No, they haven’t closed. Not yet. But once upon a time they were one of my most favorite stores EVAR, and it has been sad to watch them slide into irrelevance. And now, they have made a decision which makes them, in the immortal words of Stephen Colbert, dead to me.

Back in 1998/1999, Mike (now-ex husband) and I moved to Southern California, leaving virtually all of our furniture behind as a gift to a friend who really needed it, and started over again. Virtually everything we bought was from Restoration Hardware (henceforth referred to as RH). We spent about $15K there; they had the good stuff, serious solid wood Craftsman style furniture.

It wasn’t just the furniture that caught our eye; you could get that from other places (and truth be told, most of them were less expensive than RH). What really drew us in was all the interesting accessories and knick-nacks. The kitchen gadgets from a bygone time. The stocking stuffers at Christmastime. It was an awesome place to browse and I almost never left the store without a sack full of new treasures I hadn’t even known existed before I walked in. And the entire eclectic collection was tied together by these little sign cards that described each and every item. One person wrote every single one of them, which ensured that they had a consistent style and voice, and they were wonderful. Perfectly descriptive, not too long or too short, and sometimes very witty.

It was a satisfying place to shop in other ways too. They had excellent employees and the service was top notch. I don’t know what their return policy actually was in those days, but they always took care of us no matter what the situation.

After we moved to New Hampshire we had only one RH, in Boston, so we didn’t go there as often. Slowly we began to see things change… the sign cards disappeared, and one year they put all the kitchen stuff on clearance and the entire department disappeared. After a while the store took on the look of a place that was in desperation mode; they kept rearranging and trying (or so it seemed) to hide the fact that their inventory was shrinking.

After we moved to Portland in 2005 I once again (for the third time now, if anyone’s counting) went to RH and replaced every bit of bathroom hardware in the house, spending hundreds of dollars in the process. I noticed with some sadness that the quality of the pieces was not what it used to be; they are still chrome-plated solid brass but the construction and packaging were much sloppier this time around. I went to the store a few times after that but was underwhelmed; even the selection of toys at Christmas failed to interest me.

Ok, finally we get to the point: This past January (2009) I ordered a hand-held showerhead, matching the rest of the bathroom hardware, from their website. I was planning to remodel the master bathroom and that was one of the main pieces. But life intervened, and now here we are in September and I still haven’t touched the bathroom, nor do I plan to any time soon. So I decided to return this unused (and fairly expensive) piece of hardware.

I went to their website and noted, to my dismay, the 90 day return policy. Oops. But I also noted that if you bring in a return without a receipt, you can get store credit. To my way of thinking, returning a resaleable item for store credit, no matter how long it has been, is a good deal for the store; they get to keep my money *and* sell it again. So I sent them an email explaining the situation and asking if I could send back the showerhead for store credit. I received the following response:

“Thank you for contacting Restoration Hardware. We do apologize for the inconvenience. Unfortunately, due to the length of time you have had your item we are unable to honor any exchanges or return on your order# 689199. We do apologize for this inconvenience.”

Um, ok. Far be it from me to tell them how to run their business, but this makes *no* sense to me. Particularly since if it was an item I could have purchased in their store, all I would have had to do was take it in and say I lost the receipt, and I would have gotten store credit, no questions asked. They do still sell the item in question, btw, and since I bought it on sale they could resell it for *more* than I paid for it.

Ten years ago I probably would have engaged Vanessa, the “E-Mail Customer Service Specialist”, who probably works for a service and could not care in the least about RH’s customers, in a debate about the stupidity of this policy and tried to get an exception. But I’m tired of tilting at windmills, and I hope that by putting this out where Google will find it I might actually do some good, whether that is getting management to change their attitude or at least warn off some customers who might also find this to be a very poor business policy.

If anyone from RH happens to be reading this… I did some Googling to make sure I was correct in my sense that the company is not doing well. Yikes. Looks like things are pretty dismal. May I suggest that you find that guy who used to write the sign cards, and maybe the rest of the management team from that era, and bring them back? They knew how to merchandise a store that people like me, who still have some disposable income, wanted to shop in. The folks you have in there now don’t have a *clue*.

Apparently his name is Stephen Gordon. Here’s an article about him:

http://www.answers.com/topic/restoration-hardware-inc

He knew what he was doing. And there’s still a need for a store like RH used to be.

The article even talks about the sign cards. *sigh*

Did I say hate? No, actually it’s more like a visceral loathing. Every single encounter I have with them seems to go badly, and yet? I keep buying service from them. Kind of sounds like a personal problem, doesn’t it?

