Second Cup Somerset to Bank on

Yesterday I was out on an adventure and stopped off with the last remnants of my Second Cup gift card to a Second Cup (290 Bank Street, Ottawa) at Bank and Somerset Street West.  Perfect location if you are heading to Chinatown as it is a transfer point off of OC Transpo's Routes 1, 2 & 7.  There always seems to be a number of people in that area either transferring from the buses either to go west along Somerset to Chinatown, south down Bank Street towards the Glebe or north into downtown.   Thus, this Second Cup is a great location to grab a hot beverage while waiting for your next bus.  

I visited at 11 A.M. to find a fair number of people inside but with still some seating left.  Of course most customers were taking full advantage of the free Wifi, but this Second Cup also ensures that there are free newspapers available to read including the Ottawa Citizen and Globe & Mail.  The free newspapers also seem to be respected by customers as they are neatly returned to the counter or left on the coffee table in the area of the leather chairs. 

I stepped up to the counter and ordered a nibble and a drink.

The Order: 1 Medium Black Irish Cream and a Apple Cranberry Muffin.

I exchanged my gift card for my order and visited what looked to be the welcoming arms of the soft leather chairs with a newspaper to read.  The leather chairs sure were soft alright, I nearly felt I was going to be on the floor soon as the back springs seemed to be shot.  I looked around at the other three chairs and saw they were worn around the edges.  These chairs are just starting to be on borrowed time. 

I opened the Apple Cranberry muffin.  Mediocre taste because, as mentioned in previous posts, Second Cup ships all baked goods in instead of making them from scratch.   

The Irish Cream coffee though was one of the best I've had from Second Cup.  I sipped it slowly enjoying the perfect mix of coffee to Irish Cream quotient. 

Overall, this Second Cup location provides a comfortable spot with well prepared beverages.  The free newspapers available are an added bonus as well.  Good spot to curl up for a little bit of time, read the news or talk to friends.  A good traditional Canadian coffee shop sans le donuts though.

Winterlude 2013 is Coming Soon!



One of the first signs that Ottawa's Winterlude is close by is the opening of the Rideau Canal Skateway.   

 

Rideau Canal Skateway and Mackenzie King Bridge

 

This past Sunday I slapped on my skates and headed out from near the Mackenzie King Bridge.  The Canal was bustling with people.  So much so that there was no room on nearby benches or in the chalets to change your skates.  Thus, I improvised by using my back pack to sit on the ice and do the skate changing.

Rideau Canal Skateway looking toward Laurier Street Bridge



I skated southwards on the Canal towards the Pretoria Bridge.  Ice conditions were far from ideal with ruts and light snow on the top.  This is because this past weekend was the first weekend the entire Canal from Rideau Street to the Hartwell locks was open for skating. It seemed everyone and their grandma was on the Canal getting in their first skate of the year.  

Rideau Canal Skateway near the University of Ottawa (left)



I got down as far as Pretoria Bridge before giving up for the day.  The ice conditions, the number of other skaters and the fact I can't remember the last time I had my skates sharpened were all contributing factors.   I've since remedied the skate sharpening issue and hope to take to the Canal like I did in January 2009.

Winterlude though, I'm even more excited for.  My wife has never really taken part in seeing the Ice Sculptures, the Snowflake Kingdom and much more (including looking for Ice Hogs!). 

A Milestone of a Meal

Saturday for Lunch, with a gift card melting my pocket begging to be used and my wife and I in downtown Ottawa, we visited Milestones (700 Sussex Drive, Ottawa).  

Milestones is owned and franchised by the Cara group of companies who also own and franchise: Harvey's, Swiss Chalet, Kelsey's and Montana's. Each banner name (i.e. restaurant name) has a different flavour for the dining pleasure.  Harvey's is the traditional burger place that competes with McDonald's, Burger King and others.  Swiss Chalet is the family rotisserie chicken place competing in the Quebec and Ottawa area with Scores. Kelsey's bills itself as "Your Neighbourhood Bar & Grill" which also typically has more family friendly pricing in a place that pretends to be a bar/pub but really isn't.  Montana's is supposedly a cookhouse that specializes in serving up grilled meats of whatever flavour you wish. 

Milestones' dim lighting for the evening with supposedly higher end culinary chef inspired food attempt to make the ambiance and food romantically inclined.  Daytime wise it still has aspects of romance to it as well, but less so with light streaming in through the windows.  

