This year, Kristy and I decided that since our anniversary (7 years!) is so close to both of our birthdays, we’d get each other a present for “around the house”. No, I don’t understand the logic there either, but I’m sure I was on to something when I came up with it.
So, come October 30th, and Kristy becomes the proud owner of a brand new toaster. Yes, I gave my wife a toaster for our anniversary. She loves bread! And, it’s not just any toaster, but a fancy pants, shiny silver one, which boasts such features as an “A Bit More” button (to add a bit more time to the toasting cycle), and “Lift ‘n’ Look” (to see how things are progressing without interrupting the toasting cycle). In fact, the “Lift ‘n’ Look” feature is so revolutionary that Breville listed it on the toaster’s Tech Specs page twice! Even Breville themselves stand behind this toaster so much that they included the word “hero” in the filename of the photo which I have shamelessly pilfered without permission for my own use here!
By now, it’s inevitable that you’re burning with desire to ask the obvious question: “How does this fancy pants new toaster perform?” Well, sadly, the answer is we still don’t know! See, I ordered it from Billy Guyatts, a self-claimed online electrical superstore. I wasn’t impressed with how long the toaster took to arrive; in fact, it was positively hopeless! Over a week! How much of this is the fault of Billy Guyatts versus Australia Post I don’t know, though I suspect that order status moving from “paid” to “dispatched” was somewhat short of instantaneous.
However, that’s not my main complaint; no, far from it. Unfortunately, someone in the Billy Guyatts warehouse was having a serious case of dyslexia when they were picking my order, because instead of sending us the BTA430, they sent us the lower model (and “A Bit More” button-free) BTA340! Yes, I appreciate that both models are made up from the same letters and numbers, but that does not mean they are the same toaster!
OK, so I’m human, and I can accept that people make mistakes, so I sent Billy Guyatts an enquiry asking how they were going to remedy the situation. Suffice to say, I was underwhelmed with their response:
Hi, we apologize, we will send you a post return label through email, you need to print this label off and stick it to the item.
Then take the item to your local post office. Once we receive the item back we will then send out the replacement.
My two main problems with this are:
- The toaster that they mistakenly sent retails at around $30, which means they probably buy it for somewhere between $10 and $20. Postage is about $10.50 each way. Surely you’d write the toaster off and send out the correct product?
- At the very least, I would have expected them to send out the correct toaster immediately, rather than waiting for me to return the incorrect one. Yes, I can see that that puts them “at risk” of me not returning the incorrect toaster – but see my previous point for my feelings on that particular matter.
I wrote them a reply to this effect, and thus far have not received another response. Neither have we received the correct toaster yet. We are underimpressed! And our bread is undercooked! Billy Guyatts, you’ve got some learning to do!
PS: Happy Anniversary, wife!
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