Dwell the Rubbishmonger

Dear Dwell Webmaster,

I purchased the Stained oak veneer, mirrored glass · Dimensions : h156cm : w92cm : d45cm : table h77cm” Loop Leg Dressing Table Darkwood with two drawers and mirror (product 101590) for £145.00 and took delivery in my home in London. Dwell as an order and delivery system worked sufficiently. As for the end product, it was rubbish.

I have assembled many flatpack legoland wonders so I am accustomed to all manner of these objects as they arrive in their cardboard shipping boxes and sticky tape fastenings. This one is a particularly bad example of what can go wrong with these products.  You should send a stiff note to your product buyer, and they can send an edict of displeasure on to the Malaysian slave labour camp they use to create these lousy fiberboard furniture approximations. Perhaps you can instruct the inmates on the power of product quality by cutting their rations to half a bowl of gruel a day.

The instructions included were a half a page of wrinkled paper showing a fully assembled loop leg dressing table (darkwood) with a kaleidoscope of arrows that looked more like a two year old’s scribble than any meaningful instruction meant for human use. The fastening objects depicted were indistinguishable from each other. It was more useful to look at the picture on the box than the instructions. People who create drawings like this are usually locked in padded rooms. There was no meaningful sequence to follow, no explanation of the ‘twisty lock’ technical marvel that holds it together. Fortunately I have encountered the twisty lock before. I imagine you have had other complaints because your website has an explanatory paragraph on the twisty lock.

The insstructions have a nice line in para 9: “Follow the instructions carefully and don’t rush. Take a break when feeling tired.” That means you must at some level understand that building this fibreboard concoction will take so long we should plan for naps when exhausted. No doubt you call that messaging consumer relationship value add. Nice work.

The piece itself is of such dimensions that it requires the assembler to have non standard tools. Specifically, the space age twisty locks are inside the drawer assembly where there is 4 inches of clearance. A standard screwdriver is 6.5 inches long. So when you buy this Dwell.com marvel, you have to also buy a shortened 3” screwdriver or you cannot assemble it. That means the actual price is £151.99 plus labour to acquire the special screwdriver. Interestingly, the ‘tools required’ shown on the useless instructions include a poor rendition of a standard screwdriver. Additionally, the holes were not properly drilled. It looked like the drill machine was set incorrectly because on one piece where the holes should have been there were only indentations. I had to redrill the holes myself. When I saw the fine handiwork you sell beneath the Dwell brand, I thought that for you, those indentations were not failures, but statements of Dwell QUALITY.

Why do I care so much about a flatpack fibreboard dressing table with ill conceived documentation delivered undrilled and made so difficult to assemble I should take breaks between sessions? I don’t. Its just another highly branded, cheaply made, globally shipped, overpriced piece of ‘product’ that has the cultural staying power of a Burger King anything but beef frozen patty served at the drive thru window at Home Depot’s joint venture with Walmart – WalBurgerDepot. Why should you care? You might not. But a product sold under your brand had the quality of a trailer park credenza and if you are happy with it, I guess we should be too.

Lawyers & Bagels

Lawyer buddy writes:

I go into Starbucks and ask if they can toast a bagel. “You can” the Barista replies.  He sees the perplexed look on my face.  “At your home.” He clarifies.  “We can’t toast the bagels. Legal reasons. ”

Lafo responds:

Some hyper attenuated legal posse calculated the liability of toasted bagels across the entire Stabucks system and determined the risk outweighed the benefit of toasting the bagels so they literally removed the finishing service while still offering the raw product. Food prep meets flat pack.

What is even more a statement about the sign of these end times is that the communication all the way down the chain from legal posse to zit faced coffee jockey was not a repackaging of a customer facing service message like “I’m sorry we don’t toast bagels here. Would you prefer a muffin instead?”, rather it is considered completely acceptable to offload the work so you can “take it home” because the lawyers said so. And that’s considered good messaging at the counter because the US is a corporatocracy run by lawyers, Indian casino operators and porno magnates.

You were victimized by your own kind. As you gnawed on that uncooked pasty bread mass I hope you considered your own role in propping up the monstrous legal mechanism and how at heart you may be an OK guy, but through your actions you create the rules and findings that suck the life from the very society upon which you feed.

Face yourself. Take a good hard look at what you are sowing before the day of judgment comes and you are reaping a ring of Hellfire!

Citibank the Terrible

Absolutely true in every detail and it speaks plainly for itself: 

Dear Citibank,

Look at yourself, you bloated jabba hut financial maggot leeched onto the jugular of the American Dream. You gargantuan percentage point scorer in a sport with no name, driving the baseline of morality farting your spam mail into the clear air of freedom. Look at yourself and flinch at the reality of your own putrescence. Citibank the Putrid.

