Right at home

I took care of my Mom's lawn for a lot of years and she had a fine Sears Craftsman riding lawn mower. I could always depend on that old machine. All I did was keep it clean and take it to 51st and Garnet in Tulsa every year for the yearly upkeep. It was small enough that I'd drive it up into the bed of my truck and take it in.
Well recently I found that I needed to get me a new one for my countryfied lawn.
Consumer Reports told me that the best tractor mowers out there are John Deere and Craftsman so, since I don't live on the John Deere budget I watched the Sears sales and found a really good deal on a new one last February. It's a great machine but it fell in a hole. I have a rough lawn way out in the Oklahoma hills and sometimes it's pretty challenging to manicure things without a hitch. It was pretty easy to lift the thing out of the hole but it's been hard to steer ever since. And it's been getting worse. So I called Sears.
Looked them up in the phone book and the only phone number they offered for repair was an 800 number. I called. Got a dreadful recording that repeatedly assured me that my call is important to them. Of course we all know that any call that prompts a recording to say it's important isn't. When I got an answer I had to wade through the stupid menu. I did it wrong a couple of times and had to call back and wait again but finally got through to - who? A real person? Hell no. It wasn't a real person at all, it was a person from India. Of course I know that East Indian persons are real persons and West Indian persons are real persons and West Indies Indians are real persons too but to an American who is calling an American company they're not real persons at all, they're foreigners. And this foreigners couldn't even understand my hillbilly Okie attempts at communication. But anyway he asked me a number of questions (the same ones, coincidently, that the recording asked) "What's your phone number. Please sir, the area code too. Your Address please. The type and model of your lawn mower. Where did you buy the mower." And a few more probing questions that they probably didn't need. Then he transferred me to a real nice guy in Louisiana who was very easy to talk to and who understood that I want to make an appointment to get my lawn mower fixed. We made the appointment during a pleasant and stress free conversation. Thank God for Bayou Boys.
And the time came for me to make my appointment.
I rented a trailer at the U-Haul place in Tulsa. I need a trailer but can't buy one just now. We've only lived in the country for 4 years and we're still trying to acquire all those essential country things that cost so much money and that you shouldn't be without. I was hoping that one of my neighbors would see me struggling with the U-Haul and say "Well hell, why doncha just borrey mine next time". They didn't.
I took the trailer home and got the mower up onto it and then tied her down real snug. Got up the next morning at 5 and drove the 35 miles to Tulsa so I could drop it off at 51st and Garnet at the Sears repair place on my way to work.
Everything was going to work out well. I could leave Sears repair at about 8 and get to work on time and then drop off the trailer before noon (you rent it for 24 hours) at lunch time and then do it all again when the repair was finished.
Well I got to the Sears repair place at 51st and Garnet before 8. I took the mower out of the trailer and put it right there in front of the big garage door so I could be the first one to go in and get fixed. A huge African lady walked over to me and said "What's that thing doin here?". I said that I had an appointment today to get it fixed. She told me that they "Don't fix them things here." She said they fix them at your house.
I said "Wah????".
She said "O yea. They come out to your house and fix them things". She was good enough to go inside and look me up in the computer using my telephone number. She didn't even care about my name. Shoulda known - no company that ignores names knows how to treat a person.
She said that she saw my phone number in the computer and that the repair man would be at my house around 11:30 or 12:00.
I'm bitching here but I'm certainly not bitching about that. If they're going to come out to my house and fix my machine then I'm more thrilled than one person can get. I think that's fantastic. But why didn't they ever mention that before? I asked Ms Donna. She doesn't remember that either. I would think that'd be a huge selling point. Maybe they told me and I tuned it out. I'm capable. I'm old. But I sure don't remember. But then, I don't remember the sixties either. That doesn't mean it didn't happen. I even double-checked my literature and there's only one place that even suggests fixing it at home. And all it says is "You can get your lawn mower fixed at home". Of course I saw that and assumed that it would cost more. But it doesn't.
So anyway. I called work and told them that I'm taking a sick day. Had to do that because now I needed to return the lawn mower to the house and then return the trailer to U-Haul and then meet the Sears fixit guy at my house between 11:30 and noon. I put the mower back on board and retied it securely to my U-Haul rentable and zipped out of there and back 35 miles to my country home. When I got there I took the mower off the trailer and then got back on the road and drove another long ride back to Tulsa once again to the U-Haul place where I had to turn in the trailer before noon. Got there just fine in plenty of time and then turned around and headed back once again out the country to my house in order to meet the Sears guy between 11:30 and 12:00.
When I got back to the house there was a message on my machine. It was the Sears guy. "I'm calling to meet you for a mower repair and there's no one home".
I said "AAAGGGH HH" or something.
That noise woke Ms Donna up. She said "Hmmnnuhgg?" or something.
So I leaped back onto the phone and called that damnit 800 number again. It gave me a recording with questions. Did I want to buy or repair or whatever? I said "Repair". It said did I want to speak about a repair appointment. The dogs, being so thrilled that I was home in the middle of the day, were barking uncontrollably. Of course everything they do they do uncontrollably. Once when the hound dog got close to me and barked the recording "Didn't understand" what it thought I was saying and had to start over.
Well they give you a bunch of questions but they don't ask you if the repairman had just called and do you want to call him back. None of the questions it asked pertained to my predicament. I tried and tried. I selected a few different forks in the recording road but none of them led me to where I really needed to go. So I got an idea.
One fork in the recording had asked if I wanted to talk to a sales person. I said "YES". Articulating expertly without any doglings in the way because by this time I was hiding in my office. The recording very quickly handed me off to a real person who was actually from the United States. I suspected they wouldn't trust a new customer to a machine and so I was able to very cunningly set a trap for them. I asked the sales person for his name. Then I said that I know his name and I know his city and now he has to help me or I'll complain about him. He happily assisted me with getting in touch with a direct phone number to the service department dispatch.
I talked with a very sweet lady there (Very sexy and young and fit and trim and hot in my imagination - so I never want to meet her (see previous email about this kind of mistake) and while I was talking with her my damn phone STOPPED WORKING.
I slammed it down on the counter. Broke it I think. It hasn't worked since.
So I called back using my cell phone and went through all the same crap again. And finally got (surprisingly) the same gal and she helped me get a message to my repairman.
He called me back in about an hour.
He came over finally. Bitching over and over about how he had to drive too far today and even drove past my town twice when I was unavailable. Anyway he fixed my lawn mower. I had the day off.
And now I know they'll fix it at home.
Aint America great?