The downtown Ottawa Milestones is in a picturesque location nestled between the upscale yet historic Chateau Laurier Hotel across the MacKenzie Street side of the building and yet on Sussex Drive opposite the Byward Market. But the building also has a architecturally significant tierred patio built into it providing great views from the Milestones' bar / lounge area with wrap around windows facing the Government Conference Centre (formerly the Ottawa Train Station) that provide great opportunities to look at historic architecture as well as people watching of the hoards of tourists walking by on Rideau Street. 

We arrived at the MacKenzie Street entrance through the double front door to meet the two hostesses standing at a table.  The interesting part is about said table is it is really as soon as you walk in instead of a little further back to allow other guests coming in to wait in the warmth.  It was like the designer of this Milestones location thought this was Los Angeles, California where the weather is nice year round instead of a February in Ottawa where it is below freezing and customers may be wielding ice skates before or after a venture on the nearby Rideau Canal Skateway. Not very well thought out, but lucky for us the restaurant was not that busy for a Saturday noon time lunch.

At this point you are given an option by the hostess to either eat in the dining room or in the lounge.  Not knowing that difference was I selected the dining room.  It wasn't until later that I ventured over to the bar area to realize the above noted wrap around windows overlooking the corner with Rideau Street.  I got a few looks from the waitresses when I visited like "can we help you?"  I just looked, went, o.k. that is the view and scurried back to the dining room. 

We were lead to the table by a hostess who, while on the way, showed us where the washrooms are.  At the table she dropped off a slip of paper with our table number on it and the time we were seated.  I'm not sure the reasoning behind this slip of paper but I used it to guage the timely progression of our meal.  

We were seated below a panorama historical picture of the Parliament Hill view from the Hull (Gatineau) side of the Ottawa River.   After perusing our menues for both brunch and dinner I took a closer look at that the photo and noted the time period was definately before the First World War as the Chateau Laurier was absent, the railway was prominent and the Victoria Tower on the Centre Block of Parliament Hill was still present as opposed to the Peace Tower.   An interesting view compared to what that same view is today.  

While perusing the menues,  I first observed the different somewhat gourmet style named and increased pricing compared to your average restaurant.  But offerings weren't that high brow that I was going to need to sell my first born to attend or to expect the Prime Minister to visit with the Queen.  But we did find something for each of us that we would be content with. 

Our waitress, five minutes after us sitting, stopped by to reiterate that the menues were looking at were the brunch and dinner menues and we were free to order from both.   She asked if we wanted to order drinks, we replied nicely that we were ready to order our food as well. 

The Order: The Montreal Stack (Montreal smoked meat, aged Cheddar cheese, caramelized onions and ripe tomatoes served with a house made blackberry ketchup with curly fries on the side) & a Pepsi and a Spicy Thai Chicken Rollup (A warm red flour tortilla, spicy smoked chicken breast, Jasmine rice, peanut sauce and sesame cucumber mayo with curly fries on the side) & a glass of water.

The waitress was pretty quick with service.  The odd thing was she would dissapear for five minutes at a time leaving her three or four tables unserviced for a while.  She would reappear later, service all of them and dissappear again.  No real issues with the service but she seemed to have this down to a science knowing where in the meal process each table was in and what they would need next.  At no time did I have to ask for a refill on my Pepsi, she just quickley offered, grabbed the glass (which I ensured was always at the end of the booth table we sat at), refilled it and returned it.  The only service issue we had was actually with the refill on the Pepsi when our food arrived. 

When our food arrived, in a timely manner, our waitress ensured we had everything and offered to refill my Pepsi glass.  I agreed, she dissappeared and it took three or four minutes for her to return.  She apologized for the delay as I had already dug into my meal.  No sweat though, other than that she was top notch service wise with a dose of good cheer. 

The Montreal Stack smoked meat sandwich was nicely done with finely sliced beef brisket, fresh tasting tomatoes and cheese.  Admittedly, I missed the "caramelized onions" until I reread the menu for this review.   Although the menu promised "blackberry ketchup" I didn't see anything except for a little thing of ketchup that I assumed was for my fries.   This is also because my wife's Chicken Rollup was also accompanied by same said small ketchup container.

