It’s no secret in my house that I cannot live without my dishwasher. When it broke beyond repair a few years back, I was not the happiest person having to wait two weeks to have a new one delivered. The dishwasher and washer/dryer are in a tie for #2, with the coffee maker taking the #1 spot in our house for favorite modern luxury. With that said, I really should have been paying closer attention to what I put into the dishwasher.
I should also tell you that I’m cheap. Frugal, yes, but most definitely cheap. I am brand loyal to maybe a dozen items, but mainly if I think I can get a product for $0.45 cheaper, I’ll do it, or wait for my favorite brand to go on sale. Some things transcend the Scrooge in me, and I will purchase it regardless of sales. Cascade Complete is now one of them.
Strange thing, a few weeks back I was starting to notice that the dishwasher smelled like chemicals and so did all the plasticware coming out of it. Things like the baby’s sippy cups, the only baby bottle we own, and the large straws we use for our Six Flags soda cups (we get $0.99 refills all season long with the cup at the park). Nothing is more disgusting than taking a sip of Coke on a hot day just to find that the straw makes the soda taste like chemicals and you have to toss the entire drink. I had gotten Sun Light dishwasher detergent on sale, but it was making everything I washed with it TASTE bad.
Then, the way that Karma works for me, I received an offer to try out Electrasol and Cascade Complete - how could I say no? I was honestly having an issue with the dishwasher, and this was the perfect time to try something new. A head-to-head comparison of the two, with the brand I had in my cabinet as a third. I thought there would be no difference. I was wrong.
I’ve been using all three now for a few weeks. I got my mom in on the test since she’s been staying with us and helping with dishes after dinner. To our surprise, not only does the Cascade Complete not make my plasticware smell like chemicals, it gets the dishes clean without spots. An added bonus, the dishes are DRY when I open the dishwasher and I don’t have to spend time drying them off by hand before I put them away. That may sound like a little thing, but when you’ve got a baby crying for breakfast, taking an extra 10 minutes to dry dishes (that are supposed to be dry!) every morning is a pain. The Electrasol cleaned the dishes well, but depending on how well I rinsed the plates or how much glassware there was determined how many spots showed up. Plus, I almost always had water left on the plastic (not really the glasses or plates). My Sun Light, forget it. Every time I run the dishwasher with it, I can smell the chemicals in my kitchen. My only problem is now, I have two half-used bottles of dishwasher detergent that I really don’t want to use.
What stared out as a fun experiment turned out to make me into a brand-loyal customer. I guess “Cascade Recommended” is printed inside my dishwasher’s soap dispenser for a reason!
Cascade Complete:
- Pros: No chemical smell, clean dishes well, leaves no spots, removed some coffee stains from inside the dishwasher!
- Cons: Costs about 10% more than the bargain brands.
Electrasol:
- Pros: Cleans dishes well.
- Cons: Slight chemical smell, leaves plasticware wet even after ‘dry cycle’ in dishwasher.
Sun Light:
- Pros: Costs the least out of most major brands.
- Cons: Leaves plastic smelling strongly of chemicals!
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Original post from the Reviews From The Radio blog. This post is an unpaid and unbiased personal review of the products discussed. Disclaimer: The Cascade and Electrasol were gifted to me to be able to write the review. The Sun Light was already in my cabinet. My dishwasher is a Whirlpool QuietTouch II.
Technorati Tags: Cascade, Electrasol, Sun Light, dishwasher detergent
Our phones work. That’s a plus. What still sucks is 1) they never brought me my groceries and 2) I waited around all day for them just to get a phone call to say I didn’t need to be home. After the fiasco of waiting around and having Verizon tell me they came by my house when they didn’t, I was sure I’d get a visit from the neighborhood plumber-crack in a cherry-picker guy bright and early. Nope. All I got was a phone call - I hesitated to answer it thinking it was still for the crossed phone number - telling me my line was fixed. And just like that the tech wanted to hang up on me! Whoa spanky, what number did you call because the lines were crossed. He confirmed that it was my home number and tried to hang up on me again. Uh. NO. What about me waiting home for him to come fix my line? No ma’am (SHIT I hate it when old guys call me that!), we fixed the problem down the road at the switch box (they still use those?) or at the central office. He didn’t even know - which means he didn’t even do any work, a computer button-pusher someplace did.
