Customer Service

I've often heard that if you have a bad experience with someone, you are likely to tell ELEVEN people. On the contrary, if you have a good experience with someone, you are likely to only tell TWO people. How odd that seems -

Well... Since this month was the month of giving. I truly was given some exceptional customer service.

1. Red Lobster

At the beginning of this month, Michal was in the mood for Red Lobster. I love their special Parmesan Crusted Tilapia. I went to order it, but it had been removed from the menu... so I asked my waiter what had happened to this item. He said that it is no longer a special, but he would see if the Chef could make one for me that night. He returned shortly to tell me that the Chef would make it but instead of it taking about 15 minutes to get our food - it would take about 30. Michal and I didn't mind, so we waited... and 15 minutes later both of our meals came out to us! I was so happy that I got my favorite meal, and it really meant a lot to me that Red Lobster went the extra mile. I had such a good experience there with our waiter taking care of us, that I will definitely return there!

2. Les Schwab Tires

On the way to work one morning, I went around a corner and hit a patch of black ice. I slid right into a huge snowbank and had to put my car in to 4-wheel drive to get it out. Several cars slowed down to make sure I was okay. But as I left and got on the freeway, if my car went over 55 mph, it would shake uncontrollably. Michal dropped off my car at Les Schwab (which was a 5 min walk from work) and it was ready in 20 minutes. I went to go and pick it up and pay for the damage - and they didn't charge me for the re-alignment that they had done. I thought it was very exceptional of them and you better believe that the next time I have a car problem, I am going there for service!

3. NuSkin Enterprises

Most of you know that I have worked at Nuskin this year. I have been treated really well there! Not only do I get about a lot of retail product a month, but this year for Christmas Nuskin really spoiled its employees!

We got our annual Christmas bonus, Christmas gift, Costco special + games, and package of products. But they surprised every employee with a second bonus - and a very, very, very generous one too! I started to get all teary eyed because it really meant a lot to me. We really needed that extra bonus and it helped us in numerous ways. Nuskin has shown me generous customer service since working there and I'm grateful that God helped me find this phenomenal job.

4. Gold's Gym

Okay, okay - I know that when hearing this Gym's name EVERYONE has a bad story about how they got ripped off or scammed big time. I was a victim of this too. I signed up for an hour of personal training for 6 months - and 4 months into my training (since I got a new trainer) I found out that it said I only had 30 minutes once a week. I wasn't furious, I was hurt. I tried to be so careful to sign up for what I wanted and Michal read the fine print to EVERYTHING so that we didn't become Gold's Gym victims. However, we ended up victims. My new personal trainer was super nice about things and kindly explained that she would only get paid for 30 minutes, so she didn't want me to be screwed, but she didn't want to get screwed either. So I called corporate. It was a pleasant experience. I didn't have to wait on hold forever and I explained my situation to the person on the other end of the phone. She said that my contract did say 30 minutes, but that she would see what she could do and ask me if she could call me back before they closed in about 20 minutes. I got a call 15 minutes after they closed and she said that she got the approval to change my contract to 60 minutes for the remainder of time remaining. She thanked me for being kind and patient with her on the phone. This really made an impact on me as it meant a lot to me that she was willing to change it based on my word alone.

Not only was Corporate extremely nice to me on the phone, but my new personal trainer has been amazing. She puts so much energy into helping me and making sure that I am getting the correct information and work-outs that I need. She is very enthusiastic and does a superb job. She goes above and beyond the call of duty and it has made a difference to me! Because of her, I would be willing to renew my contract once it expires.

5. Travel Agent & Delta

We recently went to a travel agent to book tickets to Poland. Michal's mom had a voucher for us to use (since her flight got bumped on her way home from our wedding)... and it was extremely kind of her to let us use this voucher. Usually when any flight is giving away a cheap international flight, they aren't too happy about it, but they were extremely kind and gave us any deal they could. Our travel agent was also so patient with us and got us SUPER good tickets for a STEAL. Plus she went out of her way to make sure that we had the non-stop flight from SLC to Paris going out and returning home so that customs wouldn't be horrific when we returned to the States. Not only did she really help us out and get us a deal for almost nothing, but she fed us lunch while we waited for her to do her magic, and she gave us really cool pencils that smell like grapes/oranges when you write with them. It was quite a great deal and I am so grateful that she really went out of her way to make this affordable for us to purchase.