The accompanying curly fries on both plates were hot as well.  They were an interesting take on the traditional bar fries that looked like little rings.  At one point I had about six fries intertwined to make a chain of which any five year old playing with his food would be proud of.   The accompanying ketchup tasted better than the Heinz you would find at your average bar and made a good compliment to the fries.

The spicy chicken wrap my wife asked for the spice to be more mild in nature.  She reports that after a couple of bites there was a tang to the chicken spice but it wasn't eye watering suicidal like it might of been.

Overall, Milestones is a good restaurant if you are in search of a romantic spot probably away from the crayons and associated place mats of the family dining establishments. There are a few interesting culinary delights to find here but because Milestones is part of a chain, don't expect the food to overly great with the chefs onsight taking culinary liberties like other single family owned locations.   Looking for a decent romantic spot out in downtown Ottawa after a date on the canal or before a romantic walk at night around the rear of Parliament Hill food you know will be decent? Milestones just might be your place.

Boy this was Bland Pho Noodle Soup, is it on the House?

In my wife and my continuous search for Vietnamese Pho places in Ottawa, we stopped off on Friday for dinner at Saigon Boy Noodle House (648 Somerset Street West, Ottawa). 

We arrived at 4:30 P.M. to a restaurant with only one other customer in it.  A little disturbing but it was early.  My wife and I have learned that if it is before 5 P.M. on a Friday evening, it is fine if a restaurant is not that busy.  Most Ottawa restaurants start filling up after 5 P.M. for dinners.  We have noticed that at a couple of restaurants where we thought things might be questionable because there was nobody inside but turned out well. 

We entered and were immediately seated by a twenty something young Asian man with perfect English.  He followed up with the usual complimentary tea.  He returned to the kitchen to fetch a couple of items and could be heard speaking Cantonese (dialect of Chinese) to someone working in the kitchen.

We looked through the menus and noted the prices for Pho ($9.25 for a large) seemed a little more expensive than both Co Cham and Pho Thu Do.  I was debating on ordering the medium size instead as perhaps the large was simply to large.  My wife would have none of it because if we are going to compare the other Pho places we had previously visited, where we had ordered a large, we needed to order the large here as well. So we did.

The Order: 1 Pho with Rare Beef and Beef balls with rice noodles.  1 Pho with Rare Beef, Beef Balls and tripe with rice noodles.

We looked around the Saigon Boy Noodle House.  It was quite modern looking with newish looking ceramic tile floors, modern wooden tables and plastic chairs.  Even the artwork looked carefully selected.  The restaurant itself looked clean, well kept and family run.  On the door to the restaurant even had the parking metre times for when payment was required and when it was not.  The inside looked well run, uncluttered and unworn unlike other typical Asian restaurants. 

Our Pho dishes came quickly with the Asian gentleman providing excellent service. 

The Pho itself needed a little help.  For any good Pho dish you need to start with quality beef broth that has taste to it followed up by quality beef and other items as per customer order.  The beef broth at Saigon Boy Noodle House was bland and didn't have any taste to it. The broth at both Co Cham, Pho Thu Do in Ottawa and Pho Xe Lua in Toronto have a beefy taste to it. The noodles as well were just run of the mill noodles that you could also find at any other pho place on Somerset Street West in Ottawa's Chinatown.  The meatballs and rare beef were also nothing to sneeze at in terms of quality or quantity. 

Quantity wise, the Pho at Saigon Boy Noodle House is hard to beat.  The Large bowl is huge! I felt like it was just short of a bucket full of Pho.  Yes, the beefy ingredients weren't skimped on either, there was definitely enough rare beef and noodles to go around. 

The tea was also a little disappointing.  Sure it was the regular Asian tea served at most Asian food places, but this was lukewarm.  Any Brit will tell you that tea should not be poured unless it is boiling hot right from the kettle.  Apparently this little but important tidbit was missed.  

We left Saigon Boy Noodle House a little perplexed.  They have a better modernized interior like Co Cham with a family run business.  The Pho beef broth though was bland which takes away a lot from the restaurant.  The other ingredients (i.e. noodles, rare beef and beef balls) were merely average.  With so much competition in the immediate vicinity serving Pho, mediocrity simply isn't good enough.  Add in lukewarm tea, and things get even worse.  We may wait a while to return, unless we find another better Pho location.

A Trip to Manhattan for a Burger: Part 2

On Friday for lunch I made a return trip to Manhattan's Handmade Burgers (407 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa) but to a different location from last time.  

