Are You Kidding? The Jack and now the Phone?

Sunday February 21-Monday February 22, 2016                                     Most Recent Posts:
Koreshan State Historic Site                                                                  Ups and Downs: Windows and Jacks
Estero, Florida                                                                                        Plans Go Awry

 

This post is dedicated to Jim and Gail who have recently been unlucky enough
to have had a similar experience.
Wish I had transcripts, although they would just make me more irritated.

 

SUNDAY

 

This morning starts out fine.  We walk over to the Koreshan Farmer’s market and buy some fresh produce and  four crab  cakes from the seafood couple.  Yum!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

David stays for their wood fired stove cooking demonstration at the Cast Iron Cafe and samples their buckwheat pancakes but doesn’t stay long enough to wait for the sourdough bread, the peach crisp or the bread pudding they are also preparing.  This surprises me.

 

 

 

Love the wood smoke coming out the chimney.

 

 

 

The peach crisp and the bread pudding are in the oven of the cast iron stove oven.  The bread is being baked in a dutch oven with coals on top.

 

 

Silver Dollar pancakes go much further.  They have real maple syrup and local honey as toppings.

 

While David waits for the food to be ready, I carry the groceries back to the rig on the wonderful long walk between the campground and  the settlement.

 

 

 

And that’s where the fun ends.  The rest of my day is totally wasted as you probably guessed from the title of this post.  And I do mean wasted, all day long.  I make 10 telephone calls and in the end have a promise that someone from Samsung Technical Support in India will call me back tomorrow.

To make a long story shorter, I got a Samsung Galaxy 5 for my birthday to replace my aging HTC ReZound.   That was less than 3 months ago and this morning, for no reason at all, my screen went black and no amount of taking out the old battery and pushing the power button with the up volume button with the home button and multiple combinations of that would bring the screen back.  Neither would getting a brand new battery from Batteries Plus for $40.   FORTY DOLLARS for a battery?  I bought my Rezound ones two for $15. 

So my 3 months old phone is useless.   I can feel it vibrate, I can see a blue light on the upper left above the screen and white lights on the left and right under the screen but the screen is as black as the sky above the swamp last night.

 

I start with the first of the phone calls.  I spend the rest of the day making phone calls.  I make a total of TEN phone calls.  They cannot get the thing about not having a permanent address.  They simply keep repeating their request for my address so they can fill out their form.  It’s like a broken record.  What part of I’m not giving you an address until you tell me when you’ll be returning it do they not understand.

They want me to send them my phone, they will take who knows how long to fix it and send it back to me at my current address.  Yeah Sure.  I’ll be 190 miles away from here by then.

That’s the end of Samsung anything for me.  This experience has increased the probability that I will buy my next phone directly from Verizon so I can deal with customer support in this country.  It also pretty much assures that when my Dell Laptop dies I will replace it with another Dell so I can deal with Customer Support in this country.

At the least from now on I am certainly going to call the technical support for any company from whom I may buy any electronics to see if they are in India and forget about it if they are.   I haven’t had an experience this frustrating in a LONG time. 

I spend my most of my morning trying to fix this thing myself and the rest of the day talking with people from India and demanding to speak to their supervisors.

Call number 10, the final supervisor of a supervisor that I talk with is Jonathan and he promises to look into expedited repairs and how to make sure the company calls me before returning the phone to whatever address I give them which so far I have refused to do.  So my day is gone and there is no resolution.  He’ll call me before 1:00 tomorrow.  Really?

Beautiful day outside here if I could just have enjoyed it.  Between the phone and the jack problems this seems over the top in terms of Murphy visits.

 

 

MONDAY

This morning while I am waiting for my call from India I find out that with all the rain in Florida this year a serious environmental mess is happening.  To curb flooding officials “back pumped” 10 BILLION gallons of water from South Florida’s agricultural district into Lake Okeechobee.  Think about what that means?  All the agricultural pollutants that are fertilizers and pesticides that you eat as they are taken in through the roots into your food, are now in the lake poisoning the fish.   And it gets better,  now the overflowing lake water has been sent by the Corps of Engineers into the Caloosahatchee River and down to the Gulf and into the St. Lucie River and out to the Atlantic.   The polluted water kills sea grasses which feed the manatee,  it kills oyster beds and can contribute to harmful algae blooms and the red tide.  This is bad news for the beaches and tourism on both coasts and everyone is up in arms.  No one wants to swim in dark goop.

