Hilton 2

My Hilton saga is continuing. It is frightening the number of people who answer costumer service calls and have no clue how to solve problems. They make believe they have all the answers, yet they have none. They come up with non-answer responses just to get rid of us. And when I insist that I need to speak with a supervisor they make every effort not to transfer you.

The routine response to such a request is, well why don't you just tell me what this is all about and then we will see. No way will they transfer you to a supervisor. I am convinced that they have standing orders not to connect and also there is no supervisor.

I had the misfortune to call costumer services a few times and I am not even sure that these people don't work from home. There is always so much background noise and frequently children's noises that I am convinced these people work from home. Hopefully in this country!

Years ago, I listened to a very wise old man on the radio who always maintained that if we want to get certain things taken care of, never deal with an underling. Go straight to the top. And exactly that is what I did. I wrote to the president of Hilton and explained my problem. I hope he can persuade his people to look into what happened. I am very hopeful that something good will come out of this.

Hilton

It is interesting and very disturbing how the internet works. We are at their mercy and getting back at their good graces is very difficult. Case in point:

My wife and I have a Hilton account, accompanied with a Hilton Amex card. We have this account for years and years. Through purchases we accumulate points that can be used for stays at Hilton establishments. Just recently, Abigail stayed with a friend at such place during the July 4th weekend and we have a huge amount of points it did not cost anything. 

Yesterday, my wife tried to log on to our account to check the point status and was unsuccessful because the Hilton website was not able to find our account number. After several attempts I called their customer service and was told that they were not able to find our account number. Same response was given when they tried by name, telephone number and email address. This situation became more and more upsetting.

Not that our account disappeared, our 400,000 point as well. I was on the line for about 45 minutes, listened to various canned classical sonatas until finally the person came back with an answer, not a solution just an answer.

He said he did find the account and he did see the points but because there is or was a glitch in the system it would take 24 hours to straighten it out. According to him by tonight everything should be in order. Now I either believe him or not. Maybe he just wanted to get rid of me, that was why he said what he did. So far, we didn't try to log on, it is too early, but we will try later.

Update: we tried, and it is still not working!  

Lidl

Everybody has their favorite supermarkets. Some because of the price, or the cleanliness, or the variety of foods, or many different variables. We like Stop 'n Shop and ShopRite. The first more than the second. These are real American stores, with nothing exciting on the shelves. Addition to these two we also like Aldi which is a German chain, low priced, lots of German products and fairly low keyed store.

Recently, not fat from us with lots of fanfare a Lidl Supermarket opened. I heard of this store and was very curious how it will turn out. I never knew that this store is aggressively expanding in the US and there are quite a few not far from us. Anyway, on June 15 they opened their mega store not far. My wife and I were curious to see what they have to offer, so last week we visited it.

In short, this was a double visit: first time and last time! I don't understand what these people think of us. Prices high, selection poor, quality of food poor, availability of European or German food very poor. How can they survive with this kind of merchandising? Aldi is ten times better than they are. 

We went into this store with certain expectations and left with a lot of disappointments. They can bully their way into the market, but they can not force the public to buy their products. Time will tell if they will learn.

Trip

Going, driving to Cleveland, Ohio is not much fun. I did the trip several times and as much as I like being there the getting there is the difficult part. My wife did the trip a lot more than I did because most of the time I had to stay home to babysit for Abigail and Robin. But this time it was just Robin and us two. The trip is about 480 miles, mainly on I-80. That alone is not bad because the average speed limit is about 70 miles per hour. However, at that speed everybody leaves you in the dust. It is amazing how fast people drive. Actually, we did, too.

I always tell my wife, drive with the flow. That is the safest way not getting a ticket. 480 miles take us about 7 1/2 to 8 hours of driving. The most boring part is Pennsylvania. That alone is about 310 miles of woodlands, the Poconos and countryside. I dread that part. It is long and boring. Pennsylvania has some very peculiar locality names along this road. One is Snowshoe. Why in the world they name a town Snowshoe? The other one is Jersey Shore. 

Can you imagine one says he owns a home in Jersey Shore and people will say ooh, aah, this person has a home on the Jersey Shore, not realizing that this Jersey Shore is a small town of about 4,100 people in the middle of Pennsylvania, with no ocean access. Why such a weird name? Then there is Corsica. Corsica is an island in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to France. Why was this town named after that island? Did they run out of names and had to pick these weird names? South of Cleveland there is a town named Macedonia. On these drives one has the felling that he is traveling around the world.                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Back in business

The long weekend is over and now back to the grind! This is what we used to say, when life was more fruitful. But now that just does not apply any longer. Long weekend or short weekend has no special meaning. Since in New York everything is open seven days a week it is hard to tell weekdays apart from weekends. In my neighborhood the only difference is that being predominantly Jewish, all stores are closed on Saturdays.

When I worked, I used to like these three-day weekends. If the weather was nice, it was always good to have it. Now we are having seven-day weekends. It is called retirement! Being a nice guy, I always root for the working people. This time they were very lucky. The three day, Saturday, Sunday and Monday were beautiful. Sunny and hot every single day. I could just imagine how crowded the beaches must have been.

Saturday and Sunday we were not home, went on an overnight trip to Ohio. This was a business trip and we figured going in the middle of the weekend we would miss traffic. And we were right. I wouldn't say the roads were empty, but nothing compared to Monday when everybody was heading home. This is a seven to eight hour drive and fortunately my wife loves these long haul trips. I don't drive, my job is to keep her company and that means I can not fall asleep at all. That is the hardest part of the trip.

This time it was just the two of us and Robin. Abigail spent the weekend with a friend. Robin really likes car travel. He behaved admirably. He slept most of the way. He is allowed, me no! Is this fair?

Long weekend

 This is a long weekend coming and I will take advantage of it. I shall return on Tuesday, probably.

Applaud

Whenever there is a kind of assembly with a larger number of people, applauding is inevitable. It is interesting to see how certain people do applaud. The styles vary as much as many people are there. Applauding is not something they teach in school, it is not even being taught by one's parents. It is something that should come natural to every civilized person.

Yet, styles do vary from the childish clapping to a very serious banging one's hands together. There are people who's applause look like seals clapping with their flippers. There are people who bang the bottoms of their hands together while there are some who create a deep sound with their fists. These last ones are very annoying because they overwhelm everybody, and their clapping can be heard over all noises.

Some grownups clap like little kids who just saw some miracle. While it is cute on a child it looks ridiculous on an adult, and they just don't realise it. Some people clap non stop, They clap like their life depends on it, just don't want to stop it. In Hungary and I'm sure other Eastern European countries rhythmic clapping is the norm. I think it dates back to the soviet days because that was the wa they did it during Stalin. But the habit stayed. 

Anyway, for me watching other people clap is an entertaining thing.