But Not a Drop To Drink
June 10, 2008 – 9:45 pmOn Friday of last week, I went to order a water cooler for our office.
Being a technophile, I tried to do it online first, via Poland Spring. After filling the cart, I go to check out. Delivery information? No problem. Billing information? Uh oh.
Wikia’s billing address is in, apparently, an unrecognized town in an unrecognized state. You, me, and anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the United States would know of the state — it’s one of the better known ones (sorry, Tennessee). Many Americans with an eighth grade degree would, similarly, be familiar with the city. Why Poland Spring’s website did not is anyone’s guess, but nevertheless, I was unable to order a cooler online. So I called their 800 number instead, and was pleasantly surprised at how simple it was. The water cooler, three five-gallon bottles of water, and copious amounts of cups were to be delivered on Monday.
At around 1 PM, the delivery man arrived. At 1:30 PM, our carpet was soaking wet.
I immediately called the 800 number again. The helpful person at Poland Spring — really, their customer service people are great — told me that he’d dispatch the delivery man to come out and check the problem; if the water bottle were defective, he would fix it on the spot (by replacing it), but if the cooler itself had a leak, I’d have to wait a day. And they’d pay to clean our carpet and make whole whatever else was damaged (as of this writing, a stained wall hanging) by the leak. Fair enough.
Until the driver called me, informing me that he was near the tunnel (Lincoln, Holland, Brooklyn Battery, Queens-Midtown, take your pick) and did not want to come in. I explained that he had to — I mean, it may be as something as simple as a cracked bottle. No, he assured me, it was the cooler. “How do you know?” I asked, innocently.
To paraphase his response: “I noticed a problem with one of the tubes.”
To quote the rest: “I figured I’d chance it.”
More amused than angry — how ridiculous! — I called Poland Spring again. End result: a new water cooler was on its way for tomorrow, and we were now given three months of free service. Plus a replacement water bottle for the one now almost entirely soaked into our blue carpeting.
By noon today, the water cooler delivery man had returned with another water cooler. He had left the extra bottle on the truck and promised to return ten minutes later with it; he failed to fulfill that promise. Worse, within thirty minutes, the cooler started making loud banging noises, as if a mouse had crawled into the machine and started to play pinball inside it. Growing pains, we figured (or rather, hoped in willful ignorance), until a co-worker filled his cup using the cold water tap.
Out came water so hot that his cup began to melt.
Back to the phones with Poland Spring, and cooler number three is on its way tomorrow. So is the carpet cleaner and two new bottles of water to replace those destroyed or otherwise lost via not one but two errant coolers.
Hopefully, this will be my only post — ever — about water coolers.
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