 

So much good news.  My phone obviously isn’t working so I have to carry David’s around with me all day waiting for “the call”. 

By 3:00 and no phone call I call them.  Of course I am talking to another fast speaking person from India who informs me that “No, there is no way she can connect me to Jonathan who promised to call me back today”.  But she can help me.  So I start all over with the problems and we go through the whole thing about no I don’t have an address and let me speak to your supervisor and repeat and let me speak to your supervisor.  90 minutes later the latest fast talking “service” supervisor from India tells me politely that I can decline to send my phone in for service if I like.  Yes of course I can and keep a phone that doesn’t work for which I paid a ridiculous amount of money,  very passive aggressive.  So again I ask her what will they do if the phone comes here and I’m 190 miles away.  She again tells me it won’t. 

What choice do I have?   I agree to send them the damn phone with the Koreshan address IF they will send me an over night shipping label to get it to them, guarantee me expedited service and send it back overnight.   I’m told by this 3rd level person that expedited repair means 72 hours to 3 days.  I laugh out loud.  72 hours is 3 days.   BUT she informs me, if they can’t fix it in 3 days then it will take longer and they will call me.  Of course they will.  And I have her word for all of this including her promise that Samsung respects my right not to send in my broken phone.

 

They will call me just like Jonathan did today.  I can see the end of this irritation is no where in sight but I remove the battery, the back cover of the phone and the sim card and with just minutes to spare before they close, I rush it over to UPS in a box where they graciously give me bubble wrap and seal it up and put it in an envelope with the overnight shipping label that was sent to me via email.

Whether or not I will ever see my phone again without more hours of hassle is anybody’s guess given that the return address on the label was only a part of the address I gave them and did not have the name Koreshan State Historic Site in it.  It took an additional 20 minutes for her to print out multiple labels where the last two lines either didn’t have the park name or didn’t have the park address. 

What it did have on the line where either of those should be is my phone number or rather David’s since of course my phone doesn’t work.

 

In my numerous phone calls about this yesterday I talked with Amazon Customer support who, although they could not help me, did do everything they could in a language I could understand.   I also talked with Verizon, my carrier, who also was as helpful as they could be and the customer support was in the United States.  As I said earlier, that is going to be more of a criteria for me than price from now on.  Before I buy something, I am going to call the company’s customer support and if they are not in this country providing jobs for Americans, they will not get my business.  The biggest vote I have is actually where and how I spend my money since money is the bottom line of everything in this country.

Sorry for the huge rant but as you can see, I am furious. This has been the polar opposite experience of how to treat the customer from my experience at Darren Thomas Glass recently.  I’ve had no time to do anything else in these two beautiful days. 

BUT in the evening, after the Samsung fiasco was put on hold by sending the phone off to Texas, I called Verizon.  The service person there was very polite and efficient about activating my former phone which I wisely bought directly from them and did not recycle when I stopped using it.  That phone is old and works poorly but at this stage it actually works and has never in 3 or 4 years given me a black screen or had to go in for repair.  I do have to switch batteries about every 3 hours since it won’t charge when plugged in.  But at this point, I have a phone and who knows how long it will be before my new broken one will be back.

A phone that has to be sent in for repair in barely three months is crap and so is the compnay who made it.

Now tell me your horror stories of cheap junk products that you pay serious money for and then get customer NO-service.  We can all commiserate.

Ups and Downs: Windows and Jacks

Thursday February 18 & Friday February 19, 2016                                     Most Recent Posts:
Darren Glass Company, Sebring, Florida                                                      Plans Go Awry
Koreshan State Historic Site, Estero, Florida                                    Poisonous Bean Creates Quite a Stir

 

There are two big questions in today’s post. 
The first has nothing to do with the post and everything to do with my attempt to make plans for this summer.  If you can recommend things we should not miss on our way from Virginia through Pennsylvania to Niagara Falls, over to the Finger Lakes and into Vermont, please comment and let me know.  The jello plan isn’t made in stone so suggest away even if it requires a reroute.  I trust your recommendations.
The other question is about rig washing and is in the post. 
Thanks in advance for your help.