Ok…I ask if my husband’s business line fixed? According to him, that wasn’t on his work order (yes it was), but if he’s not too busy he can get back to me in 48-72 hours and give me a status. All I could envision is kicking him in the teeth. Not very lady- or mommy-like I agree, but the guy was an ass. When I asked about my husband’s ‘business’ line he gave me a snarky answer that it wasn’t a business line (technically no it’s not, it’s just another ‘residential’ line) but a home office line. “Well, then, now, it’s not a BUSINESS line, is it?” in a horrifically condescending tone. My thoughts race to buying the most expensive ‘Sex In The City‘ Manolo Blahnik heels and wedging them right back to his molars. He hangs up on me.
A few minutes later I hear the office line ring. Then my house line rings again. He tells me the other line is fixed, you are very welcome. Then he hangs up on me, again.
For more reading on Verizon and how their customers love them, be sure to check out The Consumerist. They *love* Verizon over there. Riiiight.
Note to Verizon: Get a clue. Comcast helps their customers. Maybe you should take a lesson.
Technorati Tags: Verizon
Originally posted at Lynette Radio
Why do companies lie? Flat-out in-your-face serve you bullshit? So here I am on a Monday morning, stuck in the house with the baby, missing a coffee date I had with some friends in the area. Oh? Car broke down you ask? Baby sick you ask? NO. The people that work in the customer support department at Verizon are habitual liars that apparently don’t care if their employees lie to them, and in turn lie to their customers.
Our house phone and my husband’s business line have been non-functional FOR OVER A FREAKING WEEK. How is that acceptable? The best part is, last week, after waiting over four days to get a service repair appointment, I was required to stay in the house from 8am to 8pm and wait for them to show up. Honey, if I had a meeting with a customer and told them I’d show up sometime in a 12 hour window, the client would say ‘kiss off’ and get someone else to do the job. Plus, the technician didn’t even show up! When my husband called them on this, they claimed they were by and tested the line at 4:20pm and it checked out fine. Really? I was in my driveway at that time making chalk drawings with my daughter. I have the digital photos with time/date stamps to prove it. I would have noticed if a truck pulled up and someone walked across my lawn.
You say the phone is working? Then why isn’t it? In fact, last night at 11:30pm our phone started ringing - for someone else’s phone number. My husband got to listen in on a conversation between some guy calling his wife from a business trip. No, he didn’t stalk them, in fact it turned into a ménage à trois of phone company bashing. Not nearly as sexy a situation as I’d always hoped it would be.
Why don’t we dump Verizon and go 100% with our Vonage lines? Well, we have one item in our house that must run from a POTS phone line. I am doing research today to see if there are other solutions. What really got me all worked up was when I realized that I’m home alone with two kids during the day and have spotty cell phone service (living semi-rural does have some drawbacks). What if something happened? Besides, no one has been able to reach us in over a week - including the parents of the birthday boy yesterday that had to move up the party because of rain. My daughter would have been heartbroken if she missed the party.
So to Verizon I say, you SUCK. Just because your technician was too lazy to actually show up at a customers house and say “customer not home” does not give you the right to lie - and infer to my husband I wasn’t home when I said I was. I plan to spread this post far and wide, maybe some Google search will place this in your queue in 10 years when you finally get up to date and look for things like this. You SUCK.
And while you are at it, I need a gallon of 1% milk, Gerber stage 2 baby food, diaper wipes, butter, apple juice and a new coffee date with my girlfriends. Since I can’t leave my house for another 12 hours again today, running to the grocery store for me is the VERY LEAST you can do.
PS - Verizon YOU SUCK.
Technorati Tags: verizon, customer service
Originally posted at Lynette Radio
It’s no secret in my house that I cannot live without my dishwasher. When it broke beyond repair a few years back, I was not the happiest person having to wait two weeks to have a new one delivered. The dishwasher and washer/dryer are in a tie for #2, with the coffee maker taking the #1 spot in our house for favorite modern luxury. With that said, I really should have been paying closer attention to what I put into the dishwasher.
