Why would Janssen Biotech, Inc NOT do their legal advertising for this in a Chester County PA paper? If their office is in Malvern, unless they’ve moved Malvern it’s still in Chester County isn’t it?
Does that seem odd to anyone? I have to ask a question and the question is this is: is it good legal advertising if you don’t advertise in the paper that is the daily paper to the area where this would occur? Or would this just still be considered satisfactory legal advertising, albeit slightly sleazy?
And how will potential discharge affect this creek? The Valley Creek? Wonder what Trout Unlimited thinks?
Doesn’t the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection think that poor East Whiteland has enough going on?
I guess people that live in Chester County are going to have to start looking in Delaware County newspapers too? I just don’t understand why this wasn’t put in The Daily Local News? That is Chester County’s daily newspaper, right?
Someone told me that someone might still live there, not sure how that is possible but who knows? I am guessing part of the house still has an apartment someone lives in. I don’t know if it’s a caretaker or whomever owns it.
I was also told in the 1990s it was separate apartments inside and there were also cottages around it which were rented out as well.
In the 1950s and 60s there was a large barn there that was a sale barn for cattle run by Bayard Taylor a blog reader told me recently. He knew because his mother did bookkeeping for that business while she was in college.
Every time I post about this house I get all sorts of comments. I am not the only one that notices this old house.
The house was built in 1878. It was altered in 1894 by its namesake inhabitants. Dr. Price. According to the West Whiteland Historical Society he altered it from a Gothic to a Queen Anne style.
This is just one of those houses that captures the imagination of almost everyone who drives by it. Maybe someday a preservation buyer will drive by it and it will be saved. Until then I just sort of falls apart.
A lot of my friends like the cool historic houses and properties around Chester County. It’s not just me.
So above is that once lovely 18th century farmhouse. If my research is correct, it was built in 1734. According to the Tredyffrin-Easttown Historical Society, Lincoln Highway, Lancaster Pike, Lancaster Avenue was laid out in 1732! (Now I know the place has to be on a historic resources inventory list, but I can’t find that on East Whiteland’s website, although I can find it on one of the little maps on the comprehensive plan.)
I am not sure if the house’s address is 307 or 310 W. Lancaster Pike. Or W. Lancaster Ave. Or W. Lincoln Highway.
Ironically, I have previously photographed this same farmhouse April/May 2013, April 2015, and April 2016.
My photo. April, 2016
Looking at the naked acres of it all today makes me wonder what is going on with the property. The trees that were around it are gone, and possibly one of the dead Saabs I remembered on the side of the house. So is it going to be rehabbed or is stripping away the greenery mean it is truly marked for death? Inquiring minds would love to know.
Based on a true story, Little Pink House is about a small-town paramedic named Susette Kelo leaves a bad marriage, and starts over in a new town. She buys a rundown cottage with a gorgeous water view. She fixes it up and paints it pink. Then she discovers powerful politicians want to bulldoze her blue-collar neighborhood for the benefit of a multi-billion dollar corporation.
With the help of a young lawyer named Scott Bullock, Susette emerges as the reluctant leader of her neighbors in an epic battle that goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, inspires a nation, and helps millions of Americans protect their homes.
Most of you probably have no idea what this means. Or care. But I think you should. It is the movie about the 2005 United States Supreme Court Case Kelo vs. New London, and what Susette Kelo and her Fort Trumbull neighbors endured at the hands of Pfizer and New London, Connecticut.
Susette Kelo taken in front of her little pink house around 2008 (I think) – It has been a long time since I looked at these photos. Scott Mahan photo.
And all of a sudden, I am taken back years. I see faces I haven’t thought of in years; hear voices and snippets of long gone conversations. Ardmore, PA to Washington, DC and Virginia. What a long strange trip it was.
Dick Saha of Coatesville (left), Scott Mahan (center), Nancy Saha of Coatesville (right). I took this photo in June of 2006 down in DC/VA at an Institute for Justice/Castle Coalition conference on Eminent Domain.
My friends and I were ordinary people who became accidental activists via the Save Ardmore Coalition. I resigned my position at Save Ardmore Coalition (“SAC”) in 2011 when diagnosed with breast cancer. I do not know if the organization still exists at all or not, truthfully. I am not there any more. My friends and I have all moved forward into our lives, and now we are mostly like local folklore. Normal people who went to Washington to fight eminent domain and hang out with people like Susette Kelo. But it’s not folklore, or urban legend as we did all that and lived through all of that.
Scott Mahan (left), Susette Kelo (center), Ken Haskin (right). Scott Mahan photo (again circa 2008 or thereabouts)
It was a long road for those of us who were the original SAC and we paid heavy prices for our activism at times (it was not pretty), but I would do it all over again as it was the right thing to do. We were part of the Institute for Justice/Castle Coalition’s eminent domain fighting communities.
My friends from Ardmore and I (the original Save Ardmore Coalition) went to Washington once upon a time as I mentioned when Susette Kelo and others (like Long Branch NJ and the Sahas of Coatesville, PA and the other New London, CT /Fort Trumbull folks) were fighting eminent domain for private gain. We lived this with the Institute for Justice as we fought (and won) Ardmore’s battle.
They were crazy times and I am proud of what we did in Ardmore back then. I am honored I got to spend time with Susette Kelo and the other amazing folks from other cities and states along with the people from the Institute for Justice.
Little Pink House Movie Hits the Big Screen, Seeks to End Eminent Domain Abuse
Biopic on Supreme Court’s Landmark Kelo Ruling Shows How Eminent Domain for Private Gain Destroyed Lives and an Entire Community
Eminent domain creates strange political bedfellows: Once-developer and now-President Donald Trump, along with liberal justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, came out against ordinary homeowners and in favor of the government and private developers.