 

THURSDAY

Today before we leave Highlands Hammock, I take a picture of each of the back bedroom crank out windows to show how seriously fogged they are. I love crank out windows since you can have them open even when it rains but I haven’t been able to see through the bottom panes for far too long.

 

 

They look even worse close up.

 

 

Since we don’t have the jacks down or the slides out (see yesterday’s post), we pull out in the morning to make a stop at the dump station and arrive at Darren Thomas Glass by 9:00am.

We are having these back windows replaced with their Never Fog Windows. Rather than take our double pane windows out, clean the moisture, reseal and reinstall them as other places do, Darren Thomas replaces our glass with two panes of glass which have a solid polymer bond polished so you cannot see it. There is no air space or gap. The glass is flat dried and polished. The color is the same as our former windows with the same insulating value.

The deal cincher is the life time warranty. Something goes wrong, they fix it, no question. Darren’s a fairly young man so I don’t think Winnona will outlive him.

 

Darren Thomas Glass has been a family owned and run business for the past 35 years. Darren was replacing auto windshields by the time he was 16 and says he has the back problems years of such heavy lifting will cause.

They are ready for us when we arrive. Darren’s wife Meri greets us and gives us the gate code, the wifi code and a map with local restaurants and attractions on it.

Meri is leaving to represent the company at an RV Rally in Sarasota so she introduces me to Miss Grace, as Darren calls her, at the front desk who will take care of us while Meri is gone.

We move Winnona to their RV hook up section across from the Bays where they do the work. The RV sites have 30/50 amp power and water. I think there are 7 or 8 sites. There was only one other rig there when we arrived but there are two in the shop. All their bays are large enough for RVs.

 

 

 

 

Soon enough it is Winnona’s turn to move inside.

 

 

They take the old windows out. Luckily they do not have to remove the frames.

 

 

Cut the new ones to the exact shape of the old and reinstall them.

 

 

 

 

 

By 6:00, everyone is gone and we have the entire place to ourselves with a beautiful sunset. We spend the night in our site waiting for the adhesive to set and cure so they will be fixed in place before we leave. Boy do they look nice. Too dark for pictures but I’ll get some tomorrow.

 

 

FRIDAY

 

In the morning, they check things out, open and close the windows and all is ready to roll except that there is a blemish on the finish below one of the windows that came about when they were removing the original window pane.  They say it is from the original sealant that held the pane in place and somehow it came in contact with the side of the coach.  The staff tries their best to get it out but it doesn’t come out completely.  Darren takes over.  He is determined to remove it. He’s planned to join his wife at the Rally but he takes his time working on this.

 

 

He’s successful.  No sign of the spot.  Once he’s gotten the spot out, the process he has used has made a beautiful white area under the window. So he goes above and beyond to take the time and trouble to clean around the entire area and blend it in.  If only the entire coach looked as good as this.

 

 

What we learn here is that Darren Thomas cares a great deal about the quality of his work and about his customers’ satisfaction. We also learn that the products he has used will deal superbly with the fiberglass oxidation we have. Those little gray spots and spider webs that we have not been able to get out drive me crazy. I am elated!  We actually can bring Winnona back to pretty much original condition. 

This is a HUGE piece of knowledge for us. We’ll pass this information along as well as soon as we put it to the test ourselves. And to top it all off Darren gives David permission to wash a seriously dirty Winnona in their the lot.

 

 

We could not be happier in dealing with this excellent family business. Darren Thomas is a businessman in the old fashioned sense of the word. He is honest, cheerful, thorough and reasonably priced. He cares about his customers. There is no better recommendation than that. We expect no problems at all with these windows but should we have any, we know he and his staff will take care of us.  These are guaranteed to never ever fog again.

