How Not to Buy A Mattress

Image via beddingmaster.com

I usually cringe at airing dirty laundry (even if it’s not my own) in public, but this really takes the cake and has pretty much sucked a bunch of joy out of my summer.  So I will say this now, and for the record, that if you ever decide to buy a new mattress, never, ever purchase one from Nasafoam.  I will tell you the story here, because I’m feeling really, really vindictive right now.  Sorry about that.

You may recall me mentioning that the Pie and I had purchased a new memory foam mattress through a Groupon Deal.  It was $500 for a $1700 mattress, and as broke students, that struck us as a really good deal (you can see it here).  The question was, did they deliver to Newfoundland?  Many companies don’t, so I posted the question on Groupon’s FAQ page and received a response that to ship to Newfoundland would be $225.  You can see the posting here.  You will also note, for a later point I will make, that nowhere in the fine print does it say it does not ship to Newfoundland.

Anyway, we were happy with that shipping price so we bought the Groupon and submitted it to Nasafoam.  We typed in our information, everything, and then pressed the “submit” button.  Normally when you order something online you get some form of record of your transaction, whether it’s something you can print or something that is emailed to you later as a confirmation that you actually bought the thing.  Several days later I’d received nothing like that, save the “Thank you.  Your information has been submitted” that we saw after clicking the button.

So I emailed Nasafoam and asked for confirmation that I had actually submitted the order and asked for an ETA on delivery, as well as a final cost with taxes included.  I was told simply that “delivery will contact you with final cost.”  At that point, I left it at that.

A couple of weeks went by and I started to wonder when my mattress would arrive, so I emailed again, and was told that it would arrive in 2-3 weeks from the date of that email. That sounded good.  I started making preparations to renovate my office and all that jazz in preparation for my houseguests.

Future site of my mattress. Oh wait, no, never mind.

Five weeks after the date of that email I still had no mattress, and I was starting to get a little cheesed.  So I wrote to Nasafoam and told them that I was cheesed, and demanded a final bill and a shipping estimate.  I got no response.  I emailed twice more with no results.  Then the Pie discovered that Nasafoam had a Facebook page.  On the page they were telling Groupon customers that the wait for a mattress was 4-6 weeks and at this point I was onto almost nine.  I posted this on Facebook and Nasafoam informed me that they had not been receiving my emails.  I have kept every one of their automated receipt emails so I know that is not true and told them so.  Eventually I sent another, slightly angrier email to every email address at Nasafoam I could find.

The response was unsurprisingly disappointing.  One email response told me that my order would be shipped in 4-6 weeks, which of course indicated to me that the person I had emailed my message to had not actually read it.  I responded of course that it had been nine weeks and received simply a “I see that!  Thanks!” answer to that.  The other response I received was a very frosty one saying, essentially, that they had told me delivery would contact me and that they had no control over when their delivery company would deliver any of their products.

Think about that for a moment.  A company has no control over the delivery of its goods?  What kind of crap company is that?

And of course there was no acknowledgement that I was upset (which I mentioned in a very polite way, of course), nor any final bill (which I had requested for probably the fourth time).

The next week I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.  I felt really good about this.

Nasafoam comes back with the response that I haven’t paid my final bill and that’s why they haven’t shipped.

I respond with the fact that they have not sent me a final bill.

They respond again to tell me I haven’t paid my final bill.  Which they have sent to my email address, so they say.  Which of course they haven’t.

I may have turned into Godzilla at one point in this process.  Also I know I definitely growled out “HULK SMASH” a few times as well.

Image (c) Marvel, via “Without Envy”

Rather than smash my head into the wall at the ridiculousness of this situation (and I’m in Portland at this time, mind you, so I’m using my dad in St. John’s as proxy while I try to type out all this nonsense on my smartphone), I suggest that my father call them with my credit card number and we can sort this out.

He calls.  The guy who answers, according to my dad, is an idiot.  He tells my father that  I apparently filled out the form wrong, and put in Nova Scotia as my mailing address instead of Newfoundland.  He had the form right in front of him, he said (which is nice for him.  I never got a copy of my order form).  I’d like to point out here that I have been working in the legal world for almost a decade and as such am an extremely conscientious form-filler-outer.  I do not make mistakes like that.  I double-check everything.  And the Pie was sitting next to me as I filled it out.  He also double-checks.  And, as I pointed out to Nasafoam, Nova Scotia postal codes start with B, while mine in Newfoundland starts with an A, and I sure as heck didn’t mess that one up.