On my last visit to a Manhattan's I noted that the burgers themselves were pretty good with the fries rivalling Swiss Chalet despite claiming to be handmade.  Would this location, across the street and a block away in a food court from the previous, do better, worse or the same?  Let's find out.

I visited the Minto Place Food Court (located on the Northwest corner of Laurier Avenue West & Kent Street) to find the Manhattan's.   My wife accompanied me on this visit, but had already had lunch and had already previously visited this Manhattan's location previously.  We arrived at 12:50 P.M. to find the food court, as you would expect in the downtown of any nation's capital, full of government workers on lunch. We found an empty table right away where I left my wife and I headed over to the Manhattan's counter to join the line.

This Manhattan's is like any traditional mall food court where you move from one side of the counter to the other just like a cafeteria.  Here it is quite orderly, choose your drink, place your order, get your toppings and bun made up, pay for your order and finally have your food put together and given to you.  The service appeared like clockwork and the customer's only job is to move with the container.

I grabbed my drink and slid down the counter to place my order.

The Order: 1 Cheeseburger combo with fries and a can of Coke. 

The lady behind the counter, one of 5 employees, wrote down my order on the Styrofoam container in black magic marker. She then takes your container and puts it in one of two places depending on what you order.  For wraps it goes along the back wall where another employee is stationed to make them.  For burgers and salads, like my order, the container is put at the front where another employee does the buns and toppings.   At the toppings station I ordered my toppings but did note a couple of things, Manhattan's could improve their topping ordering by putting a sticker on the glass, like Subway, with the listings of toppings available.  The best thing about Manhattan's is the variety of toppings.  The only toppings that Manhattan's charges extra for are bacon and cheese.  But you can have spinach, two types of onions (instead of the usual one choice) and much more all at no additional charge.  The freshness though, rivals that of Five Guys Burgers & Fries.

I paid for cheeseburger combo ($10.10 including taxes) which I thought was a little steep.  At pubs around these parts I may pay a dollar or two more but get unlimited refills on my pop and better ambience than a mall food court setting.  But the burgers are supposedly better than your average McDonald's Big Mac with fries.  Manhattan's fries though, as mentioned previously, are not any better than Swiss Chalet.  So perhaps the price should be more in line at $8.00 to $9.00 taxes included. 

After paying, I advanced to wait for my burger to be situated correctly on the bun with the toppings and fries dished up. Here there are all the condiments available, napkins and anything else you may need.

So far so good compared to the previous Manhattan's experience at 360 Laurier where the service seemed a little disjointed.  At the Minto Place location all the staff knew what they were doing, handed off orders one to the another in a timely fashion and had all the necessary supplies in an easily accessible location to either themselves or, if needed, the customer. Thus, there were no slowdowns due to employees inquiring about certain orders or to wait for customers to juggle the ketchup bottle while standing at the cash like at 360 Laurier.

Next, I headed over to my food court table to dig into my lunch. 

The fries were exactly the same as the 360 Laurier location, tasted just like I would have at Swiss Chalet.  In other words not crisp and firm but potatoey and somewhat soft. Fresh cut fries? I think not, Manhattan's should save their money on torturing employees from hand cutting these fries, call Swiss Chalet and order their fries instead.

The Cheeseburger itself was tasty with the right proportion of toppings to burger and cheese quotient.  Nothing to runny that came spilling out back into the styrofoam container like other burger places.  Cheeseburger itself was exactly the same as the 360 Laurier location, a strong contender for a better handburger than McDonald's but not up to Five Guys Burgers & Fries or The Works.

Overall, this Manhattan's Handmade Burgers at Minto Place was better servicewise than the 360 Laurier Avenue.  The food court location works like clockwork during the lunch rush with equitably good food.  Best burger in Ottawa, close but no cigar.  Price wise as well this burger place seems a little on the expensive side.  Perhaps this is done intentionally to take advantage of the local clientele, the average government worker who has a slightly larger pay cheque than those in the private sector.  To the average person though, Manhattan's should be seen as slightly better than the average lunch counter. 

Overpriced Cardboard Sold at A&W

On my way past St. Laurent Centre Mall on OC Transpo's Transitway, I decided to stop in for lunch before heading over to Nepean.  I made my way to the food court to visit the A&W (1200 St. Laurent Boulevard, Ottawa). 

