I am not happy! (And for once it is not because of The Man.) I am not happy because of my "HAPPY GRILL". You may ask, "What is a Happy Grill?" and I will tell you. For The Man's birthday I wanted to buy him an electric barbecue so he could cook burgers and such outside on the patio. We have a small electric barbecue in Florida and we love it. No propane tanks to refill, no charcoal to purchase and wait for it to heat up. Just plug it in and you are ready to grill. Is it cheating? Maybe, but it is easy ! And when you get to be a senior citizen you like easy !
Naturally I went onto Amazon for my search for the perfect grill. It should not be too small or too large. It needs to be tall enough to make grilling easy. (The one we have in Florida is short. We had to put it up on a cinder block so that we didn't have to lean over to cook.) I THOUGHT I considered all these factors in my search so that when I found the "perfect" grill it would be, . . . well, it would be PERFECT.
NOT !!! Being the dumb ass that I am I purchased an electric barbecue from a company called "HAPPY GRILL". What was my first clue that this was not a good idea? Seriously, a company called "Happy Grill"? Oh well, what the hey, the price was right and the grill seemed to meet all my criteria and so I bought it. A week later the LARGE box arrived and I knew I had screwed up. We did open the box but when I took one look at the monster within I knew this was not the grill I wanted. Perhaps if I had a 42 room mansion and wanted to barbecue for 56 people this would have been the grill for me but since it is only The Man and myself we did not need a grill the size of a bath tub. (How did I mess up looking at the measurements I don't know.)
Naturally having bought this item on Amazon I immediately went to "My orders" and checked out the return policy. OK, looks good, no problem. I print out the return label and read the instructions. HUM? Wait a minute . . . what's this about if it's too expensive to return just contact the company? Usually I just print out the label or QR code and take it to UPS and off it goes at no cost to me. NOT THIS TIME ! I take the box to UPS, haul it out of the car and into the store where the lady tells me it will be $60 to return the damn thing. AH HA ! Now that sentence makes sense. I take the box back out to the car and drive it home and get on the computer to contact HAPPY GRILL company.
Let me take a moment here to say that when I was reading the Happy Grill instruction on shipping the statements were not written in exactly proper English. Little things like "You send grill back" in stead of "IF you send THE grill back". If you were to be politically incorrect or racist and did an imitation of someone from China or Japan speaking English that is how the instructions were worded. So now I know just what I am going to be dealing with.
On to the return . . . OK, says here "contact company if it is too expensive to ship item back". That should be easy. NOT !!! They have an address in California and a phone number. I call the number . . . and I get the message along with that annoying sound telling me, "Please try again, this is not a working number". So I try again making sure I have the correct number. "Please try again, this is not a working number". I tried putting a "1" in front of the area code, nothing. This is "Not a working number"!!! Then I Google the name of the company, "Happy Grill" does not exist. Not in California or any other state as far as I could tell. By now I am cursing out the damn foreigners that make this crap and kicking myself for being so damn stupid as to buy from them.
Now I need to bring in the big guns . . . I call Amazon customer service. If you have ever had an issue with something Amazon related you know that the customer service number is rated up there with US National Security and secret spy documents. It is probably easier to get through to the Pentagon or the White House than it is to talk to a person about something you bought on Amazon. Years ago I spent a day researching this secret phone number which I have written in invisible ink in my well hidden password book. ( I will sell it to you for a small price). I must say Amazon has fantastic customer service. I get right through to a real person who listens to my sad tale if woe and tell me not to worry they will contact the company and the company will then contact me. If a week goes by and I don't hear anything just call back. A few days later I get an email from "Happy Grill" asking "Why you return grill?" I write back explaining that it is too large. They want to know if it is damaged and I explain that I never took it out of the box. They then ask me to send a picture. I respond that the grill is in the box that it came in, do they want a picture of the box? I get no response to that. A week goes by and I still do not have a pre-paid shipping label from Happy Grill so I contact Amazon again. Two days later I get another e-mail with the label attached.
I am going to UPS tomorrow with the damn thing. I'll keep you posted.
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