6. My brother

Sam fixes phones. He is really good at it too. This month my phone broke, and he spent 2 days trying to fix it. After exhausting his resources, I figured I'd have to pay at least $100 for a new phone... but he gave it to me for free. It was extremely kind of him. Also, Sam got me a 3G 8GB iphone for Michal for about 1/3 of the price that a brand new one costs! I don't know how he does it - but not spending very much on this (could be) Christmas gift - it made me a very happy girl and it was really nice of him to help me get a steal of a deal! Thanks Sam!

Overall, I feel like all of these experiences expressed the Christmas spirit and I just wanted to thank each one of them for helping me feel special or saving me money in some way or another. I really appreciate it! Thank you!

Michal the Marathon Runner

Lately Michal & I have been really busy... I mean - who hasn't been? It's the Holiday season with Thanksgiving and then Christmas right around the corner...

Well, with all that we've been doing, we had someone at Church ask us if we were going inactive and why we haven't been lately. Michal jokingly said, "Oh, we've been trying out the other Churches in the area, so far we really like the Catholic church." And they believed him! Their mouth dropped open and they blinked their eyes (as if to make sure we were still standing in front of them)... and they were speechless, didn't know what to say or do. Told us that maybe they should get our home-teachers to stop by and make sure everything was okay. I think that we were justified in not being around the last two weekends because here is what we've been up to:

For Thanksgiving we went home to Layton to spend the time with my family. It was extremely nice to have 4 days off of work and just lounge around and spend all of your time with family. Michal had this crazy idea, it was partly my idea too, to get up early the day after Thanksgiving and go shopping. It was the first time that Michal has ever experienced Black Friday. We ended up getting OUT of the house around 5:10 am. I assumed that after Michal experienced the crazy shoppers of this day, he would not want to return. I was wrong. Michal loved it! We got all of our shopping done and spent hardly any money! We got such GREAT deals. Michal got himself a really nice coat from EXPRESS. It was normally $278.00 but we only paid $59.40. I got a coat too, for about 65% off from Banana Republic. We got steals at Wal-mart, and the best part about all of it was that we had a blast. Michal couldn't believe that people camped out in their trailers overnight. He couldn't get over how people were in Pajamas at Wal-mart and people were dressed up (or at least in Jeans) at Target. All-in-all we had fun and Michal couldn't believe how much money that we saved and he is now converted to black friday. He wants us to do all of our shopping on that day from now on. He is a smart man.

When we returned home from our Thanksgiving break, Michal got a surprise in the mail. His OFFICIAL green card came in the mail. He was so excited! I believe that for the next two days every time I saw him he was looking at his green card. And I do have to admit, it is interesting... they have made this card so hard to get a "fake" one. There are so many minute details, for example, all the pictures of the presidents of the United States are on the back of a size of a credit-card, but you can only tell that they are the Presidents when you tilt it in the light at a certain angle. I am really excited for him. The instant we got his Green Card meant that we can legally leave the country now. So he asks me, "Where do you want to go now....?" (More details to come soon!)

Last week Michal accomplished an even greater feat. He ran the ROCK AND ROLL LAS VEGAS MARATHON.

Yes he did it!

5 hours!

I got really nervous because I went outside to wait for him after 4 hours, and I didn't see him until like 6 hours. I knew that he would never take that long, but apparently because there was over 30,000 people who run this marathon they let about 1,000 people go in increments of 5 minutes. So he had to wait a little over an hour before he actually started running. While I was waiting for him, I was listening to the announcers comment... and I learned some pretty interesting facts about this marathon. There is a band who plays for you at about every mile marker. They had contestants from over 33 different countries and almost every state in the US. They had over 300 Elvis' who ran this race, numerous Santa-Claus', Mrs. Claus', Elves, Cavemen, and they even had a few dozen (yes dozen) couples who got married the night before and then ran the race together in wedding attire. Here are a few pictures of people that I caught running like this.

Here are the Elvis runners:

Here is the Caveman

Here are some married couples:

I was so proud of Michal for running this race! He did such a good job. Including the face and everything else we did, we had a blast in Vegas. We ate at some really awesome places, and we just shopped. It was such a fun trip - but don't even get me started on the LUXOR hotel. One piece of advice: If you want to stay there - DONT!