Just before Halloween, I noticed something very scary lurking in the corner of my living room: a pile of untouched catalogs.
Late summer each year, I start to stockpile catalogs for holiday shopping. To my shock and horror, none had yet tempted me to place an order, and few had even upped my interest enough for a quick browse-through. (Cue ominous music.)
To paraphrase the late George Sanders, I was bored. Bored with what felt like the same-old, same-old in many books. But when leaves have turned and the pumpkin is starting to rot, it means it’s time to begin holiday shopping.
So over the course of several evenings, I forced myself to read through about 65 catalogs. Upon closer inspection, I came up with some interesting tidbits and – of course – some items worthy of putting a few more miles on the credit card.
For those of you who keep score of such things, 18 were housewares catalogs (Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, etc.), 16 were from clothing retailers (Lands’ End, J.Jill and the like), 13 were gift catalogs (Lillian Vernon, Signals, etc.), and eight were food books (The Popcorn Factory, Dean & Deluca and so on). The remainder covered categories ranging from pets to cosmetics to stationery.
Frock Frolic Being finicky and hard-to-fit, I don’t tend to buy dresses direct very often. But both Macy’s by Mail and Nordstrom had A-lines that caught my eye. And both allowed catalog/Web shoppers to make returns to retail stores.
Nirvana! Except…Macy’s only allows returns on items that aren’t marked with a star. And just about everything in the catalog is marked with a star. That simplified things considerably.
I logged on to Nordstrom.com to take advantage of an offer for free shipping on Internet orders. When I had problems loading a page, I called the 800 number for assistance. The rep tried her best to talk me through it, but no matter what I did I couldn’t access the correct information.
Did she tell me to try again later, or that I was flat out of luck, because the computer wasn’t pulling up the source code I gave her? Nope. She offered me the free shipping discount in good faith and spirits – even after I decided not to order the dress after all because it was on back order until after the date I needed it.
This is the stuff CRM dreams are made of.
Next in my pile was Newport News, which seems to be going through an identity crisis. The comely model on the cover was very high-fashion for sure, but the following spreads had a mishmash feeling. Some would seem more at home in a midrange department store flier, while others looked almost like they could have been pulled from a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. Then the reader is treated to pages of housewares and electronics.
Huh? I’ll check in on this book again when it decides what it’s going to be when it grows up.
Take Two In a generous mood (and lured by an offer of free shipping), I decided to give the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston another chance, even though I had gone through a customer service trauma with it a few years ago.
I dialed the 800 number and listened to the phone ring more than 15 times before a rep answered. Not a good start, but the rep was friendly and courteous and the order was placed without a hitch. We’ll see how they follow through.
And what would a round of catalog shopping be without Martha by Mail? I eagerly ticked off ornament kits and candy-making sets and all manner of do-it-yourself goodies…until it hit me. Oh, yeah. I’m a real person. I don’t have time for all this stuff. Next.
Some of my purchases were, of course, from tried and true standbys.
My order from Harry and David was processed quickly and efficiently – it has a great reputation around our household and thus high standards to live up to, so I’d expect nothing less. The same goes for beauty catalog CCB-Paris, whose on-the-ball rep caught that I’d given her the wrong key code and mentioned the correct one so I’d get my free gift. Yeah! Two points!
‘Til Next Time Then, I…aw darn! That’s the end of my space for this issue? We’ll continue this next month, with more catalogs that got my orders, piqued my interest or just plain old made me wonder who was in charge.
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