Meat: It's NOT What's for Dinner, OR, You Can Call Me "Tenacious See"

Sorry I’ve been AWOL all week. This has been the longest I’ve gone without blogging and I’ve missed you!

We’ve been working on figuring out more details about what’s going on with Molly health-wise. This has involved missed work and medical tests. There have also been some sleepless nights hanging out with her on the couch watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I cry every time I watch, do you? None of these sleepless nights has involved my breastfeeding her.

I’ve been meaning to share with you a happy postscript to my meat-buying saga. To refresh your memory, I went from mild-mannered mama to raging carnivore when two shady characters showed up in my driveway at dinnertime offering meaty morsels for me to buy. They used some pretty strong sales tactics. I fell for them, and was soon the not so proud owner of $739.00 “worth” of meat. Yikes.

I am happy to report, that against all odds, I received a full refund from the company, Capital Meats Incorporated!

I put their real name here not to brag about their stellar customer service, but rather because the meat is gone, the refund check has cleared, and I want to help prevent my brothers and sisters in blogland from following in my gullible footsteps. If this shows up on Google, so be it.

The hoops I jumped through to get a refund were numerous, and much of the time I felt hopeless and vulnerable. Certified letters to P.O. boxes in one state, unanswered emails, full voice mailboxes in another state, and out of service phone numbers were commonplace. There were many layers to keep me from ever encountering a real person in management of Capital Meats, Incorporated. I was THIS CLOSE to giving up.

I am convinced that if all of my correspondence had not included the credentials of the man I occasionally sleep with, who has the letters JD after his name, it all would be for naught. I documented every single effort I made, but if they had not eventually given in and picked up the meat, I was out of options. The Better Business Bureau is rife with complaints about this company, but there is no real physical location, and the salespeople are very hard to find.

Since this event, I have talked to others who have been pressured in similar ways. Perhaps it is by the flocks of magazine sellers each spring involved in programs that “turn the lives of youth around.” I heard one “promising” youth call my neighbor a f-ing b* last year when she didn’t buy a magazine. Lovely.

Maybe it’s a tree trimmer

Or it could be my former furnace guy, who told me my furnace was from 1970 and needed replacing when it clearly manufactured in 1996.

I do not mean to disparage those who offer services to make an honest living. I truly respect people who can do the myriad things I can’t.

I guess I just want to remind us to be wary of hard sell practices. If someone needs you to make a decision TODAY, you might want to think twice. If someone says he did work for your neighbors, look into it. Take a deep breath. Sleep on it. It’s your home and your money.

You are the consumer and you have a right to make an informed decision. Don’t feel bad if someone has spent time explaining a product to you and you decide to decline. Reputable salespeople and contractors know that taking the time to talk to potential clients may not pay off in a sale now, but it could bear fruit later.

Be honest when you decline, but don’t provide excuses. An excuse is an invitation to a slick salesperson to pick apart your reasons bit by bit. When the men came to pick up the meat and I was alone I felt intimidated. “Won’t you reconsider? Can't we work this out? We are just going to have to throw all this away!” they said.

I had already chosen my mantra and repeated it calmly. “I changed my mind” was all I said, quietly and firmly. I didn't disparage their products or complain about their tactics. I didn't blame it on my husband, or say it was too expensive. My thought: Keep it simple-- you just can’t argue with a woman changing her mind.

Thanks so much for all your kind words about my crazy meat crisis. Now I’m off to the grocery store—I have an empty freezer to fill.