kaitou | The opposite of what happened with the Pringles

This week I had what my dad calls my first 'Nora' moment. Nora being my grandmother, who is an excellent negotiator. About 15-20 years ago she decided that she didn't like the rivets in her jeans. They might scratch the furniture. So naturally she took them to a tailor, had them remove the rivets and sent the bill to Levi's. Levi's not only paid her tailor bill, they sent her a coupon for free pairs of the new line of rivetless jeans they were about to start.

And it's not just my grandmother, my mother's got the same luck. Back in August she wrote to Office Max telling them about these plastic boxes that are great for scrapbooking and how they ought to carry them. She got an email telling her that her idea sparked a lot of talk and that they wanted to send her a thank you. She was expecting a $10 gift card or something. They sent over $80 in those plastic boxes directly from the company in the UK.

Every now and then I try to have the same luck, but it never works for me. When I was living in Japan I wrote to tell them how much I loved the Curry Pringles, and would they please start carrying them in America too, because I didn't think I could live without them once I had to move back. They wrote back to me and told me that not only would they not do that, they were discontinuing them in Japan.

But I finally had my moment! When I bought the Garmin it came with three free downloads from Audible.com an audiobook site that I was already a member of. (You can download audiobooks and mp3s directly to the gps and play them from there) But when I went to their site it said that I wasn't eligible because I was already a member. I wrote to them and said, 'that's not fair, the card with the downloads doesn't say it's limited to new members.'

And they gave me my downloads! *does a little dance* Now I can get some books to listen to on the way to visit