Thursday, July 28, 2011

Consumers do have the ability to get what they want or need

Today I revisited an old reoccurring problem that I really thought had been resolved a couple of years ago, our kitchen faucet’s finish was peeling once again.
Now I do know that the world is into stainless steal but being in the restaurant business for a while everything we had was commercial grade and all of it was stainless, big refrigerator/freezer, stove, grill, even our prep surfaces were stainless, display cases you name it.

And because of that in our home I did not want or like it. And so when we had to redo our kitchen after Hurricane Charley I went with white appliances, switching out the stainless steal sink and faucet with a white Corian sink (our counters are Corian too, but Blueridge is the color) and therefore a white single handle faucet with a built in hose and all our faucets in the bathrooms are brass and even our door handles are brass as well, to me it looks like gold, which I find quite appealing. While to me, stainless means industrial strength not homey; and I do know most crave it, desire it and just plum want it or have it because of the way it looks, and one must admit it does hold up well and polishes up well with Sheila Shine, which at one point we should have had stock in from all the stainless we had.

We did buy an American Standard faucet that is what this one is and we have bought entire bathrooms of that brand over the forty-years we have been married and in those five homes that we have had either built or renovated or whatever. But to be sure we have always had good luck with anything that was purchased from them except for this darn faucet in the white coated product, let’s put it this way it is our third one that the finish has chipped off of.

Last time a few years ago after purchasing the second a few years before that and it is a good one of over one hundred bucks when the second one went we asked Home Depot about what to do and they suggested contacting the company and then American Standard sent us a new one no charge and identical. But this time when we called and got an email address to send them PICS of what had happened they said I had two choices to send them our receipt for a full refund or they would replace it with chrome or stainless steal one free of charge; even without my receipt.

Well, I told the customers service rep that it was so long ago that I would probably not be able to find the receipt and so I did something rather nervy and I asked her if they had any in brass. And she said no, and then I said that I would prefer the stainless over the chrome and that’s what she is sending. I had explained why I preferred the brass like I did here, but I suppose that if I recall that is why we went with white last time, brass kitchen sink faucets are not that common, and apparently our white one finally was determined to be a problem since they no longer make them in the white for our style.
All I emailed back was a great big, literarily a big, THANK YOU!
What else should one say?

Looking a gift horse in the mouth again, I should be so ashamed, but it is refreshing to know that some company’s ala ‘American Standard’ still stand behind their products completely and they are an American company out of Piscataway, NJ, at least their customer's service is and I hope their manufacturing is too.

On that bit of what I did today’s peek into my life as I see it or how it appears, huh?
Dear readers please allow me to be the first to wish you all a very happy good night and to ask you to kindly count those blessings and to share those overages and we will too!

And next time please be here or be square, ya hear?

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