Their response?  “Groupon is aware that we do not ship to Newfoundland.”

Really?  Could have fooled me.  I sent them a photo of the Groupon FAQ page where I asked them the shipping cost to Newfoundland.  Their response to that was just that I had made a mistake and should have been aware all along that they do not ship to Newfoundland.

And it just went on and on, response and rebuttal through the BBB where they simply ignored everything I said and made me look like the bad guy.  I pointed out their contradictions and blatant lies and they told me I was an idiot (or at least that’s how it felt to me).  The final verdict from the BBB was that Nasafoam was standing by their decision (to do nothing) and that they (BBB) were sorry that I was unhappy.  At least the BBB apologized. I’m in negotiations with Groupon right now to get my money back, and they’re being remarkably helpful, if a little slow, which has kind of renewed my faith in business.

When we returned to St. John’s, the Pie took a screen capture of the Groupon FAQ page where they give me the shipping quote for St. John’s and juxtaposed it next to the section of the BBB complaint where they tell me that I was “well aware it was for nova scotia only” (what? It was an Ottawa Groupon!) and posted it to Nasafoam’s Facebook page with a short paragraph about how not only did Nasafoam make us wait double the shipping time to receive our order but they lied to us and didn’t ship it to us at all.

The Pie’s graphic, with this commentary: “Nasafoam made us wait 11 weeks before telling us they would not ship us our mattress to Newfoundland. They also insist that we knew they only shipped to Nova Scotia but we were quoted a price to ship it to St. John’s, Newfoundland. They refuse to acknowledge any mistakes on their part and blame us entirely. Now a refund will only get us groupon dollars back and not our money back.”

Nasafoam deleted the comment and graphic the next day and closed their page to further posts.

Long story short, the Pie and I ended up sleeping on the floor while my parents were in town so that they could have our crappy old mattress.  The day after we returned to St. John’s we went to the lovely people at Cohen’s, and, for $600, purchased a similar memory foam mattress.  Add in $50 for delivery and they brought it right into our bedroom just a scant week later.  That’s it in that picture up there.  Isn’t it pretty?

Sorry for the venting here, folks, but I really hate it when people lie to me, especially when it’s a local Canadian business.  If you’re curious to know more about the crap that Nasafoam has put me through, send me a message and I can forward you our long and convoluted correspondence, together with the BBB complaint form (as I said, I keep meticulous records).  And if you’ve had a similar experience with some company who refuses to acknowledge any wrong doing, please feel free to rant in the comments below.  I’m ready and willing to listen.

Summer in St. John’s

The harbingers of summer here in Newfoundland are not the dandelions taking over the green spaces (although they do that, too), nor are they the rare but blindingly beautiful cloudless skies.

No, they’re icebergs, and their smaller components, growlers and bergy bits.  Actually, now that I think about it, that’s pretty typical of this upside-down province: ice is the herald of warm summer days.  After all, Gren and I were out in a (short) blizzard just three days ago.

When the Pie and I were here house-hunting in June of 2008, St. John’s was experiencing one of the best years for icebergs in a long time.

Then we moved here, and, true to form, saw barely any ice for the next three years.  This year, however, is another good one for ice, and you don’t have to stray too far from town to see it. This one was nestled in Quidi Vidi Bay a few weeks ago.

It was worth struggling over slippery rocks in high winds and sleet to get a better view.  Unfortunately I only had my phone with me, so the picture quality isn’t what it could be.

The Pie wasn’t too happy without his touque.

These ones are off the shores of Blackhead, a tiny ancient settlement between St. John’s and Cape Spear.

I wanted to get all three in one shot but they were really far apart.

We headed a little further south to see if we could get a different angle and ended up at Dead Man’s Cove for these pictures.

A very nice lady took our picture with a berg.  Unfortunately the berg looks more put together than we do.

Then we found these bits up in Middle Cove.

That’s the Pie down there on the beach.

There were bits of ice all broken up on the beach.

