I found this thread because I had a visit from a SITC officer with USDA this afternoon. First..he was a very nice man, and I learned a lot from him..so no complaints with a man just doing his job. He knocked on my door, showed his badge, then asked me if I had ordered "peanut seeds" from China on ebay? I had not, I had ordered "Jungle nut" seeds, from China on ebay, (last October)...I told the truth. He asked what happened to them , I told him I planted them this Spring, but only 1 came up..walked him out to the garden, showed him the row, with a marker that said jungle nuts, and my one little plant. To my surprise, he didn't take it, didn't ask me to pull it..said he would just give me a warning, and let it go? We had a long talk about importing things..I knew plant diseases could be spread through vegetative material, but not seeds..he taught me a lot. He also said that if I were deemed a persistent offender, I could be fined $5,000.00.......that got my attention! He said they were mostly interested in high volume buyers buying in bulk and spreading the seeds all over the country...I told him that usually I buy U.S. seeds, but that 2 days ago I ordered Brassica Juncea Zha Cai on ebay, from China, as I couldn't find a U.S. seller...and what to do now? He wrote down what I told him, gave me his business card...and honestly, I was so shook up after hearing 5K fine, I don't remember what he told me to do with the seeds..I will e-mail him and ask. During our conversation I told him there was an Australian seller selling the Juncea seeds, he said it was illegal to order seed from ANY foreign country including Canada. All I know is I'm done ordering seeds from other countries..I am obviously on somebody's list now, anyway. The USDA must have access to Ebay records somehow, because he had my name and address as well as name/address of seller in China. I truly didn't know it was illegal, and as I said, I buy U.S. seeds 99% of the time, anyway. Odd thing is, after he left I looked up my ebay order and realized that I had ordered a rare Chinese long bean(yard long) from that same seller only a month before I ordered the Jungle nuts. He never mentioned them? So...here I am with my one little Jungle nut plant..I hope I get a few nuts from it so I can plant my own seed next year..although they are much easier to get now in the U.S.

I can't thank you all enough. I've gotten such good ideas and help from you. I'm implementing many suggestions. I think you people have seen things more clearly than we were; lost in the forest, I guess. Here is the latest: dan1888: That was also the suggestion of my local appliance store, who supplies the small local hospital with medical refrigerators. He figures he can find me a very small fridge and we can find a home ?somewhere? so I can stop obsessing about the reliability/parts issue of food fridge. And also, Hubby asked our pharmacist -- the beauty of living in a small town -- if he would be willing to house the drugs if we have a power outage and aren't yet equipped with a backup generator. (Thanks hollysprings for reminding us of the backup generator and the idea that maybe we take the 19-year-old Kitchenaid -- if it hasn't kicked the bucket -- and put it in the workshop.) laat2: you helped solidify the idea that we just need to make backup power a necessity rather than a nice-to-have. We've re-prioritized some things; sometimes it takes an outsider to see things clearly. Thanks for your clarity. deeageaux: I spoke with USA Miele service and they will, indeed, send out a certified, authorized, anointed repair person if I need service. BUT the install has to come from the dealer. I'm focusing on a dealer that actually has a few Miele products in their showroom (a kitchen design place) because I'm guessing they have more invested than the other two appliance places that don't even carry any product. BUT I think we'll save the Miele purchase for the combi oven and 3-burner cooktop because I just can't find anything comparable in a local appliance. We are going to follow the advice of those who voted for local repair person. And there we have a pleasant surprise. jakvis: I called local appliance dealers and had conversations about your suggested Bosch fridge. Boy did I learn a lot. None, save one, do warranty work and most who say they repair them are not authorized to do so -- but sell me one they will, and then invalidate my warranty. Wow! But by asking those Bosch questions I have located an appliance dealer in the next town who is authorized to do warranty work on the Bosch and suggested I look at the Fisher & Paykel counter-depth 30" fridge if it would spare my husband a heart attack. He cautioned that F&P parts take a long time to come cross country, but that pressure isn't as critical with the idea that only food is affected. So, we'll probably implement most everyone's advice. It is with a big sigh of relief that I go shopping. It has been good "talking" with you, and a BIG help. Thanks.

One of our replacement PO carriers delivered all the odd numbered mail to the even side and the even numbered mail to the odd side. Twice. Our regular carrier is wonderful. He actually cares and comments if something goes wrong. Re tracking. We were waiting for a kayak last year. We purchased through LL Bean (we live nearby), but they were out of the one we wanted. The manufacturer insisted on sending it by a national trucking carrier. After several weeks of waiting, we were told that although the shipping paperwork documented the kayak made it to the local facility, the kayak itself was not on the truck. It "fell off" somewhere in upstate New York. I finally was told that often paperwork gets scanned, but items do not to save the carrier time. We had to start over and finally received the kayak that we purchased in April at the end of August. Next time we will go with something in the store no matter what the color is. Sigh.

Costco's return policy is legendary. People have returned half-eaten pizzas and dried out Christmas trees (in the new year!). I have personally seen somebody trying to return a 30 year old VCR. The Costco sales person was pretty sure that Costco never even carried this brand, but they still tried extremely hard to issue a refund. The only thing that stopped them from doing so was that they couldn't figure out how much the VCR happened to have cost when it was originally purchased. They have since changed their policy and electronics have a limited return period. This is mostly a response to electronics being so extremely short-lived that every half year a new model appears on the market. Other product categories don't suffer from the same problem and still have unlimited return periods. Also, if this is an older piece of electronics that was bought before the policy change, Costco will generally honor their former policy. Home Depot is similarly generous. I have heard this chain referred to as the "power tool lending library". I don't like that a small number of consumer abuse these policies. But companies have discovered that a small amount of loss is acceptable, when it overall results in more customer satisfaction and more return business. And it works. Places like Costco have many happy regular customers who do most of their shopping there. In fact, even Amazon has partially adopted some of these tenets. They don't have the same overly generous return policy, but overall their customer service is pretty amazing. It's one of the reasons why I buy so much from them (and why I usually try to avoid buying from their third-party market place vendors).