Props

Recently, I've been VERY impressed with encounters with the commercial world.

The RoomStore
I have bought two pieces of furntiture from The RoomStore in the last few months: a bed and a dresser. I managed to break the bed in a matter of days. One of the claw things in the rails that attaches the rail to the headboard/footboard ripped from the rail in a spot where I noticed a crack in the veneer when I was assembling the bed. All I did to break the bed was to flop down on it one (or a couple) evenings. I called the The RoomStore about it, and they were very prompt in ordering me some replacement rails at no extra charge. The dresser came pre-damaged. When I pulled the dresser from the box, which was no easy feat, one of the corners on the top was crushed. I called The RoomStore, and they said they would send someone out to fix it. After several rounds of phone tag (they were very persistant), the repair guy arrived and worked his magic to produce this:

Aside from the dust that quickly accumulated on the dresser, it's as good as new. And again, it was a free service. For their efforts to fix mistakes and quality of their work, I give The RoomStore my props.


Zep Mold & Mildew Stain Remover
Ever since I moved into my house just over 4 years ago, I've had a lot of mildew stains in my shower. I've scrubbed the affected area several times with Softscrub with bleach to trya and remove the black lines from between my beige tiles. The tiles clean off nicely, but the stains remain in the grout lines. After some of the grout started to fall out from between the tiles, I decided to tackle the stains as well. On one of my marvelous trips to Home Depot, I came across this product:

All you have to do is spray this stuff on the mildew stains, wait 2-3 minutes, and rinse it off. And it works wonderfully! You know it's a good experience when you still marvel at the result several days later.


Home Depot Appliance Repair
On the Friday before Thanksgiving, I tried to bake something in my oven, but the oven never got any hotter than 250 degrees, even after 30 minutes. After letting the oven cool down, I removed the heating element...


...and found this...

Somehow, I managed to get a blowout in the heating element. With a dead heating element in hand, I headed to Home Depot to find its reincarnation. They didn't stock the replacement, but I did get a business card with the phone number for the Home Depot Appliance Repair and Replacement Parts. When the operator on the other end asked for the serial number of my 46 year old oven, she couldn't find it in her system, so she said that she would check the microfiche. Microfiche? I hadn't heard of someone using that since my pre-Wikipedia/Google days of high school research papers. After delving into the past, she found the replacement part number, and they even had one in stock. UPS dropped off my new element on the day before Thanksgiving, and my oven had successfully been resurrected.