I got to touch a piece.  It was very cold.  If I hadn’t been worried about the pollution I would have taken it home and put it in a drink.

Jelly Bean Row

I love Quality Street chocolates. They remind me of everything good. And I love the colourful wrappers they come in. I’ve wanted to make something out of them for years. This year at Christmas I made sure to save all the wrappers so I’d have lots to work with.

Quality Street also appeals to my environmentalist side. You can re-use the tins for anything you like. You can recycle the foil wrappers that go under the clear ones, and recently, the company started making the clear wrappers out of vegetable products, so you can actually COMPOST them. How cool is that?

So what am I making with these?  I’m glad you asked.  St. John’s is famous for its colourfully-painted and artfully crooked row houses.  They’re often likened to a line of jelly beans, stacked on their ends — Jelly Bean Row.

If you watch any of those ever-popular tourism Newfoundland and Labrador commercials, you’ll see a few of them (though in real life they’re not quite so quaint — or clean).

So I thought I would make a few out of Quality Street wrappers, something to send people to paste in their windows, or to hang on their Christmas trees as ornaments, something that will catch the light and give them a taste of St. John’s at home.

The house construction is pretty simple.  I used black construction paper, folded in half, as a frame.  Then I cut out the frame using a craft knife and inserted and glued down the wrappers in the appropriate spaces.  Then I cut out windows and doors from the black paper as well, making sure to glue them to both sides so the ornament is reversible.

The problem with this particular material is that the wrappers always want to go back to their wrinkled state, and the construction paper doesn’t do a lot to prevent it.

A heavier-grade card would probably work better in keeping the stuff rigid, but at the same time, it would be harder to manipulate.  I wanted to make several of these hanging ornaments and create a sort of mobile for Doodle for her birthday, but the physics of it continued to defeat me — the ornaments were simply too light to be able to balance everything properly.  And I had it all planned so the houses went up on a slant, too!

Alas. In any case, they are pretty enough placed in a window or on your tree.

Have you tried Fussell’s?

This is how Fussellette got her name.

She was sitting in the MUGS room with the Pie, talking about, of all things, pie (we don’t call him that because he’s sweet and flaky, after all).  They were discussing the merits of ice cream versus whipped cream as a topping.

Fussellette, a native Newfoundlander, mentioned that growing up, she had always had Fussell’s on her pies and desserts.

The Pie’s first reaction was along the lines of, “what on earth are you talking about?  Fussell’s?”

I’ve never heard of it either.  So Fussellette bought us some.

Apparently it’s a sterilized thick cream in a can, a Newfoundland staple.  Ostensibly it’s from the Golden Butterfly Brand, but on the back you can see it’s distributed by Smucker’s, which is part of Nestlé.  Globalization …

It’s rather clotted and yellowish, but tastes just like what it is, thickened cream.

We plopped it on our pie.  It was good.

Gren Learns to Swim

We didn’t have much of a summer in Newfoundland, so when the Pie and I were visiting family in Ottawa we took advantage of the proximity to our cousin’s cottage and decided to teach Grenadier how to swim.

Now, some dogs, like labs, goldens, duck tollers, and PWDs, are born swimmers.  Other dogs, especially those whose front ends are significantly heavier than their back ends, like pugs, bulldogs, daschunds, and yes, corgis, are not.

Even so, it was something we wanted to get Gren used to doing, just so he would have some options on a hot summer day.  Aside from some wading about and a briefly traumatic fall into a turtle pond, Gren was a land-lubber.

For safety’s sake, and because corgis are not natural swimmers, we got Gren a dog’s life jacket.  Make sure when you are looking for a life jacket that the seams are tightly sewn and the workmanship looks good.  Ensure that the fit is correct for your dog’s weight, as well as his length.

You should be able to comfortably lift the dog up by the handle of the jacket when the jacket is properly secured. This handle is especially useful when your dog falls off your boat and you can just haul him back on.

This Outward Hound version is widely available and nicely affordable at around thirty bucks retail.  I like the additional flotation under the chin, which helps keep the dog’s head above the water — this is a plus (and a must) with brachiocephalic dogs like pugs and bulldogs, who don’t have the long snouts of other dogs.  And remember that even with a life jacket, you should never leave your dogs unsupervised in the water!

