Greatest Customer Service eMail EVER! #woot

I got this email today and laughed so hard I had to share it!


Dear rwnutjob, 

Welcome to the warm embrace of Woot, the first, best, and most hygienic daily deal site! Sit still a 
minute because you need to know this stuff:

• You're now a registered member of all four of our sites: woot.com, shirt.woot.com,
  wine.woot.com and sellout.woot.com. Don't be alarmed. We'll explain more
  later.
• Typical orders take up to 5 business days to ship from our warehouse (except for overnight
  t-shirt orders, which go out sooner, and wine orders, which take longer). If you order an item
  during peak times like a Woot-Off, it can take a little longer. Once we ship it, delivery time to
  your door depends on FedEx or SmartPost.
• Once the item ships out, you can access your tracking data by going to Your Account and
  clicking on the order number. If you have a problem receiving your order, or you receive the
  wrong item, contact service@woot.com.
• If you receive your item and it doesn't work, contact the manufacturer first. They made the junk.
  Let them deal with it. If they turn out to be total tools, contact service@woot.com and we'll
  grudgingly provide some further assistance.
• If you receive your item and decide you don't like it, take it to eBay or pawn it off on one of
  your so-called friends. We don't want it, either.

That goes for Woot.com and all of the sites in the Woot.com family. There's some specific stuff 
you might want to know about each of the others. And here it comes now. 

Shirt.woot - Check the size chart, check the size chart, check the size chart. It's at the bottom of the 
product description for each sale. If you order the wrong size, we won't take it back - your only option 
is to gain or lose weight so it fits, possibly including painful, costly cosmetic surgery. If you want your 
overnight order the next day, place it by noon Central time. International orders generally take about 3-
4 weeks to arrive. Looking for an old shirt design? If you're lucky, it'll still be for sale via our
Reckoning page. If you're somewhat less lucky, it might turn up as one of our weekly Shirt.Woot 
Classics. If you think your one-year-old can design a better shirt, encourage your 
one-year-old to enter the Derby, our weekly design competition. That $1,000 prize can buy a lot of 
Binkies.
http://shirt.woot.com/derby/
http://shirt.woot.com/Blog/?cat=reckoning
http://shirt.woot.com/WhatIsWoot.aspx


Wine.woot - First, don't get your hopes up: wine orders can only be shipped to certain states, so read 
the entire list of eligible states before you print up the invitations to your wine party and place your 
order. Ineligible orders will be cancelled and refunded. If you do complete your order and receive the 
tracking data, make sure you give it some time to update. It won't be uncommon for it to take a little 
while for real, actual data to show up. You might call the data "late" - we prefer to think of it as "aged".
http://wine.woot.com/WhatIsWoot.aspx 

Sellout.woot - Don't be confused or disoriented by the redirect when you visit the site - we just have to 
run you through Yahoo! Shopping before you come back to Woot turf. It's perfectly normal. You should 
know that we actually sell things here at times that could partner nicely with items from the regular 
Woot website, giving you a chance to have your cake and eat it, and then take a bite of another guy's 
cake when he's not looking, and mmmm...cake...is this email almost over? We're getting hungry.
http://sellout.woot.com/WhatIsWoot.aspx 

Kids.woot - Keep in mind that Kids.Woot is a site that sells childrens' products, not necessarily a place 
you'd want your kids hanging out. We make every effort to monitor the content and activity in our 
message boards, but you should approach Kids.Woot with the same circumspection you'd bring to any 
other adult-oriented site. Well, not "adult-oriented" in the nasty sense. We just mean it's for mature 
audiences only. But not "mature" as in- ah, forget it, you know what we mean.
http://kids.woot.com/WhatIsWoot.aspx 

Bear with us a moment more and we can all get on with our lives. If you email service@woot.com, 
make sure you include your order number and/or username. We'd hate to have to track you down 
through other, less savory means. And this last bit of information is critical: when you look at your 
order history and panic because you don't see an order you placed, make sure you are logged into the 
Woot site you purchased it from. Your Wine.Woot orders won't show up in your order history if you're 
looking at it on Shirt.Woot, and so on. And you'll be upset, and we'll be upset, and we'll each say things 
we don't mean, and even though we'll eventually work it all out, things will never be the same between 
us again. 

Last but certainly not least, happy Wooting! 

Woot Member Services

Cultural and Religious Implications for Healthcare

While I realize this is a bit off topic for me, it is something that we've been discussing in my Assistive Technology curriculum and I wanted to share a bit. So indulge me! :P

The acceptance of refusal of an individual to follow a healthcare or treatment regimen has been an issue as long as there has been organized healthcare. When someone who has been duly informed of the possible repercussions and consequences of their informed choice to accept or reject treatment, then I believe they have the right to make that decision. However, when the patient is a child and the decision must be made for them, my feelings take a sharp turn. For a child to be made to suffer or be faced with even more dangerous consequences due to a belief they may not even understand is simply wrong. I understand the parents need to make informed consent decisions for their children, but when those decisions are clearly not in the best interest of the child's general health and welfare, it is necessary for an outside agency to step in and advocate for them.

Many factors, including cultural and religious beliefs or teachings can play a role in determining whether or not someone may accept a prescribed course of treatment. Some examples that come to mind are certain Native American beliefs regarding the use of some types of radiological imaging and exploratory procedures. A major controversy that is currently ongoing is the discussions over the use of Stem Cell Research by various religious groups. These are some drastic examples, but the issue can also be as simple as a (in my opinion) misguided parent refusing to vaccinate a child against possibly horrific, life threatening diseases such as Polio or SmallPox. Many of these parents dilusionally believe that they are protecting their children against a greater evil, such as those that believe the MMR vaccination causes Autism.

I, as a general rule, refuse to take prescribed narcotics unless the pain or discomfort I am experiencing is simply too much to bear. I do not like the side effects these drugs have on me and I would rather avoid them if at all possible.

The statements I have made here do have to be taken in the context of an individual patients case however. There can be any number of extenuating circumstances that can influence the decision to accept or reject treatment. An example that comes to mind is a child who has been unsuccessfully battling crippling cancer for years and is being prescribed yet another excruciatingly painful series of treatments that only have a 5% chance of having any benefit. In this case, I can see the family questioning the wisdom of what they see as a torturous existence. While this is an extreme example, it demonstrates the need for health care professionals to treat individual patients, not just a condition on a chart.

Cheers til next time!