Sharper Image ruined my Christmas

My wife, Lauren and I never buy each other Christmas presents. We have been together 10 years now and pretty much have the things we want. Anyway, I had been paying special attention to detail this year because I felt the time was right for a Christmas surprise! I thought of a very thoughtful gift. I went online and found the right one at The Sharper Image. Of course The Sharper Image is a pathetic company that doesn’t have a very good e-commerece website so I thought it would be best to buy from them through amazon.com. Things went very smooth as they always do from amazon.com. I sent the package to my work since my wife is still working from home after the birth of my pride and joy Mirabelle.

A week later when I came home from work my wife exclaimed, “I know what you bought me for Christmas”. I was like, what are you talking about… She went on to show me a letter we got from The Sharper Image. The lame bastards sent a letter to my house just to say that I shipped the package to a different address. Now I have been buying items online since 98 and I have never had a letter like this sent to my house.

So I wrapped her present and put it under the tree and she opened it on Christmas day. She of course liked the present but it was much much larger IRL and from the pictures online. She wanted a smaller one. I proceeded to read the return policy and call a local store. I certainly didn’t want to bother with returning it via the mail. That would have taken 6 to 8 weeks and the hassle and worry, who needs that! Luckily the local store said they would be able to refund my credit card.

We trecked all the way into San Francisco to one of The Sharper Images. When we got to the counter, luckily we had the assistant manager, he was very friendly and I explained the story. Of course when I went to give him the receipt, or what was the receipt things got complicated. The receipt that they sent me was nothing more than a packing list with an order number and item number on it. Anyway he went into his pathetic little DOS type interface computer and came back to me and basically called me a bold faced liar. He said I paid for this with a gift certificate and could only get store credit. I explained to him again how I purchased the item. He went back to his pathetic little DOS type interface computer and came back and said, wait, I see you paid for it with a voucher through Sky Mall. I actually laughed at this and told him I didn’t. I paid for it with my AMEX. Long story short, they were unable to give me a refund.

Later I called The Sharper Images corporate office and complained. The customer service woman was extremely nice and after she talked with a couple people she basically said that there policy with amzon.com was weird and there was nothing that she could do.

Bottom line, The Sharper Image ruined my Christmas surprise for my wife and I certainly wont do business with them again and I warn anyone else of the same!