Gren likes to paddle in the water, but he’ll never be a big swimmer.  Whenever we had him out over his head his first move was to head for shore.

He did swim out to “rescue” the Pie at one point, because he was too far away, but that was the only time he left the shore of his own will.

He was really not a big fan.

Related articles

• Can Your Dog Swim? (dogsden.wordpress.com)

A Weekend in Gros Morne

Today is a holiday in Newfoundland — Orangemen’s Day — so I thought I would share with you what I did on my last long weekend (which was just last week, actually), when the Pie and Gren and I went with Miss Awesome and Ranger P (formerly P-with-an-E) to camp in Gros Morne National Park.  What a trip!

While not a fan of car rides, Gren was a trooper for the trip.

We were only there for five days, and two of those days were spent traveling to and from the park (it takes about 8 hours, with pee breaks, to get from St. John’s to Gros Morne), so our time there was short.  We were also limited in the places we could go, because Gren is still young and doesn’t yet have the stamina he will develop when he’s full-grown.  There are also places in Gros Morne that dogs are not allowed (like on Gros Morne mountain itself), so we had to choose carefully how we would occupy our time.  In addition, though the weather forecast predicted rainy days with a high of 15°C, we ended up getting full sun every day and highs nearing 28°C, so we were all hot and tired after even our short hikes.  None of us thought to bring shorts.  Summer just isn’t like that in St. John’s.

So anyway, a bit about the park.  Established as a reserve in 1973, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985, and then recognized as a national park in 2005, Gros Morne is the second-largest park in Atlantic Canada, and the mountain itself is the second-highest in Newfoundland, belonging to a branch of the Appalachians and dating back about 1.2 billion years.  “Gros Morne” literally translates from the French as “big sombre,” but “morne” is also understood to mean “large mountain standing alone.”  In Portuguese, “morne,” roughly translated, means bleak and dismal, and considering that the mountain in question is rather bald and often enshrouded in cloud, the name fits.

The park plays host to a number of natural and historical wonders.  The geology of the park is incredibly varied across the breadth of the park, and often serves as a benchmark for geologists seeking to understand the way the earth works.  Many geological features in the park offer supporting evidence for plate tectonic theory, while others provide clear examples of the process of glaciation.  In one afternoon you can go from barren desert to lush peat bogs to stunted tuckamore forests to glacier cut fjords.  All in one spot.  And if you’re lucky you might see a moose.  From a safe distance, of course.  And the flora in the park is just astonishing.  I saw so many plants that I had never seen before.

So now, our trip, in as few words as possible.

Berry Hill Pond

We stayed at the Berry Hill campground, near the wee village of Rocky Harbour.  On our first morning, the Pie and I took Gren on a morning stroll around Berry Hill Pond.  The trail is really not much more than a moose track, winding its way around the 2km circumference of this still pond, but in the quiet of the early morning, even the mosquitoes were tolerable as we got our first taste of the western coast of the province — which is as different from the east coast as another planet.I simply adore these rocky shores.Gren on the moose track, surrounded by crackerberries (not to be confused with crackberries).

Woody Point

We stopped here to have a bit of a wander and enjoy a quick picnic.  First settled in 1849, Woody Point displays to best advantage many historical buildings.  What’s neat is Woody Point is one of the many enclave communities within the park and yet separate from the park.It’s definitely a picture-postcard kind of town.

The Tablelands

From Woody Point we headed to the Tablelands, a section of the earth’s mantle thrust up to the surface.  We got to take a little GPS video thing with us.  You can watch it here.  Because of the chemical composition of the peridotite forming the mantle, it is hard to support life in that area.   Weathered peridotite is brown and rusty-looking, while unweathered rock is dark green and kind of waxy.

It is amazing, however, what can survive in the harsh surroundings.  These rare yellow ladyslippers are most commonly found in areas containing lime.Barren conditions mean that plants have to work hard to get all the nutrients they need.  These wee carnivorous plants were about the size of my thumb.

And let’s not forget the official provincial flower, the pitcher plant.

Creeping juniper is Newfoundland’s answer to the bonsai tree.Newfoundland Zen garden:

It was like being on the moon.  We were all absolutely gobsmacked by everything we saw. 