This time, I increased my FiOS speed from 15/2 to 25/15. I checked the speed before and after the upgrade date at speedtest.net, and found that it did not change when they said it would.

First I wrote to FiOS Customer Service. They wrote back telling me to call an 800 number. Exactly what difference does it make if they talk to me in person? I guess I made clear what I thought of that by eventually losing the email.

Then I submitted a trouble ticket on their website. This netted me a call, 8 business days later. I wasn’t here so the guy left a message saying they would need to check some settings. Hey, we might actually get somewhere! So I called back with moderately high hopes, which of course was my first mistake.

I started out by offering the guy a choice of a) a Vista system connected directly to the internet or b) a Mac connected via a powerline Ethernet adapter. He said it didn’t matter, so we used the Mac since that’s my system. He connected to my Mac via a screen sharing program. He poked around a bit but obviously didn’t really know what to do. He made me close all running programs, and cleared out Safari’s history files, which didn’t make any difference (seriously, does dumping cache *ever* actually make any difference???).

At this point he decided that the problem must be that the Mac is connected via the aforementioned Ethernet adapter, through an Airport Base Station, then to the Verizon router. Now, it’s not a crazy idea that all that could be slowing down the line, but I told him several times that this system gets exactly the same numbers from speedtest.net as the directly-connected Vista system so that can’t possibly be the problem… except in his mind, it was. So off I went upstairs to try again.

He had more options on Vista – apparently even though Verizon nominally supports Macs, they don’t actually have any tools written for them and so here he was able to run through his canned script and “optimize my internet connection”. While we were waiting for a reboot I asked him what we would do about the Mac if all this helped; he spouted a bunch of nonsense that basically amounted to “I haven’t the faintest idea, but I’m going to do my best to make it not my problem”.

All the optimizing didn’t make a bit of difference. Huge surprise. So then he went to the TCP/IP Analyzer at speedguide.net and pointed out that the RWIN value is too low, and that his tools should have fixed that, and that Vista must have some kind of firewall or something blocking him from changing it. I didn’t bother asking him what RWIN was because it was clear he wouldn’t have a clue. According to the site “RWIN (TCP Receive Window) is a buffer that determines how much data the receiving computer is prepared to get at one time.” Does that really sound like something one should have to tweak on a home computer???

Now, I know that speed test sites are notoriously unreliable. While he was doing all of this he went to speed.io, which gave radically different numbers from speedtest.net (much better on the download, much worse on the upload). But each site is fairly consistent, and I expected to see *some* increase when the line speed was turned up.

His last piece of advice? Call Microsoft to see if they could help figure out what in Vista is blocking his tools. And call Apple to ask them to optimize Safari and my Airport Base Station for me. Yea, right. Hello Apple? This kid at Verizon told me to call you, said my networking problems are your responsibility. I’d probably have hearing damage from the laughter.

*heavy sigh* Sadly, their only competition is Comcast, unless I want to go for ultra expensive business service, and they are no better. So all I can do is vent here, while I ponder what my next step should be.

Update: I posted about my troubles at dslreports.com. I’m still not 100% sure but it appears that my connection speed actually *is* what it’s supposed to be – it was the speed test website I was using to check it that’s bad. You can read about that here. But I don’t think that makes the incompetence of the Verizon tech any more forgivable.

I had a disappointingly un-Apple-like experience buying a new system last week, and of course I had to share. I would put the rest below the fold, since it's so long, but Typepad doesn't seem to support summaries anymore, or at least I can no longer figure out how to make one. So you're all stuck with the whole thing, sorry!

Last week I decided that my aging iMac was due for a replacement before it died completely, and with a little nudging from Wayne I decided to upgrade to a Mac Pro. (for those who know or care, dual quad core Xeon "Nehalem" CPUs :) Typically one might order this from the online Apple Store, but I needed to write a check for it (the price tag is well over the daily limit on my business debit card) so there was no choice but to buy it at a local store.

I wasn't even sure that a retail store would stock the high-end Mac Pro; it's not the sort of thing people usually buy at the mall. So I called the store at Bridgeport Village (from here on out, BV) and asked if they had one in stock. At first the kid who answered the phone, who sounded all of 16 years old, was confused… I said Mac Pro but I think he heard MacBook Pro, and what's this about dual quad-core what's that now??? We got it straightened out and he went off to check, reporting back that yes, they had them in stock.

When it was time to head out to buy the system, though, we needed dinner and for some reason we wanted to go to the Cheesecake Factory, which is at Washington Square (WS). So we decided to try that store first to see if they had them.

