The Weekly Review: Week 39

Interesting Online Article of the Week

A New York Times blogger discusses an interesting study. You think your child is willfully ignoring you when playing. Instead, they may genuinely not hear you.

The Weekly Project

I dove back into cardsets this week. I am enjoying being able to work with Ava in a regular and structured manner and I needed some new cardsets to address my current objectives. So I made and shared some.

Crazy Week

This has been a stressful week. My parents have been out of town and we are dog sitting their two chihuahuas. My wonderful mother usually helps with picking the children up from their two different preschools, but she could not do that when away. I've been sick. And of course, Ava's evaluation was this week. However, even with all of that, the week has gone by swiftly and the evaluation day was oddly anticlimactic (more on that later).

The Weekly Vent

So I'm an Amazon Prime Member. Essentially I pay an annual fee to get free 2-day shipping on all orders for a year (plus a few other perks). I ordered a Christmas present for one of the children 10 days ago. Today it dropped in price by almost $30 dollars. $30!!! Now that's enough of a drop that I'm willing to pay to ship the original gift back and rebuy one at the lower price. After all, shipping on the new one is free for me.

However, that seemed silly. Why should I pay to ship one back, and Amazon pay to ship me a new one when they could simply credit me with the price difference? I was perfectly willing to take a credit rather than a refund. I was also willing to let them deduct one set of shipping costs. I managed to get a customer service agent on a live chat to discuss the issue.

They wouldn't even consider it. Their policy is to not refund price drops. Period. Even if it is ultimately going to cost them more money to refund my original purchase, to pay to ship me another one (2-Day shipping at that), and to pay someone to restock the original item. They still wouldn't even discuss offering me a credit or acknowledge that my argument made sense. The customer service agent simply cut and pasted their price drop policy without even discussing my specific situation or argument. He did helpfully point out that I was welcome to return the item.

So, I politely thanked the agent for his time, shut down the chat window, and bought the new one. As soon as the box arrives, I'm going to open it up, remove the invoice, stick in my return order authorization, and ship it right back to them for my refund keeping the original one I already unpacked.

Rarely am I disappointed in Amazon, but this time I certainly was. It's just wasteful.

Ava and Michael this Week

This week the children have been doing something new and irritating interesting. They are both trying to talk to me simultaneously. They are upset that the other child is stealing my attention and each handles it slightly differently. Michael just wordlessly whines at an ever increasing volume until my attention returns to him. Ava will chant "excuse me" over and over and over until she gets my attention. This simultaneous whiny neediness sends my blood pressure skyrocketing and I usually choose whichever child I feel initiated the conversation first and focus my eye contact and attention on that one after telling the other I will be with them in a minute and holding a finger up to try to put that one on "pause" until the chosen one can get their message out.

If I step back from the high emotions generated in all three of us, it probably looks hilarious to anyone watching.