We went off-trail and followed a glacier-fed stream up to its fall point.

Gren tried to save us all.

And followed the trail into a canyon.  It was extremely windy.You should go there.

Norris Point/Neddies Harbour

Next day we headed out to Neddies Harbour, an offshoot of Norris Point in Bonne Bay, to visit Miss Awesome’s Auntie, who is pretty awesome in her own right.  She took us down past the Neddies Harbour Inn to a wee beach, where we enjoyed some sunshine.It was a very relaxing day, and after saying our goodbyes to Auntie Awesome, we headed up to the Norris Point Lookout to see the whole town.

Western Brook Pond

On this day we had to say goodbye to Miss Awesome.  She had to head back to Town to go on with her lawyer job.  It was just the dudes now, and me.  We had been told that Western Brook Pond was not to be missed, and, although we couldn’t afford the boat tour (nor did they allow dogs on the boat), we could readily enjoy the 3km hike to the dock and back.

The vistas on this trail, from the very beginning, were absolutely breathtaking.  We joked that we expected to hear the Jurassic Park theme playing while dinosaurs grazed in front of us.  The pond is in a fresh water fjord surrounded by peat fens and everywhere you look there is something beautiful.

Lush vegetation.

Everywhere.

Even in the peat fens.  These are dragon’s mouth orchids.When we got to the pond itself, Gren had a great time splashing about in the wavelets and rolling in the sand.  It was a great way to cool him down after the walk in the blazing sun.And then of course we all took pictures on the way back of things we’d taken pictures of on the way in.  There was so much beauty we’d forgotten what we’d already seen.

Lobster Cove Head

With some time on our hands after the short Western Brook Pond walk, we headed to the historical Lobster Cove Head and its teensy lighthouse, which guards the rocky and unstable shores in the area.  If you’re interested, the flags on the pole in this photo spell “SHIFT”.

The lighthouse grounds also play host to a miniature tuckamore forest, stunted balsam firs beaten (but not broken) by the harsh winds and the salt spray.And then we ran out of time, and had to go home.  You could easily spend a month in Gros Morne and not see it all.  We’ve got to go back.

You can check out more of my many, many pictures of our weekend on my Flickr site here.

For more information on Gros Morne, check out these links:

Encyclopedia of Earth: Gros Morne

Gros Morne: Wikipedia

Gros Morne National Park: Wikipedia

Gros Morne Teacher Resource Centre

How to Converse with a Newfoundlander

Pace, Rock denizens and those abroad, I mean you no harm.  This is more tongue-in-cheek than anything else (well mostly).  I’ve been here two years now and as an anthropologist my ear is especially sensitive to your quaint phrasings.

I’m working again on transcribing a series of interviews about the Newfoundland fishery, conducted mostly with gentlemen fishers from the Burin Peninsula.  When I first started these it was a serious job to translate their English into English that I understood.

Because there is no such thing as ‘the’ Newfoundland accent.  Anyone here will tell you that you can grow up on the same street as someone else and have a completely different accent.  I would say that each individual Newfoundlander has an accent unique to him or her.

While I quickly lost my Nova Scotia accent after moving to Victoria at age 8, I’ve managed to remember (and incorporate) enough of it that people don’t automatically assume I’m an outsider.  Of course, having lived all over the country my accent is so muddled no one can really tell where I’m from.  My husband, on the other hand, with his bred-in-the-bone Ottawa Valley accent (see Lee 2006) and the way he says ‘eggzit’ not ‘exit’ pegs him instantaneously as one ‘from away’ (not a Newfoundlander).

The Newfoundland accent is especially impenetrable to non-Canadians.  Kª, who is from Kansas, and Kº, who is from Moscow, have difficulty comprehending Newfoundlanders in full swing.

I will here impart the knowledge I have gained in my two years on this island and my early childhood as a Maritimer, circa 1980s.  I’ll add to this as things come to me, and I welcome input.

Pronunciation

Forget that Gs exist at the end of gerunds.  It’s all about “I’se goin'” and “You’se seein'”.  Just wipe G out of your grammar bank.

While you’re at it you might as well erase Ts as well.  Here in St. John’s all Ts are softened.  They sound kind of like a ‘sh’ noise, but with the point of the tongue closer to the surface of the hard palette and a little further back towards the throat.  Like how you would shush someone if you had no teeth.  Lacking full awareness of the phonetic alphabet I will spell it thusly: ‘isth.’

