Canada: Order receipt
  

  Hello,
  I was wondering if there was any way possible to find out if this order has shipped. There are some Christmas presents in this order and I would like to know an approximate arrival date. It would be great if your online shopping site had a track order feature as many other online merchants provide this service for their customers.

  Thanks,
  MSK
  

• Their reply:

• Hi,

  We have had well over 2000 orders in the past few weeks since Grey Cup and we are currently receiving product. The orders are being shipped as the items arrive. It has been impossible to update the status of the orders during this time.

  Thanks for your patience!

  Jersey City Canada

  www.jerseycity.ca

  1-888-537-2489

• My response:
• Hi,

  I find this response absolutely terrible. It is impossible to track an order? I am sorry but this is the Christmas season and I have ordered online with Futureshop, Chapters, Amazon, Landsend -- just to name a few -- all since ordering from you and I have received not only tracking information from them but I have also received all of my orders as well.

  When I purchased these items there was NO merchandise shortage/delayed shipping announcement on any of my items ordered (as there was on some other items like jerseys). Having paid $20 for express shipping I find it extremely unreasonable to have to wait more than a few business days for my order to be processed and shipped. If there were concerns of merchandise not being available and/or back-ordered that should have been made clear on an item by item basis - AT THE TIME OF PURCHASE. As a matter of fact -- I just checked and there still is no warning that shipping could be delayed on any of the merchandise in my order. Again, I order online often and in cases such as this there is almost always a warning that there is low stock on an item and that shipping could be delayed as a result.

  A lot of this order is gifts -- and I will be canceling this order if I do not receive it by next Thursday as I'm flying home for Christmas. That will have given you three weeks to get me my order -- extremely inefficient in light of receiving no shipping delay warning. I can receive merchandise from the US faster. I think a HUGE announcement on your site that you are experiencing shipping delays due to merchandise shortages would ease the flow of complaints. I tried to call this evening and your message mailbox is full.

  MSK

Overall -- why do I feel like you have to be extremely pushy and quite frankly a real bitch to get results and/or service that should be standard?? I'm tired of it!

I am frustrated!
This is my new motto. When this whole ordeal started last Monday, my computer was working fine. Neil are you listening to this???

I came home from work yesterday and Neil was on the phone with Microsoft AGAIN! Apparently they called around 3PM to inquire on our service and he mentioned to them that we still had a few problems. First, my computer would not shut down properly. Second, the sound drivers seemed to be screwed up. He was on the phone with them until after 7PM and now my computer is more screwed up then when they started.

I hate working from his laptop. All of our pictures and music are on my computer. Neil is currently cowering in the corner because when this first happened (last Monday) he assured me that he would have everything fixed by the weekend. Well, it's been a bloody week and everytime he touches my computer it gets worse.

I am ready to just buy a new bloody computer. Preferably a mac so that I will never have to deal with windows ever again.

A few days ago - my computer died. This is what happened.

Neil, in trying to get service pack 2 installed and working on my computer, accidently destroyed my motherboard. For those like me that need that explained, it meant that when I turned my computer on, I got a whole lot of nothing - a black screen. Solution? We bought a new motherboard. Sounds simple, or so we thought, however once it was installed we ran into a new problem. Windows XP would not run. Apparently someone at Microsoft decided that if you change the motherboard or CPU you must buy a new version of Windows because you essentially have a new computer.

So we call Microsoft to complain -- we weren't upgrading our system. The motherboard is essentially the same as our old one. Buying a new motherboard and then having to repurchase Windows XP would have put us in the neighbourhood ($) of a whole new system. The call began at 5:05 PM PST and ended at 8:15 PM PST. Three hours and 10 minutes. Yes, what a complete run-around. Enter the "Microsoft Migraine." I felt so bad for Neil. He was passed from person to person, each more incompetent than the last. At one point we were told we had to call "Microsoft Canada" - we had -- they had transfered us to another country?!? FINALLY someone came through and was able to help us. They usually charge $45 to re-authenticate your windows serial number but we got it for free (we think) because of the run-around. So YAY, I have my computer back!

It could have been worse:
As it turns out, if you buy a computer with windows preinstalled, the company you purchase from is responsible for any windows-related problem. We purchased our computer from Futureshop (Cicero). If any of you have ever had the misfortune to deal with Futureshop for repairs, you can understand that dealing with Microsoft was a piece of cake. Our old digital camera went in for repairs twice. It took them 6 months - yeah, that's half a year - and a whole lot of bitching to get my camera back from it perpetual state of repair (and we had been suckered into buying their extended warranty -- NEVER AGAIN! - but that's a whole new rant).

Moral of the story: build your own computer. That way you can install everything yourself and you'll have all the right documentation, etc.