 

 

 

Winnona has not had a bath since we returned to Florida. We were in the Keys on the water for two months which means lots of salt. We have been anxious to clean her up but in our style of full timing, we are seldom in a private RV park where they might let you wash your rig. We spend all our time in state and national parks where washing rigs is not allowed. Bringing in a private contractor to wash it for you, even if they bring their own water, is also not permitted. We have looked and looked for a self wash with a bay big enough for an RV and have come up empty handed except for one in Flagler Beach on the East Coast of Florida. I sure would like to put together a list of self wash stations with RV Bays so if you know of one please comment with its name and location.

Thanks to Darren’s water generosity, today is the day. Darren cleaned the back end of the left side and it looks fantastic so David goes to work on the back. He’s done half of it here. Look at the difference.

 

 

 

All finished and boy does she shine! I know she’s a really happy camper now. Thanks Darren and Meri and your crew. It’s been a great experience working with you. Seriously a big UP! Almost makes us forget that we can’t put our jacks down.

 

 

We move on to Koreshan State Historic Site where we settle in with a bottle jack we just happen to carry with us, until we can figure out how to get this Downer repaired.

 

 

Here’s the jack at work on the Downer.  Thank goodness we will be here for two weeks.  Fingers crossed we can get it fixed in that time and retire this bottle jack again.

 

 

But this is the UP, our new windows. I haven’t been able to see out of these lower panes for 3 years. Compare these pictures to the first two pictures in this post.  LOVE IT!!

 

 

 

Sure hope the jack problem is as easy to take care of as the window problem turned out to be.
Everybody has their ups and downs whether you are a full timer or not.

Plans Go Awry

Tuesday February 16 & Wednesday February 17, 2016                             Most Recent Posts:
Highlands Hammock State Park                                                      Poisonous Bean Creates Quite a Stir
Sebring Florida                                                                            Our Interesting Neighbors and the Young Hammock

 

 

TUESDAY

David suggests that early this evening we head back down to the Swamp Walk to see what it is like in the dusk.  It’s a great idea.  I don’t expect to see much but who knows.  I do expect to hear the sounds of the swamp at sundown and beyond.

We bike over of course and walk slowly along the boardwalk looking and listening in the dimming light.

 

When we first arrive there is still plenty of light to see and take pictures by.

 

 

 

I take a few shots in black and white.  They seem fitting for this dimming light.

 

 

The moon, at nearly half full, is rising in the sky above us.

 

 

We linger on the entering single file boardwalk.  Total silence is a beautiful sound.

 

 

As I’m standing quietly looking around a Great Blue Heron flies over the lake before me and into the trees next to the board walk in front of me.  By zooming in, I can just catch his silhouette.

 

 

 

I like the sort of golden tinge the sun gives things as it sets. But I like the shadows of the early dark as well.

 

 

 

I first notice tonight’s sunset in reflections in the swamp waters. As it nears the horizon it becomes a blazing red which we can only see it directly in splotches off to the west and through the trees.  I can see it best from the platform in the center of the swamp.

 

 

 

Once the sun has set, things begin to darken fairly quickly so we move on around to make our way out.

 

We have flashlights with us just in case but we don’t use them.  It is nearly dark and we are fairly near the end of the boardwalk when a huge white light is coming toward us.   Boy I wish he’d turn that thing off, it’s blinding us.

Turns out it’s the ranger on his last trip around the drive before he locks the gate.  Sunset is gate locking time.  He’s seen our bikes and has come in to check on us.   Very nice, but unnecessary.

We have been having a wonderful experience here in the dark and the quiet.  Even our shoes make no noise as we walk.  And his presence is a complete disruption especially since he talks the entire way out and drowns out the noises of the swamp.   The camera has given a little more light to the photograph than was actually there.

And unfortunate ending to our great adventure.  But, it’s his job.  Just wish he’d been quieter about it.  

He leaves in his cart and we bike home in the dark dark with our bike headlights.  I had to use a flash to get this picture.  In the Hammock night is BLACK.  That’s an unusual experience for most of us.

 

What a nice conclusion to our stay at Highlands Hammock.  We leave tomorrow to move to Sebring to have our fogged windows repaired, FINALLY.

 

 

WEDNESDAY

 

Today we pack up to leave in the afternoon for Darren Thomas Glass in Sebring to have our back windows replaced.  We’ve been planning to do this for several years and just haven’t been quite convinced about how we should do it.