We walked in and the store was full (as it always is), with every salesperson busy. We saw one conversing with a customer about a Mac Mini, which are set up next to the Mac Pros, so we went over there and waited. And waited. About 20 minutes went by, during which we never saw a free salesperson, no-one acknowledged us at all, and the guy we were standing next to seemed to be in no hurry, letting his customer ramble on and tell irrelevant stories. Just when I thought they were done his family showed up and the entire sales pitch had to be replayed for his wife, who then dragged him outside to talk about this purchase (which she seemed pretty clearly opposed to).

At that point we thought we'd get some help, but without acknowledging us *at all* the guy turned to a girl who had been standing to his other side, who he had apparently talked to earlier, and walked her up to the genius bar to check her in. And then he vanished. We saw him a few minutes later, in street clothes and heading out the door.

I know that getting help in an Apple Store is always feast or famine; either they are bored and you get greeted all over again every 10 feet or they are all busy. But this seemed beyond the pale. This is far from the first time I've had bad service at the WS store but it was by far the worst, and I like to spend my money to reward good service, not bad. So we walked out and headed for BV.

This time the store was almost empty, but we still didn't get greeted; I had to go interrupt the conversation between two salespeople to get some help. When I said "I'd like to buy a Mac Pro" his eyes just about bugged out of his head, and he said something like "that's not something you hear every day!". He seemed stunned. He asked if I wanted to upgrade disks or RAM and I said I'd like to bump up from 6 GB to 8 GB, mainly to switch from 1 GB to 2 GB SIMMs, all the better for adding more RAM later on if I need it. He had to go back and ask if they could do that (that is what they will do if you order a system online, but apparently in the stores it is more usual for them to just stick in two more 1 GB SIMMs. Not a good deal for the customer at all). He came back and said yes, they could, but it would have to wait until the morning. We both recall him saying it would be worked on first thing in the morning and they would call me as soon as it was ready.

The next day I went out running errands. At noon, when I had run out of other things to do, I called the store. After putting me on hold the person came back and said they were working on it now and would be done in about 30 minutes. Since it's about a 30 minute job, I have to assume that they didn't start on it until I called. *sigh*

Picking up the system was uneventful, and everything worked out fine. Except I realized that with all the confusion about the RAM upgrade I had forgotten to ask for an Airport wireless card; it has been a long time since I purchase a system that didn't come with one built in. So back to the Apple Store I had to go… this time I had other things to do at WS so I went back there, figuring that not even they could screw this up. Close, but not quite! They sold me the card, no questions asked, but when I got the plain white box home and opened it up, I discovered a big warning about this not being available for retail sale, to be installed by Apple techs only. And no installation directions whatsoever. Yikes!

I did a Google search and found this site, which seems to be the only place on the Internet that helps us mere mortals with this task:

Meandering Passage

The inside of the Pro has changed a lot since the site was written, but I was able to modify the directions to make it work. I posted a comment about the changes but it still hasn't been approved. Maybe he wants to look at one for himself before believing me. :)

I have mixed feelings about this part of the adventure. On the one hand, I'm grateful that the WS store was willing to sell me the card and didn't force me to pay for installation. But I'm also annoyed that the kid didn't warn me it was going to be difficult and ask if I wanted to have it installed. It turned out to be ok for me; I'm comfortable with hardware and have been doing things like this for a long time. But your average graphic designer or regular code monkey? They would have had a very hard time with this.

I did get a nice email from the "business" guy at BV and he has followed up with me a few times, so that was a plus.

<rant mode on>

Am I the only one who remembers when Apple Stores first opened, and they were staffed with adults who knew what they were doing? Sure, they were 20 somethings, but they had the maturity to give good customer service and the experience to really know their products. It seems to me over the last few years that the quality of people in the stores is dropping all the time… it seems like they get younger and less technically savvy every time I go in there. I don't know this for a fact but it seems like they must be paying them less and less, and getting what they pay for.

As if to confirm my impression, when I picked up the system at BV the kid asked me if I had talked to the business rep and I said no. He said that I should do that when I was ready to buy another system, because they really know the products and could help me choose the right system – "I'm just a college student and don't know all that much", he said. Well, glad to see we agree on that….

Unfortunately, not even this trend excuses the rude guy at WS… he was easily in his late 30s and should have known better.

</rant mode off>

The story ended well; everything is working and I'm loving the dual-monitor setup. But next time I need a new system I'll be a lot more tempted to order it online and save myself the hassles.