Happy Christmas to The Granny

Happy Christmas indeed. What does one buy for the woman who has everything she wants or needs? She has every kitchen gadget known to man, every useful one anyway, the rest having been declared as ‘pure rubbish’ or a ‘dead loss’. She wants for nothing in the clothes department – I couldn’t afford her style anyway – and she has enough knick knacks and ornaments bought on travels abroad and for Christmases and birthdays to fill a charity shop. If she did that kind of thing (that’s a whole other blog post!)

So…for her last birthday she asked me to buy her some good quality daffodil bulbs which I duly did. So what to buy her for Christmas I pondered (some time back in December ‘08 in case you were wondering). She has recently discovered the joys and delicious badness of the girls in Desperate Housewives but of course has missed the previous two or three series. I could buy her a box set! But without a dvd player it’s a bit useless…and the thoughts of teaching her to use a dvd player *shudder* She won’t even change her 17-inch portable in the living room because she knows where all the buttons on the remote are.

She has also started to buy a particular magazine which she seems to enjoy so I thought, if I see nothing else I will buy her a years subscription for that-genius! All other attempts failed so the magazine subscription it was. I sent an email to the address on the website on Christmas Eve – I know, I know, very late but it’s not as though you can hand over a subscription anyway is it? Email sent was very simple and as follows:

Hi there,
I would like to sign up for a subscription to You and Your magazine for 2009.
Can you please contact me for credit card details?

The delivery address is as follows:
Mrs. Whoops A. Daisy,
123 Bogger’s Lane,
Posh suburb,
Dublin.

The Billing address is:
Ms. Whoops A. Daisy,
123 Blogger’s Lane,
Completely Unposh Suburb,
Dublin.

My phone number is 0871231231,

Many thanks,
Whoopsadaisy.

Simple right? I was expecting a simple phone call by return for payment but I never got one. So I emailed them again, this time on 28th January thinking that maybe in the after Christmas blues my email had been overlooked. It was more or less the same as the first one. As was my repeat email of 14th February.

Why didn’t I call them? There is no customer service number listed on the website so I kept using the email in the hopes that they would answer me, eventually. They did have a number listed with a special offer which ended in November. I think I overlooked that phone number to be fair.

Why I kept going I do not know, I guess the thoughts of going shopping for the woman who has everything was too much to contemplate so I persevered. Next email was to the publishers…hey if the magazine team aren’t getting back to me surely someone responsible for Editorial and Commercial Enquiries will get back to me right? Wrong. Well not personally anyway. I emailed this guy on the 24th of February and today I received a phone call – a real live person on the phone to take my credit card details and to confirm the delivery address, a mere 9 days after the email to himself and 68 days after the initial contact on 24th December. Bravo!

Eddie if you want to give people advice on saving money, you should teach your staff to know that when someone emails them to say:

‘Hi. I’d like to give you money. Please call me.’

that that is easy money!

So from April on The Granny will get her magazine in the post, a bit late but it’s a year’s subscription so it’ll keep on coming even after next Christmas. Happy Christmas Granny