I arrived at 1 P.M. to find the food court bustling with customers with the odd table empty.

I visited the A&W counter to find two employees at the registers.  There were four registers possible with a short line up.  Two of the registers had the above mentioned employees working them while the other two registers were turned around facing the customer ready for their use. 

Yes, self serve registers at an A&W was available.  I didn't look to closely to see if there were any restrictions but it did say "Express" on them and had an interac machine attached for check out purposes.  It appeared the machines were useable if you wanted to order your Teen Burger combo quickly, slide your bank card through and grab your food and go.  All of the five minutes I was at the counter, nobody used these two registers.  But with decent counter service, these machines would be obsolete. But maybe that is A&W is hoping to do, cut the number of counter people while maintaining the same prices. 

I placed my order with the supervisor who was at one of the registers. 

The Order: 1 Teen Burger Combo (1 Teen Burger, medium fries and medium A&W Root Beer).

The price? $9.50 including taxes.  Yup, a Teen Burger Combo with fries the same size as McDonald's medium fries and a Medium drink smaller than the same McDonald's medium drink costs $2 to $3 more.   Go figure.  

I waited patiently for my meal to be prepared by the kitchen.  During that time the employee working the other register at the front counter was checking her watch and bragging she was able to go home in a hour.  Oh the love of fast food, bragging that you love your "A-Job" so much you can't wait to go home. Since you love your "A-Job" so much why not quit, go to McDonald's and apply for a "McJob"? 

My meal came from the kitchen, was brought over and placed on the tray.  Before the food arrived though, I was asked if I wanted ketchup for my fries.  Two small ketchup packets were dropped on after an answer to the affirmative was provided. One white napkin and one paper sheathed straw were also provided.  I felt like I was in prison!  No longer can customers obtain their own napkins, straws or, heaven forbid, Ketchup packets!  Have to keep prices down and profits up A&W has decided customers are not to be trusted with napkins, straws or any condiments.  Heck, I was surprised I wasn't asked to bring my own tray from home. 

I brought my tray over to find a clean table in the food court. 

I dug into the fries to find them taste like warmed cardboard.  Yup, no real taste at all, they rivalled the old Burger King cardboard fries of yesteryear.  I remember when these A & W fries had taste!  A little bit of salt and they were perfect, these were warmer than the mediocre to barely warm fries provided by other fast food establiments, but the cardboard taste was still there.  Ketchup barely made these fries edible. 

The Teen Burger though was an improvement.  Wrapped in the faux aluminium foil style burger wrapper, the burger looked perfect with a sesame seed bun, condiments, tomato, and paddy.  I bit into it to definately interrupt the bacon and beef's party, it was tasty. Just like the old Teen Burgers I used to enjoy when the University of Ottawa's Food Court had an A & W counter.

The A&W Root Beer was a let down.  A&W has  long prided itself on top notch Root Beer with no ice by chilling the tubes the water and concentrate mix in.  But what I was provided could hardly be classified as "prideful". Sure there was no ice, but the A&W chilling technology obviously wasn't working resulting in barely chilled A&W Root Beer begging for ice.

Overall, this A&W location provides overpriced sub par mediocre food in a busy food court location.  The other A&W Restaurant style location at St. Laurent Centre has recently closed within the past couple of months.  No wonder, who wants overpriced cardboard for fries and not so cold A&W Root Beer?  Anyone....

Part 2: Runaround Customer Service at The Bay

Earlier in January 2013 I had quite the adventure in obtaining customer service from The Bay. 

Since that blog post there has been movement on this issue with The Bay.

I followed up with tweet to Ellen Roseman who replied she was glad I at least got a refund from HBC on the jacket. 

I even forwarded the blog post to the The HBC Twitter account which then turned into an interesting exchange.  The Bay Twitter feed turned into a scripted fun for all of me raising the issue, their boiler plate scripted reply of:   

We are so sorry to hear that you are still having an issue. Pls DM your email and we will take care of you! Thank you.

Of course I was not going to send them my contact information! HBC already had it on file at least three times with my dealings with their Customer Service Department over the phone and via e-mail. If they truly wanted to deal with it, they would pull the file, review it and then deal with it.  The scripted responses from Twitter were not really helping matters. Thus, I decided a different tact was in order.  I reforwarded my e-mails to their "Customer Service" Department with a request they be forwarded onto the Twitter person. 

