The Bee Hive Should be Sprayed with RAID

4048 Packard St
Ann Arbor, MI 48108

The Bee Hive is a party store I have occasionally stopped at on my way home. They have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 parking spots, and I've seen maybe 3 of them filled at any given time. This surplus parking doesn't stop them from being grumpy about anyone using their spaces for Flower shop parking. They have 4 large signs (professionally painted on metal backing) proclaiming "NO FLOWER SHOP PARKING!!" It seems to have never crossed their mind that someone might actually want to both pick up some flowers and get beer.

Anyway, their crabby attitude always bugged me a bit, but the convenience factor kept me going back. Finally one day I stopped there to pick up ice cream for my kid. When the stinky assholes behind the counter saw that I was only getting a quart of ice cream and no alcohol they started making quiet jokes to each other. They asked to see my ID, and one said there was a lot of alcohol in the ice cream. The first said, "don't tell him that--he probably won't buy it!" These jerks were used to selling exclusively liquor and cigarettes to other stinky bastards and seemed to enjoy poking fun at the lack of alcohol in my purchase. I didn't really get the joke, but I did get annoyed enough to go elsewhere from now on.

The only time I'll be parking in the Bee Hive lot from now on is to pick up flowers.

Lay off Lays

Lays Potato Chips
are greasy.

and

not very good.

I hate how they stick in your molars.

So imagine my disgust, when I discovered that my half-eaten bag was filled with dead ants. The ants were stuck in my teeth, too.

Taco Hell

There was some #2 in my #3 Combo.

Taco Bell has given me the gut-wrenching-four-days-cramping-stomach-turning-explosive-scheisserei for the very last time! After ending up in the emergency room, I decided that I didn't want to eat Grade D Beef anymore!

D is close to failing.

I contacted the manager of my local franchise to let him know how bad his food makes me feel. He says that in the seven stores he manages, over the past 17 years, there has never been an incident of food contamination! How could this be possible?! Bullshit, as I bet that all of the DTU readers have gotten the trots from Taco Bell at some point in their lives.

(NOTE: not all members of the DTU staff are willing to write off taco bell, even at the risk of #2 in the #3.)

Up yours, MCI!

Back in the day, when I had a "land line," MCI was my long distance carrier. I was living Ann Arbor, and reaching out and touching someone, etc., without a second thought. One month, I received a huge bill with a ton of calls originating in the far-flung mystery spot of Ann Harbor, Michigan. Ordering for a pizza cost about $4.00.

So I got on the horn with MCI, who bumped me back to SBC, who tossed this potato back in their laps. I asked them kindly to correct my bill, but nothing happened. In the meantime, I didn't pay them. I called them, wrote, faxed, emailed all my old bills, and even a map of Michigan. I would mysteriously get disconnected everytime I was on hold. After a few months of this, they didn't want to listen to my blather anymore, so they sent the bill into collections. The relentless bastards were calling me everyday and demanding their dollars.

I asked MCI for the phone number for their corporate office. Their response, "We do not have a corporate number." The phone company doesn't have a phone.

I probably owe them about $20 for my long distance. Bill collectors followed me for years, wanting to settle for $300. In the meantime, MCI went out of business and had some sort of fraud lawsuit. I would like to thank the good citizens of Ann Harbor for helping kill this corporate asshole.

Cuisinart should be ground up, brewed, and served as a $6 Grande Mocha piece of shit

The following is a letter sent to Cuisinart by a member of the DTU staff:

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Cuisinart® Customer Service
150 Milford Road
East Windsor NJ 08520

To The Brilliant Engineers at Cuisinart:

How would you like to wake up to this in the morning?

I don’t know if you’re like me, but I like to have a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. Except, with your poorly designed “Grind and Brew” machine, it’s a complete crapshoot as to whether I’m going to wake up to coffee, or an explosion of burnt coffee grounds and scalding water.

This has happened so often, I have come up with a theory as to why my $100 coffeepot can’t brew a cup of coffee:
The vibration from the poorly designed grinder (which needs special cleaning detail with a toothpick) often unlatches the ineffective plastic hook that is supposed to keep the brew basket in place. As a result, the basket pops open. Without any sort of safety device in place, the machine continues to brew. The outcome is a concoction of rancid, burnt coffee and boiling water that blows up into the machine, onto the machine, onto the countertops, the cupboards, the floor, etc. There is a gummed-up coffee crust that forms on the hotplate, the carafe, inside the machine, inside every little nook and cranny. This delicate cleaning process involves the use of specialized cleaning instruments (toothpicks, barbeque skewers, scouring pads) and at least a half hour of time. Not especially convenient when you’re trying to get out the door in the morning.





Maybe you think there must be “user error” in here somewhere. Indeed, the first half a dozen times this happened, we thought we must’ve done something wrong. But our sharp minds led us to double-, even triple-check the basket before going off to bed the night before. We would check the button, yes, fully out. We would press firmly on the “Cuisinart” logo, to make sure the basket was fully seated. We would even give the basket a little tug, just to see if we could pop it off easily. With this triple-safety-check in place, we felt confident that we had not seated the basket improperly.

