Customer Complaint
Dunno if the rest of the United States has noticed commercial enterprises seem impervious to customer tastes. Unless they comport with what I suppose must be computerized algorithms that bean-counters installed, as an economical improvement over real human people paid wages for customer service, accessible by letter or phone call. (Or, okay, e-mail). People for whom articulated English is actually their primary language, not only a secondary approximation. Individuals willing to sell goods a willing purchaser wants to buy. Willing to exert themselves to provide the desired product in the desired size or configuration. Instead of trying to foist one-size-fits all on us.
Honestly, this has been a longtime gripe of mine, predating computers and data-mining, and email and pop-up advertising their miners have deduced you just must have. Ain’t many people building better mouse-traps and waiting for the world to beat a path to their door. Not sure anyone knows how to even design a “mouse-trap” any more. They’d rather slap something together and spend the money on algorithms guessing the market, and then dumping the come-ons on us.
Here’s a hint for the lackadaisical inheritors of Madison Avenue’s “Mad Men” and Vance Packard’s “Hidden Persuaders.” I for one will absolutely not purchase a single product advertised on YouTube musical numbers. Period. Bad enough to have to wait out an ad before you can click it off. Now they don’t offer the click-off; you’re a captive audience.
Far, far worse, for those of us who enjoy classical music, they have started inserting, without warning, commercials in the middle of a performance. Beethoven’s Fifth, or Bolero, is rolling along behind the screen while you work on a story — and suddenly there’s some puerile pitch man or woman in your ears.
Usually with the most irritating voice you can imagine. Fingernails on chalkboard come to mind. I’ve opened a notepad document for entry of every such offender, to consult while shopping. You ain’t getting my shekels.
Putative customers are unique, with individual needs. One size does not fit all. Especially if you’re my size. There are some few companies that know this, and I have been lucky to find two pair of excellent size-15 shoes in 2020, easy to don by a big old arthritic male with swollen feet whose joints feel rusted as a robot left out in the rain. Then there are the companies that used to offer “plus sizes” and stopped. As a life-long duck hunter, I was grateful to a company organized the year I graduated from high school, 1961. It took up slack after good old Herter’s of Waseca was killed off by the Draconian Gun Control Act of 1968.
There was a point early in this century, before I got too crippled up to get to a duck blind, when a predawn gathering of duck hunters in a remote Grange for duck-club blind assignments resembled a commercial for Cabela’s. Including me. Gore-Tex “First Flight” waders, boot-size 15. Capacious enough for my 330-pound frame wrapped in a Pendleton 4XL wool shirt and Cabela’s “Smartwool” camouflage vest. Long enough there was no crotch-binding when the shoulder straps went on, though I stand 6'2. XXL Stormy Kromer hat from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — sold by Cabela’s.
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The 4XL wool vest is damn-near indestructible, so infrequent casual wear for doctor appointments and grocery runs in cold weather mean it will last longer than me. Good thing: they don’t make them anymore. Not it my size.
For decades, my outdoor undergarment was silk: a long-sleeved silk mock turtleneck. Two reasons. One: a rock-climbing physical therapist who repaired physical outrages to my corpus after outdoor misadventures with oars — or in summer playing softball — confided natural silk kept warmth where needed on my stressed back. He wore no other kind on his death-defying climbs. The second reason: wool allergies. Nothing keeps you warmer in bad weather, even wet. But wool irritates my skin badly. In the Army, fellow Basic Trainees watched with horror as my feet in shower shoes leaked blood into the communal-shower drains after a day’s wear of Army wool socks. Once I escaped the Army, no more wool socks. LL Bean offered a synthetic substitute that worked for hunting socks until poor circulation kept my feet so cold I feared frostbite, and had to plump for rechargeable heated insoles. (Speaking of better mouse traps.)
I made a mistake in 2008. I bought a sturdy Cabela’s 3XL Long silk long-underwear shirt. One. Could have bought two. Or five. And no less an authority on outdoor sport than Gene Atkins Hill had counseled in a long-ago column to always buy at least two, because if it was good, they’d stop making it. He was right.
I thought of this one night, searching futilely on the internet for anybody selling men’s 3XL silk undershirts. Google’s algorithms showed me a bewildering array of gaudy silk for men, who, from the models’ swishy good looks and comportment, are attracted to, and meant to be attractive to, other men, not women. (On the evidence, homosexuals do not “come” in 3XL.) So much for the hated algorithms.
Then Google threw me a curve. Up popped Cabela’s, advertising the very shirt I wear every winter. But only in size Large. No options. I shut things down. Next time I opened email, a Cabela’s robot was asking if I still was interested in the men’s silk long-underwear shirt!
It was too much. I snapped. Went to their website and looked for customer service. For a “contact us” feature. Before sending a gripe, I had to prove I was not a robot! This delightful little detour involved clicking on every panel of a street-scene showing a crosswalk. I failed my first test and missed one. So I was graciously afforded a new photo, new test. By which time I was doing a slow burn. When I finally got a message-box, I unloaded.
my last Cabela 3xl black silk long underwear shirt wearing out. You only stock “L” now?!?!
My Go-To Cabela’s goose-down vest, 3XL, knockoff of the Original Eddie Bauer, is wearing out. KNIT COLLAR, damn it! Had to go with Duluth, because they get it about neck abrasion for working men (and duck hunters!)
(Note: I was complaining about a different vest than the wool one. The conventional padded goose-down vest that made Eddie Bauer famous. A model that a Canadian duck hunter, in his memoir, said his family invented — for duck hunting.)
I really don’t expect a real answer to my gripe. Last time I complained to a company, its robot replied, Thank you for choosing our products(!) You can’t win. But I suppose you can lose. Aren’t there cautionary tales out there about folks posting negative reviews on some company — and getting sued? Hell with ’em, I’m on Social Security. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip.