I then went venturing around the internet to see if anyone else had an awesome customer service experience like myself with The Bay.  I stumbled across "the maggiescene" blog and a thrilling posting on retail stupidity courtesy of The Bay.  Retail stupidity?  This post reads like the top 3 listing of how retail customer service should not be run. I retweeted this experience to The Bay and my own followers pointing out that I'm not the only one with an issue of customer service involving The Bay.

Of course The Bay's twitterer repled with:

We are so sorry to hear that you are still having an issue. Pls DM your email and we will take care of you! Thank you.

So again I reforwarded my e-mails to The Bay Customer Service Department to forward to the Twitter account person at The Bay.  I wasn't holding out too much hope for the e-mails getting to the Twitter account person for The Bay as communication with the Customer Service Department. The Customer Service Department's line of communication seemed a little suspect especially considering that original promised deadline of a Customer Service Manager calling me within "24 to 48 hours" came and went with not even a phone call or e-mail. 

I made some further noise on Twitter with replies to other The Bay promotional tweets of "save so much on..." and "we have just released...".  I also tweeted to other Bay customers on Twitter, who were also looking for Customer Service from The Bay Twitter account that it wasn't likely to happen.   These same customers also received the same scripted reply from HBC of:

We are so sorry to hear that you are still having an issue. Pls DM your email and we will take care of you! Thank you.

Eventually The Bay Twitter would send me the usual reply back to me as well of:

We are so sorry to hear that you are still having an issue. Pls DM your email and we will take care of you! Thank you.

I finally thought  the whole "please contact us so we can follow up on this issue" was a little hillarious. Really?  I've contacted HBC several times and all I got was the runaround.  So my tweet back to HBC was:

how about you sending me your email address? I've done things #hbc way and look how far that got us.

Soon enough, I had a DM response back from Christopher Sherman, who is the Social Media person at The Bay, with his e-mail address.    I wrote Christopher the following e-mail on January 10th:

Hi Christopher,

Thank you for forwarding me your e-mail address via Twitter.

I trust you have yet to see the below as I believe communication is to be subpar at HBC.

As you can see I've been through a lot with The Bay and am very unhappy about it.

I've reviewed issues online to see other people have had issues with obtaining fashion items advertised and then getting support for products sold when the item doesn't live up to regular wear and tear within a year.

My complete story can be found on my blog entry here:

http://www.michaelsuddard.blogspot.ca/2013/01/runaround-customer-service-no-wonder.html

I've also received a reply from Ellen Roseman of the Toronto Star via twitter about my story: https://twitter.com/ellenroseman/status/288807512256442369

Bottom line, I asked for something simple from The Bay: To contact the manufacturer in order to assist in resolving the issue. Of course being a good customer I also let The Bay do something as well if they wished (see first e-mail below). Instead, all The Bay gave me was the runaround in customer service. Nobody at either The Bay Customer Service or at The Bay Rideau Street Stor in Ottawa had the number for Misty Mountain. This is unconsionable, as I've stated before, because after attending at least 6 different The Bay stores in the Toronto and Ottawa areas, the largest amount of floor space is to non appliance items and especially fashion. I cannot figure out how nobody would want support if a seam went on a shirt, a zipper had issues or a button fell off.

To make matters worse it seems that The Bay Customer Service Managers are just like Rogers managers: NON EXISTANT. When I spok to Daishawn on my last call to The Bay Customer Service Phone line on Tuesday, he promised a Customer Service Manager would call me within 24 to 48 hours. As of 1:30 P.M. today Eastern (Ottawa/Toronto Time), I will be at 72 hours and counting. I'm not really holding out much hope.

Customer Service at The Bay in my memory has seemed lacking. I've been shopping at many Bay Stores in the Toronto area (Hillcrest Mall and Upper Canada Mall) to not find anyone on the sales floor to help. I've also worked in merchandising at The Bay store at Yorkdale (supposedly "Flagship store") to also have to explain to customers I don't work for The Bay, but I believe the item you are looking for might be in this aisle.

Added to the above, my simple experience of trying to get a zipper pull fixed. If it were not for Matthew at The Bay's Rideau Street store or a separate attempt at The Bay's St. Laurent store, I would have turned my story over to Ellen Roseman of the Toronto Star to follow up with both The Bay and Misty Mountain.

