I ordered a cabinet, a minifridge and some small stuff from Lowes on-line service back around the first of the year. It had a scheduled delivery date which was getting close and I had not heard from them so I contacted them to ask when to expect delivery. After they fumbled around looking for it, I was finally told I had to pick it up at the store instead of getting delivered as requested and they did not have the cabinet. I specifically requested delivery because I am 78 years old and am limited in the weight I can pick up due to prior open heart surgery. I told them this was unacceptable and after speaking even to a store manager, told them to cancel the order and went out and bought the items elsewhere. Lo and behold, in July, I get notice that someone in the store, without authorization from us, resubmitted the order and we were getting deliivery that following weekend and that they had already charged it to my account. I immediately called and again worked my way up to the manager and told them they were not authorized to do that reorder and to under no circumstances, deliver this order. Then I get a bill for the merchandize from that second order for the goods never delivered so I filed a dispute with their credit card company. After weeks of wrangling with them about the fact that the first order was never delivered and was cancelled and that the second order was not authorized they finally admitted that their records showed no delivery but they were charging me a restocking fee for the 2nd order that was not authorized . They refunded all but about $33..77 claiming this was a resto cking fee. I told them I would not pay them for an unauthorized order. Next, I received a bill for the same exact amount as this "restocking fee" only now they were claiming it was interest on a deferred interest payment which was still wrong because they should not have been a charge if nothing was delivered and they were not entitled to charge deferred interest if no charge could be made. And today, I received a new bill from them claiming I failed to pay the $33.77 deferred interest fee which was not legal in the first place since this is based upon the 2nd unauthorized re-order and they charged me an additional $30.00 for late fee on top of the $33.77 wrongful fee raising the balance to $63.77 now due so I called them again. As I spoke to that agent it became obvious he was not reading the file as he tried to "school techer“ explain the fee without listening to what I was telling him. When I again tried to explain what was wrong, I told him the fact that I am a retired court clerk who spent 17 years doing contract law and that the charges they were attempting to collect could constitute fraud he finally sat up and listened. They have now filed a new dispute resolution claim which is supposed to wipe out the entire balance. I have since closed my account with Loews and we no longer shop there. My parting statement to him is that I do not do business with companies that cheat their customers and gave him a promise that if I received any further bills on this issue I would escalate it to up the channels and indeed I will. I wlll file a complaint with their corporate offices, the BBB and since Synchronym lists itself as a bank, I will include the bank regulaters. This is a petty amount of money that should have been simply handled the first time but I am retired and have all the time in the world to return petty with petty. This should never have happened in the first place.

Eighty years ago there were small covered, rubber-tired wagons drawn by one horse going down most streets of many/most cities in our part of the world, and the horse knew where to go and where to stop next. One carried bread, one carried milk and one carried ice, with the salespeople carrying a selection of the goods into the homes, and the ice man chopped a chunk of ice from the big block, carried it into the house and put it into one of two or three compartments of a wooden box in the kitchen, called an "ice box", it kept the perishable foods reasonably cool, and the housewife emptied water from the melted ice from a pan in in the bottom from time to time. Seventy years ago they began building refrigerators. Of the refrigerators built sixty and fifty years ago, quite a few of them lasted for forty years. Refrigerators built today last only about ten years. I've told this story dozens of times over recent months, and many of the listeners step into the conversation at that point, and many of them say the same three words ... "IF ... YOU'RE ... LUCKY!!!" The decrease in average lifespan being mainly due to the engineers planning them having become so much stupider over the years, do you figure?? Could it be that if a fridge is built to last for about ten years (or, as some claim, that their new ones lasted for only a year or even less) ... the builders would sell a great many more fridges ... resulting in providing them greater profits?? It takes a great deal of precious petroleum to mine and smelt the metal, and be the source for the plastics to build our fridges. And as millions in the third world are joining the middle class and buying fridges ... ... building them to last for only 10 years or less is a greedy luxury that, wasting our precious resources, adding to pollution and global warming as it is doing increasingly, we cannot continue doing! Canadians: with an election coming soon - tell your political candidates to take major actions to take better care of our precious world. ole joyful

Well, I received my HelloFresh box yesterday. (I canceled my subscription but I'd already paid for the first week of three choices) I haven't made any of the meals but here are a few of my first impressions.. Rory, I believe you signed up in the same week I did so I'll be curious to hear what you thought. I chose three meals-- a shrimp and asparagus risotto with meyer lemon, a spicy apricot chicken with green beans and couscous and a steak with tomato vinaigrette. Two were under 600 calories, one was at 630. That's a caloric range I am comfortable with... still, I feel the menus are wayyyy too light on veggies. Even more so when I opened one of the meal boxes. The quantity of asparagus was very small-- about the size (or even a bit less) than what I'd use for one serving. I am not completely anti-carb but I will often double up on veggies over carbs. the packaging was simple and the instruction cards were clear and seem to be complete. They are definitely worthy of saving for to make another time though I wish they were much smaller. I won't likely keep them. The quality of the proteins looks pretty good-- I'll know better when I prepare the dishes. I will say that given the initial week cost only $29, I don't think I'd have been able to shop for these meals on my own for the price... but then had I shopped on my own, I'd probably have ditched at least 1 of the carb side dishes (cheap) and added veggies/salad makings (more expensive). Petalique, I think you are right on target. I need to come up with my own ideas for "kits" and shop based on them. A number of the dishes across services are things I either already make or could easily make. I just need to be motivated to stick with the shopping. On a side note: I have decided to try the every other day fasting-- 500 calories one day, eat what you want the next day. This will require that I keep up with shopping so that I have good, fresh produce for the 500 calorie days. I am just going to have to get better about planning and going to the market. I don't plan on pigging out on the "eat what you want" days but I am going to want some variety on those days since the 500 calorie days aren't likely to have much variation.

dan1888 Nav systems are limited. Have a house number up and clearly visible. If cell is down, nav systems are garbage. In my town, they insist on actual NUMBERS set out the old fashioned way. I have been here for five years. Google Maps drops people off at the beginning of my road. Waze sends people to the end of my road. I all too frequently get delivery guys knocking at my door asking me which house would be, say, #39. Which is NOT my house and I do have my house number out by the driveway. I'd hate that to be an emergency call responder.