Maybe you folks think this is a great design. Perhaps I can send you my coffeepot, so you can enjoy this experience first thing in the morning, too. Please let me know, as otherwise, I will be placing it in the trash.

The attached photos represent the small mess that is produced when I catch the malfunctioning coffeepot early in its cycle. When allowed to complete its ill-fated journey, the disaster is much, much worse.

Please be advised that as a young consumer with disposable income, I have plenty of good spending years ahead of me, and I will never buy a Cusinart product again.


Sincerely yours,

Dead To Us

Grizzly Peak Has Me Piqued

Poor customer service is upsetting anywhere it happens, but particularly at a restaurant. I mean, you go there to have someone SERVE you and the hope is to have a positive, relaxing experience where your needs are taken care of, right? We had 2 bad experiences dining (or not) at Grizzly Peak in Ann Arbor, and for the money that you have to pay to eat out in that town, 2 bad experiences is enough to make this place dead to us.

The first negative experience was the worst. It was probably about 5 years ago when we went to Grizzly Peak with some friends. We were seated by the host, but didn't see our server for at least 10 minutes. We tapped another waitstaff to ask about getting menus or some water while we waited and were told "Oh, sure, we'll be right with you." At least another 10 minutes went by and we saw no sign of water, menus, or a server. We again flagged someone down (no small effort even though the restaurant didn't seem to be terribly busy at the time), and received pretty much the same response. After waiting for another 10 minutes or so with no sign of impending service, we decided to just walk out.

A couple years ago, we were in Ann Arbor and decided to give Grizzly Peak another try for some reason. We were actually served this time, but service was lackluster, slow, and staff appeared almost put out by doing their jobs. On top of that, the food wasn't even any good, at least, not for the price. It's over between us, Grizzly Peak. If I ever want burgers and beer, Casey's is going to have me covered.

Grizzly Peak Brewing Company
120 West Washington
Ann Arbor, MI 48104

The 2002 Dodge Grand Caravan

My feelings about this vehicle are in part tainted by the horrendous service experience I had with it (see post about those a-holes at Cueter Dodge). But all the same, I have reason to proclaim this model dead to me. I realize that things go wrong with cars, and you need to spend money to maintain them in proper working order. However, $2000 over about a 6 month period on a car that was only about 3 years old at the time?? That seems excessive to me. My other car, the total powerhouse of Ford engineering that is the 1998 Escort wagon, has maybe cost me $2000 in repairs during its entire long, reliable life thus far.
In addition to my bad experiences with this vehicle, I have reports from a friend who also owned one. She experienced strange electrical problems as well, on the order of "the power windows won't work when it rains, but only while I'm driving on the highway."
These cars are either possessed or pieces of shit. I'm going with #2.

I Swear at Frigidaire

We bought an oven and dishwasher from Fridgidaire. Both were non-functional on arrival--pretty annoying, but not enough for me to write off a Michigan company. After two months and 3 visits from the repairman things appeared to be resolved.

I called up Fridgidaire with what I took to be the reasonable request that they extend my warranty--at least for the 2 months that I had non-functioning appliances. After a 45 minute phone call in which I alternated between arguing and waiting on hold, the jerks finally offered to give me a one month extension to the warranty. That seemed pretty insufficient, but I agreed. They asked me again to wait on hold while they prepared the warranty info. 10 minutes later I hung up, feeling like I had been seriously dicked over.

I think my biggest mistake was thinking that "Fridgidaire" (which clearly should handle cold-based appliances) could handle hot things like an oven or dishwasher.

Ever since that experience I've encouraged everyone I know: NEVER BUY FROM FRIGIDAIRE!!!

Cueter Dodge can bite me

During an hour long drive home at night in the rain our windsheild wipers stopped working. It was a pain getting home without wipers, but we figured it was probably a minor issue--blown fuse or something. We brought it into Cueter Dodge (Ypsilanti), assuming we were looking at $40 dollars labor, plus 50 cents for a new fuse. $450 later we had replaced some circuit boards and god knows what all. That sucked, but we figured the dealer knows what they're doing, and should be honest enough.

About a week later, the radio stops working. We again bring it in. Turns out a different circuit board had been the real cause of the original problem. The new one that had been installed was still under warrenty--so that was free--but the new board added another $500 dollars or so to our bill. So far around $1000 to fix the friggin windshield wipers.

Just to summarize the remaining experience: 3 more trips to Cueter Dodge, ever growing electrical problems, ultimately $2000 in expenses--for something that started with friggin windshield wipers. I know shit happens with cars, but the diagnosis approach Cueter took was to assume immediately that every symtom was the cause. It took 5 separate trips to the shop before they followed the full trail of symptoms back to the true cause (a bad wiring harness).

Oh, and our customer service rep (Esther) had to be reminded of my name and situation every one of the five times we came into the shop--over about a 5 week period. Each time we brought the car in, it was like we'd never been there before.

Cueter Dodge can eat me!!!