So what am I looking for from The Bay? Recognition of the time and frustration I've been put through in order to resolve this issue. The Bay has let me down big time and I'm obviously not happy about it. A call from the someone above the Customer Service Department's Management level would suffice to restore some trust in me as a possible The Bay store customer. Why not a Customer Service Manager? They obviously don't care as shown by: A. No availability when I called in 2 times, B. Customer Service Management's obvious refusal to call back. C. Not providing their front line Customer Service agents with simple contact information to manufacturers beyond those for major appliances.

Please look into the above, and ensure The Bay acts accordingly. Silence from The Bay will obviously speak volumes.

Sincerely,

Michael Suddard

 

I wasn't expecting much from The Bay.  After all the Customer Service Department was making their title into a farce with no "service" being provided except for bafflegab and runaround for a simple thing: contact information for a manufacturer of products The Bay sells.   But apparently I was wrong. 

 

My e-mails and blog entry were read, but not by The Bay's Customer Service Department, but by The Bay's own  Director of Service Exccelence within the President's Office, Shayne Tryon.  Shayne noted in his e-mail exactly what I wanted to hear:

 

 I had a chance to read through the emails and your blog. The poor service and run around you’ve been given is completely unacceptable. We are embarrassed by the unwillingness of our customer care centre agents to address the problem with your jacket. The lack of follow-up by a manager is also very unprofessional and highly concerning. On behalf of our President, Bonnie Brooks, and our senior leadership team, we hope you’ll accept our sincerest apologies.

Finally, an apology from almost the top!  Someone in the President's Office was replying to a Customer Service issue that The Bay had flubbed big time.  Even better, they were acknowleging in non scripted sincere writing that The Bay was recognizing the issue and apologizing for it.   The best two lines came in the next paragraph of the e-mail:

We’d like to send you a Hudson’s Bay Company gift as a token of our apology. Could you kindly provide me with your mailing address? 

Yes, The Bay wanted to provide something as an apology for what I went through and was even extending an olive branch to welcome me back to their stores via sending a gift.    I replied the next day, January 11th, to the e-mail with my address.

I got a little concerned a week later when there was no response to my e-mail to say the item had shipped.  Though The Bay had either not received my e-mail response or was ignoring it.   But there was still a feeling there that The Bay's President Office would respond.  Shayne Tryon wouldn't let me down though, January 18th (a week after my e-mail) he responded with an e-mail saying my gift had shipped. 

The gift, what could it be? A pair of Olympic Mittens?  A HBC striped wool blanket?  What could it be. 

Fast forward to January 22nd (yes it apparently takes 4 business days to ship stuff from Toronto to Ottawa), I debated, while putting on my Roots winter jacket, about going out to grab a coffee or do a quick shovel of my driveway then go for a coffee.  I chose the shovel first and then head out for coffee option.  Good thing I did!  Three swipes of the driveway and a Purolator truck rolls up, the driver shuffles around for a minute, and opens the door with a big smile.  He hands me my package, I sign for it, and he drives off.  I look at the return address "HBC Mail Room"! 

I dump the snow shovel into the snowbank and run inside.  I unwrap the intricatly taped and wrapped brown paper to find a red box inside.  I open the red box to find, wrapped again in tissue paper, a red scarf!  A signed note also accompanied it on Shayne's stationary.

In the end, The Bay seems to have redeemed itself with this reaching out to an unsatisfied customer.  I'm hoping The Bay will work toward improving their "Customer Service" Department so that within the next year or two that department can be renamed the "Service Excellence" Department.  The Bay customers can only hope that is the case.   As for me, I will rethink about shopping at The Bay.  Sure I'm not likely to purchase a winter jacket, but I may see if they have winter boots or other items available should the need arise. 

Ellen Roseman deals with similar  and other issues on a daily basis. She has recently came out with her own book on how consumers can "fight back" or let companies know they are unhappy.  She has also given several tips and examples on how to use social media to get what you want.  After failing to get any satisfaction with The Bay's Customer Service Department, I turned to social media (i.e. this blog and twitter) to both let the public know what happened to me and to provide an opportunity with business about how I was treated so other customer's won't be treated again.  The Bay, unlike like Rogers, eventually understood the error, made a valiant attempt at retaining this customer for the future and probably will improve their Customer Service by not repeating the same calamity over and over again.