In April of 2007 you sent me a letter offering me a home equity line of credit. Being a good consumer susceptible to marketing messages I gladly responded. A home equity line of credit makes me a good American. To draw down the equity on my home so I can purchase more consumer products at the big box retailers and then cram these Chinese made disposable trinkets into my highly leveraged home (or a nearby convenient storage facility when the space runs out) moves the economy, creates tax flow and pays for the war effort.

You had a person named Richard Flowers call me who proceeded over the course of sixty days confusedly ‘dribble request’ different pieces of paperwork one at a time, as if Richard Flowers and Citibank The Bloated and Blind had in fact never done a home equity line of credit application before. Each day Richard Flowers would ask for one more pay stub, one additional clarification of account or one final proof of this and that. For a tax return that was two years old and seventy pages in length I was told Richard Flowers could not accept scanned copies. It had to be mailed or faxed. Faxed, but not scanned meaning you give Richard Flowers 30 year old technology that gives rotten copies on curly paper but Richard Flowers can not accept a scan because Citibank the Ludditical doesn’t give Richard Flowers that 15 year old innovation called electronic mail. You are lame. You senseless weak kneed dying beast. You carcass. Citibank the Foul Financial Carrion.

In sheer frustration I told Richard (Flowers) the Mousehearted that I could not be bothered with any more paper drills. I did not want your credit line, did not need it and was withdrawing from the process. The equity on the home was 4 times the amount I was asking and Richard (Flowers) the Mousehearted just couldn’t get his weak grip around the handle of it. So I quit. Left you behind. Washed my hands of your process and your dire intent, your weak representatives and your ancient communication technology. Citibank the Osolescent.

Thirty days later I get a letter from you stating you have denied my loan because “It could not be granted under the conditions requested.” Basically you send me a letter saying “No, WE’RE breaking up with YOU.” Risible. Bureaucratic. Offensive. Conditions requested? The conditions I requested, you flaming red monkey butt of incompetence, is that the loan be processed on the scale measured in one human lifetime. If that is too much to ask, then so be it you lumbering armadillo of financial scale, you rhinoceros hided beast. Citibank the Slow and Lame.

After this ever so hurtful process and your subsequent rejection of my request to not have a line of credit process take a century or more, you sent me another letter offering me a line of credit in July, and another in August. You skunk bit marketing dog coming back for more juicing my mailbox with the stench of needless and redundant letters. You database inept clowns. You spamming, direct mailing perverted assaulters on liberty. Citibank the Inept.

Go away. Simply go away to that place where big, slow Orwellian monsters go to slide into the tar pit and fossilize. Leave me be you wretched BEAST. You’re a big dumb joke and it’s a joke you don’t even get.  Stop sending me home equity line of credit letters.

Kind regards,

reference number 107050***315000 (JT20-1 MJ201)

Complaint email to Fornsica

After spending 20 minutes trying to order a small piece of furniture from a web purveyor of flatpack rubbish I sent them this note.

To Fornsica.com Customer Service:

Terrible checkout process. Confusing, not helpful. Tried to bang my way through your process twice which sent me offsite to HSBC, to Verified by Visa then came back to the middle of the process with no explanation until I tried again and a small bar at the top says ‘fraudshield placed in review state’ - whatever.

Your web usability people should be punished severely and the best punishment I can conceive of at this point is to force them for the remainder of their natural lives to try and transact on this monstrous electronic torture chamber they have created. I will cancel this order or orders in whatever fashion it emerges once your processes do whatever needs to be done to determine if I have or have not ordered, or have ordered twice.

Verified by Visa, HSBC, Fraudshield, Chinese made flatpack overpriced rubbish, Fornsica = waste of life energy. There are hundreds of places to buy home kit and wasting my time with this one won’t happen again. As a matter is fact, it would probably be easier and the result more satisfactory to walk into a stand of trees, cut a few down and fashion my own furnishings than to be twisted around in your electronic web of pain and suffering. Shame on you and the bit/byte mediocrity you have wrought on the world.

Turn On My Phone

After an autopay failure and temporary phone disconnection at a second home in the US of A, Lafo navigates an abysmal web help section after paying his bill to request the phone be reconnected:

“Your website helps you the corporation sort emails to reduce costs and increase profits, but it is remarkably inflexible and unusable for those of us needing assistance. The ‘limited subject sort’ is awful. Simply unimaginably awful. Your product usability people should be punished and the most terrifying punishment conceivable would be to force them to use their own creation for an extended period. They would go mad in the face of it. Oh, I can’t say more because I have only a few characters and spaces remaining. Turn my phone back on, you faceless gigantic bloodsucking corporate monster. You vile out of control branded creature. You Drakken, you Leviathan, you Cerberus with your multi SBC/ATT/BellSouth heads devouring treasure and life force with your terrible products and crushing mass. Turn on my phone.”