We talked with Winnebago about replacing the windows.  Ridiculously expensive.  Mark that off.  At the Tampa RV show we talked with both the folks in Hudson who “fix” your fogged windows and with Darren Thomas who replaces your windows. 

We’ve known several people who have been to Hudson with various levels of satisfaction.  It will cost about the same, to do the three crank out windows in the back bedroom, about $500.  Darren’s process is different than Hudson and David likes it better.  I’ll talk more about it when we get there.

I’ve paid for an extra day at Highlands so we don’t have to rush.  Our appointment isn’t until tomorrow but they suggest we come and spend the night there for an 8:00 start in the morning.

We’re all packed up at 2:30 and ready to pull out.  We pull in the slides, raise the jacks and only 3 of them come up.  Those of you who follow us know we’ve been having off and on troubles with our right front jack coming up. Intermittently David has to give it a crowbar assist to get it going.   No troubles ever going down and even going up has been problem free for months now.  

We’re bummed to see that our problem free days are apparently over with this jack.  Out comes the crowbar.

 

 

But this time the jack will not move.  The coach moves up as David leverages but the jack doesn’t budge.  This is a whole new development.

 

It will not go up no matter how much assist.  David tries a couple of other tricks and none of them work so we call up HWH and tell them we have an emergency.  He’s told to use a 1/4” deep well socket to back off the valve nut on the top of the solenoid in order to release the pressure.

David has 1/4” sockets but not deep well so now it’s 4:00 and he has to go into Sebring to Harbor Freight to get the right tool.  Yes we are lucky there is a Harbor Freight in Sebring.

With the right tool and a bit of hammer coaxing, the socket fits on and he releases the pressure that allows the jack to come up.  But by now it’s 4:45 and Darren’s closes at 5:00.  We had intended to spend the night in their water/electric sites so an early start in the morning could be had.

I call them with our dilemma and they say not to worry at all, come in the morning.  Great, now that we know how to release the jack, we’ll just put it back down so we can put the slides out for the night. 

NOPE, for the first time ever, it will not go back down.  Another call to HWH has David checking the fuses for the second time today.  They looked fine initially but now one of them has melted and fallen off the board.  We have a much bigger problem at this stage and there is nothing we can do about it now. 

SO the slides stay in, the jacks stay up and luckily with the horse pads you can see above, we are close to level without the jacks.  No problems for the refrigerator. 

I’ve been saying for some time now that we needed to replace that solenoid.  Seems to me that problems left unattended always just get worse.  David’s view is sometimes things fix themselves, sometimes they go a long time before they fail.  So when the jack had taken to working continually a few months ago, the problem had fallen out of view.  Thus we have spent this entire day dealing with the problem as it goes from bad to worse.

 

In order not to make this day a total failure for David, I whip up some mushroom cous cous to take to the Wednesday Pot Luck which he was sad he was  going to miss by our leaving today.

This group of volunteers from Friends of Highlands Hammock has tons of different ideas about how to raise money for the park.  They have this table of home made items for sale at reasonable prices.  Plus you can enter the 50/50.  You buy a playing card for a dollar or 6 for $5.  They tear the card in half, you keep half and the other half goes into the pot.  After dinner they draw the winner who splits the pot 50/50 with the park.   Last week the guy across the table from us won $22.  This week the guy next to us wins $37.  We are close but no cigar.  I seriously think we could use the cash to help with what may well be a costly jack repair.

 

David heaps his plate full as usual and even goes back for seconds. 

After the dinners, the park often has some sort of entertainment. Tonight it is William Florian, an ex-member of the New Christie Minstrels.  His oldies songs play well to this audience.  He does a nice tribute to John Denver who I was shocked to hear died 18 years ago.  Wow!  I had no idea it was that long ago.  Time really is flying by.  It sure didn’t seem to do this when I was a teenager. 

He puts on an entertaining show and lots of folks are singing along to songs for which they know all the words.

 

 

We walk back to the rig in the dark and sleep with the slides in and the jacks up. 
Life on the road is not without its problems.
Looks like we’ll get one of them fixed tomorrow and now have another to take its place.