A wake-up call?

We're generally fans of internet shopping - the promised convenience married with the cash you can potentially save is a sure fire winner in a household with a Scotsman who hates plodding around shops!

But things don't always so smoothly and when they don't I invariably find myself wishing that I'd just gone into a shop a paid a little extra. When something goes wrong it doesn't seem all that convenient to put it right!

Recently we've had a 'mare. Over the last month or so we've experienced a less than satisfactory 'service' (we've arranged and re-arranged numerous times to be around to take delivery while nothing turned up, we've had stuff turn up that we haven't ordered, and when stuff has arrived it hasn't fitted as the catalogue promised!) from a certain company purporting to be 'experts in parenting and babycare'. A company that rather sexistly (that can't be a word but you get what I saying) purports to 'care' for 'mothers' - and it isn't Babies R Us or KiddiCare!

Anyway, I guess these things happen,, but what doesn't help (really doesn't help!) is when the 'customer services' assistant is a stroppy person seemingly without the slightest interest in your predicament!! (it's perhaps worth pointing out that one of my bugbears is 'customer service' that is anything but!!) So you can imagine how we often felt coming off the phone having struggled to explain our frustration and to find a satisfactory solution.

However shockingly bad and infuriating these conversations were, as I put the phone down from one such call, the phone immediately rang - this time with a 'wake-up' call.

It was Social Services who wanted to know if we could do anything to help an elderly wheelchair-bound man who for whatever reason had no money and no access to food. Unable to do anything themselves, Social Services were turning to the Salvation Army.

Details taken we got on the case. Suitably distracted from our Mothercare woes (doh! I wasn't going to mention the shoddy company!!) we were sobered by (and grateful for) the reminder that however appaling and annoying there are defintely more important things to worry about that slack customer services. And there are many, many people living around us who have far more taxing concerns!

The paradox of perspective: so important to keep a healthy perspective, but so easy to lose.