S/O I'm Never Shopping There - What Businesses Will Forever Have Your Patronage?

[PastryGoddess]

I need a lot of anesthesia and those pills they give me to knock me out an hour before don't work.  I now go to a sedation dental practice whenever I need to have major work done like a root scaling or dental surgery. 

[iridaceae]

I need a lot of anesthesia and those pills they give me to knock me out an hour before don't work.  I now go to a sedation dental practice whenever I need to have major work done like a root scaling or dental surgery.

Oh I'm scared to use one of those. I don't know what my reaction will be.

[PastryGoddess]

I need a lot of anesthesia and those pills they give me to knock me out an hour before don't work.  I now go to a sedation dental practice whenever I need to have major work done like a root scaling or dental surgery.

Oh I'm scared to use one of those. I don't know what my reaction will be.

I use the local medical university's dental practice, so there is an actual anesthesiologist on site for sedation.  I've never been to a stand alone clinic for sedation dentistry.

[cwm]

I need a lot of anesthesia and those pills they give me to knock me out an hour before don't work.  I now go to a sedation dental practice whenever I need to have major work done like a root scaling or dental surgery.

Oh I'm scared to use one of those. I don't know what my reaction will be.

I went to one for my wisdom teeth coming out, it was nice. I don't remember a bit of it. It was at an actual dental hospital with nurses and anesthesiologists on staff full-time. Luckily I've never needed any other dental surgery, so I don't have to worry about it.

My sister goes to our normal dentist for work. She's got really bad teeth, bad anxiety, and shots don't work well on her. She takes an anti-anxiety drug beforehand, gets the shots, gets the gas, and the dentist lets someone come back with her to hold her hand, usually me. She can still talk to me, we both know ASL, so if she has any major concerns she can get them voiced without trying to talk around the drugs and gas. He works around all her needs so well, we've been going there since I was a wee small girl. It's actually only a block from the house I grew up in, so it was nice to be old enough to walk to the dentist's alone. My grandma goes there, and he's constantly asking us about what new shows she's in, he remembers how our lives are going visit to visit, and is generally a great person.

[perpetua]

I think it's very, very easy to get the injection in the wrong place, for a lot of dental work, so if you're unlucky, or if your teeth have wonky roots so the nerves don't run quite where they're expected to, you can have lots of anaesthetic without it helping at all.

Definitely, and you can also have it happen the other way around - where the dentist hits the nerve where they shouldn't. The nerve that goes all the way up the side of your head. That, combined with my EDS-related non-numbing, and the fact that she was trying to extract a wisdom tooth, was *not* a fun visit.

[Redsoil]

Pen - have sent you a PM.

Wow - Em, very interesting!  I am hypermobile (with some measure of joint instability - reasonably managed as a rule with physical therapy/gym), and though not technically a redhead (nods to Outdoorgirl) I have red-gold tendencies/highlights.  (Cousins are true redheads.)

I did go to hospital when I had all four wisdom teeth out aged 17, and was in for a week after.  Looked like his boot got stuck in there as well, and I swelled up badly.  So, have to say I'm not fond of dental work. 

[BabyMama]

Green Mountain Coffee. If you set up an autoship schdule, your Keurig brewer is automatically under their warranty. I was kind of skeptical, but figured at least I was getting a discount, so what the heck.

Then our brewer stopped working. We'd had it for something like 2 1/2 years, they didn't even make that exact model anymore, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, since I really didn't want to shell out $120 for a new coffeemaker. They asked if I knew the serial number and purchase date, which was easy to find since I registered with keurig.com when we got the brewer. Then I had to enter my shipping address, and a few days later a new brewer appeared on our doorstep!

[workerbee]

Excited that I have an addition to this thread, and for a big box store no less! Every Christmas we "adopt" 2-3 foster children through a city-wide program and buy them gifts. I try to set a budget but tend to go overboard b/c these are often the only gifts the child gets (I know, I know, not a crisis.....but I love to think of them opening them on Christmas morning....). Anyway, I hopped online on cyber Monday and was delighted to find a FANTASTIC deal on one particular toy at ToysRUs. The price meant that I was able to get all three items on the child's list AND stay within my allotted budget!