Another letter, the H, or “haitch” as it is pronounced here, doesn’t really figure into local pronunciation.  ‘The’ tends to come out simply as ‘t’ (e.g. “T’other day I says to Mam, I says …”) or ‘d’ (e.g. “whaddya got dere b’y?”).  “Three” comes out as “tree”, and so on.  H is pronounced at the beginning of words, such as “hurricane” and “hoose”.

Rs are extremely important to Newfoundlanders, and my Nova Scotian birthplace enabled me to pick this trick up right away.  It’s like the opposite to the Boston accent (“you pahk the cah neah the hahbah”).  Here it’s “You parrrk the carrr nearrr the harrrburrr.”

If you like to talk like a pirate, nobody will notice.  Arrr!

If you see any words in a foreign language, pronounce them as incorrectly as humanly possible.  Especially French and Portuguese ones (e.g. “Baccalieu” is pronounced “Backlo” in many places).

Greeting

“Whaddya at?” This means, in common parlance, “how are you?” There’s a Great Big Sea song about this.

I try to use my familiar “‘sup?” as a response and it’s never particularly successful.  Ebonics never made a strong inroad here,  I guess.

Proper island response is “This is it.”  But if you’re a true islander you leave off the T at the end of ‘it’ and it comes out sort of like ‘isth’ (see Pronunciation).

In Conversation

Quantify abstract concepts using “some” (e.g., “That’s some weather we’re having out there, b’y” or “That’s some nice shirt you got der me darling”).

Mention people the other person doesn’t know by first name or nickname, as if your conversation partner knew who they were (e.g. “I was talkin’ to Mam/Dad/Nan/Brenda t’other day dere …”).

Emphasize your important sentences by ending them with “b’y”, which is an abbreviation of “boy” (how you can abbreviate a single syllable I have no idea but there ’tis – e.g. “Some rain out dere, b’y!”).

Get used to strangers addressing you as “my love,” “my darling,” “me handsome,” “dearest”, “lovely”, etc., even if that stranger is 15 years younger than you and sporting several piercings.  The inflections and conversation topics of most Newfoundlanders remind me of gossiping old people.  Not that it’s a bad thing.

Instead of asking someone, “Where are you?” say “Where ya to?” Instead of saying, “Come over here,” say “come where we’re to.”

Conjugate all verbs in the third person singular (e.g. “I says, you says, he says”).  To avoid confusion conjugate your pronouns accordingly: “I needs me tea and I needs you’se to gets it fer me.”

Words and Phrases of Note

Dildo is a place, not a sex toy.  There is a giant squid there.

Gander is also a place, not a verb or a male goose.

Rooms is an eyesore of a museum/archives, not a place where you hang out.  There is also a giant squid there, but a real one.  And they have a fantastic view

“I’m near the Church” is not a valid descriptor in St. John’s.  Everywhere is near a church.  You can spit on five different churches standing in one spot.  Be more specific.

“The Highway” is a valid descriptor in Newfoundland.  The Trans-Canada Highway (TCH #1) is the only national highway in the province.

Cursing

The Scope, St. John’s local independent newspaper, runs a “Best Of” contest every year.  This year I had a good giggle at the results of the best local curse section.  Most “townies” (St. John’s residents) are descended from Irish Catholics, so sacrilege is a key component of the curse.  I will copy and paste this in full, from “Best of St. John’s 2009”:

Winner: Various combinations of “Lord” and “Jesus”

Other answers: Lard tunderin’ streetlamps! • B’y da Jesus • Dancing Blue-Eyed Jesus! • Dirty Dingus • Fish n Chips! • Fuckultitties • Frigit • Fack • Gentle Jesus in the Garden • I don’t give a jam-jam jesus! • Jesus Mary and Joseph • Jesus as an adjective (example: stubbed my toe on the jesus coffee table) • Jesus Murphy • Lord Lipton • Scrot • Sculpin face • Shitya (“I shrunk your sweater.” “ Shitya!” • Yuck B’y • You little frigger • You are drivin’ me! I am drove! • Cursing should not be celebrated.