So I was really disappointed when I received my email confirmation and the fantastic-deal toy was nowhere to be found! I contacted TRUS through their customer service link and heard...nothing. So I contacted them again and got a response! They were very apologetic, said the item was out of stock online but available in stores, and that I should contact them to order it.  I did, and got a helpful (albeit slow) sales rep who put the order through, and knocked off another couple of $$ for the time it took.    I ended up getting the toy, which runs $30-40 online, for $10!

[TeamBhakta]

Adding to the list: my local AT&T store. My ex wanted to buy a newer phone. We needed to find a store where someone could speak to him in Spanish. I speak Spanish, but it's easier to sit him down with a bilingual employee and let the two of them hash out what he's looking for. So we tried some phone stores at the mall and that was a huge mistake. The prices were insane, there weren't any bilingual employees or brochures, etc. One store had two employees just slouching around bored on chairs. They acted like it was such a hardship for one of 'em to get up. The only price they gave us was "It's $500 down and then $300 a month for two years. Or you're welcome to buy one on Craig's List and bring it back here for our Equally Ridiculous, Expensive Plan." And then the employee just stared at us like "Okay, I wanna go back to navel gazing and like I really don't want to talk to customers."

We had the complete opposite treatment at the AT&T store. Even though they were super busy, someone came over to take our name, put us on a wait list and find out what we needed. And they had two bilingual employees available to help us, both with "we speak Spanish" name tags. One person made sure to tell us after sitting for a bit "That guy is printing a customer's paper work. He's almost done and will help you right after. It'll only take a minute or two." The employee we were sent to drew up a reasonable list of price plans and was super friendly. The phone the ex picked was over $400 less than what the mall stores had. And it was the same dang phone  We almost did cartwheels on the way out. Also, the employee shook our hands when he met us, shook our hands and said thank you when we left + went across the store to open the door for us. 

[GlitterIsMyDrug]

I've never shopped Liberty Bottleworks, but after reading this I really want too!: http://www.ijreview.com/2013/12/101904-small-business-viral-reply-angry-customer-family-first-product-second/

Polite response, and backed his employees!!!

[jedikaiti]

I bet their sales have taken off!

[SCMagnolia]

My bank has won my business for life...

It's a very small regional bank and I've always had wonderful service from them, but yesterday sealed the deal.

When I read about the whole Target credit card hacking debacle online, first thing I thought was OH $#!*!!!!  I had shopped there three times in the timeframe in question and used my bank debit card each time.   I went to my bank at lunch and asked what I needed to do.  I was fully prepared to be without my debit card for quite a few days (given the holidays and delayed mail), but I was told I didn't need to do a thing.  They were already on top of it.  They monitor the accounts of anyone whose account showed charges at Target, lower the per-transaction limit on those cards to $200, and are sending new cards out to everyone affected.  The manager even came over and told me that the new cards should be out to everyone no later than January 3rd, and if I don't receive mine by then to call her and she'd make sure a card was expedited to me. 

The new cards they send out? Well, they require activation.  When the new card is activated, the old card is automatically shut off.  Our PINs do not change, just the card numbers.  They said they didn't want to inconvenience anyone, especially at the holidays, so they'd take care of monitoring accounts for strange activity until the new cards are activated.

I thought this was wonderful, and such a relief!  Made me a very happy girl!   

[ladyknight1]

USAA is also monitoring the Target card fraud.

I am very pleased that the US Post Office was equipped and handled today's crowd with aplomb.

[Jloreli]

My credit union is also on top of the Target "issue". They preemptively cancelled my debit card since it was one of the ones on the list of the compromised. I am not thrilled to be without my debit card the week before Christmas but the inconvenience beats having to deal with my checking account being emptied by crooks and the drama associated with recovering the money!

[Slartibartfast]

My credit union is also on top of the Target "issue". They preemptively cancelled my debit card since it was one of the ones on the list of the compromised. I am not thrilled to be without my debit card the week before Christmas but the inconvenience beats having to deal with my checking account being emptied by crooks and the drama associated with recovering the money!

That beats what Target themselves are doing - their credit card site has been down for the last two days, then when I was finally able to get in and check, there's no way to say "Please just sent me a new stinkin' card with a new number already."  Other than calling, which I don't want to do because I'm sure their lines are swamped.  I guess I'm glad we have the Target Visa, which we only use at Target (5% back adds up, but it only counts for purchases made there, so why bother using it anywhere else?), so it'd be pretty obvious if there were extra charges showing up sometime in the future . . .