But for the government’s use of eminent domain, corporations would be powerless to take someone else’s home.
The release of Little Pink House provides a rare opportunity for political unity. It should unite the Left, which wants to limit corporate influence on government, and the Right, which wants to limit government power over property.
Little Pink House is both a major motion picture and a cautionary tale that shows what happens when the government teams up with powerful private interests to take an entire working-class neighborhood for a glitzy development—a project that 13 years later is nothing but barren fields.
Starring two-time Academy Award nominee Catherine Keener and Emmy nominee Jeanne Tripplehorn, Little Pink House opens on April 20 and will be screened in theaters across the nation. It tells the true story of Susette Kelo (played by Keener), a small-town paramedic from New London, Connecticut, who buys her first home—a cottage—and paints it pink. When the governor and his allies plan to bulldoze her little pink house to make way for a development benefitting the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, Kelo fights back, taking her case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Although national polls at the time of the Kelo ruling consistently showed that the public overwhelmingly rejects the use of eminent domain for private gain, the issue made for strange political bedfellows. It was the U.S. Supreme Court’s liberal justices who made up the majority that ruled against Kelo and in favor of the government, and when the Kelo ruling was handed down, developer Trump said, “I happen to agree with it 100%.” Trump had earlier sought to employ eminent domain to take a widow’s property in Atlantic City for his private use. After becoming President of the United States, he said, “I think eminent domain is wonderful.”“As the Atlantic City eminent domain battle showed, unless the government abuses its power of eminent domain, private corporations are powerless to take someone’s property; they must negotiate because they cannot use force,” said Institute for Justice Litigation Director Dana Berliner, who successfully represented the widow at the heart of the Atlantic City lawsuit and who argued Kelo’s case before the Connecticut Supreme Court.
As documented in the film, after Kelo lost her U.S. Supreme Court case, her struggle sparked a nationwide backlash against eminent domain abuse that today helps millions of Americans better protect what is rightfully theirs. The Supreme Court used the Keloruling to radically expand this government power—allowing eminent domain for the mere promise from a developer that it might pay more taxes if given someone else’s land, rather than for an actual public use, as required by the U.S. Constitution. Because of the grassroots backlash at the state level against eminent domain abuse, however, the Kelo case is justifiably seen as a situation in which the government won the battle, but lost the war. Still, the Institute for Justice, which represented Kelo, stated that more reforms are still needed if the abuse of this government power is to be ended once and for all.
“Little Pink House wonderfully captures what the fight for property rights is all about,” said Institute for Justice President Scott Bullock, who argued the Kelo case before the U.S. Supreme Court. “A house is typically someone’s most valuable asset, but the value of a home goes well beyond its mere monetary worth. For so many, it is an extension of who they are and what they value. It is where a person might raise a family, grow a small business, celebrate, mourn and grow old. Eminent domain abuse, as depicted in this film, is not only unconstitutional, it is profoundly wrong. Little Pink House vividly documents the heroic struggle of Susette and her neighbors to not only fight for their homes but for the constitutional rights of millions of others in America and throughout the world.”
Little Pink House should unite those on the Left who want to limit corporate influence on government, and those on the Right, who want to limit government power over property, said Bullock. Eminent domain abuse disproportionately strikes poor and minority communities, and there is often a giant gap between the promises made by redevelopment supporters and the promises such plans actually deliver. In just a five-year period, there were more than 10,000 instances nationwide where eminent domain for private development was either used or threatened by the government.
Government officials and the developer promised that the project that replaced Susette Kelo’s tight-knit blue-collar neighborhood would thrive and would make New London tax-rich. Now, 13 years after the landmark Kelo ruling, all that remains there are barren fields; nothing lives there now but weeds and feral cats.
“It was all for nothing,” said Susette Kelo. “The government put us through all that torture and now, more than a dozen years later, they have literally nothing to show for it. But even if they turned what was my home into an emerald city, that still wouldn’t have made it right. The government and their corporate confidants destroyed our neighborhood and our constitutional rights. We need to keep fighting this until we end eminent domain abuse once and for all.”
Eminent domain hot spots remain around the country. For example: In Garfield, New Jersey, the town’s redevelopment agency is using a bogus blight designation to take a zipper manufacturing warehouse, along with its neighbors’ homes, for a private developer to build private retail and housing. Cumberland, Maryland, is trying to bulldoze a number of homes to make way for a chain restaurant. The Bae family left Korea and built a successful dry cleaning business in East Harlem, New York. But city officials want to demolish it so a developer can build an entertainment complex.
Little Pink House has been lauded by The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline Hollywood, among others. In addition to attracting stars Keener and Tripplehorn, Little Pink House features the original song “Home Free,” written and performed for the movie by rock legend David Crosby.
The independent film was directed by Courtney Balaker and produced by her husband, Ted Balaker. It will open on screens across the nation with more screenings being added each week. In those markets where Little Pink House is not being shown in theaters, the public can follow a simple process to bring the movie to their hometown theater or enter an email address at littlepinkarmy.com and a representative from the film will walk them through the process.
Courtney Balaker said, “Eminent domain abuse is a fancy term for legalized bullying. It happens when insiders take advantage of outsiders. Developers and politicians promise more jobs and more tax revenue, so it sounds appealing to lots of people. But all the high-minded talk obscures what’s really going on—they’re forcing people out of their homes. If you own your home and you want to keep living in your home, you should be able to stay in your home. Eminent domain abuse happens far more often than most people realize, and it rarely brings the kind of economic development its supporters promise. It should come as no surprise that poor and minority communities are especially likely to be targeted.”
Eminent Domain for private gain is legal stealing, economic segregation, and more often than not, class warfare. When you receive a notice of a taking, your world turns inside out, not just upside down. At first you feel like you are in the battle completely and utterly alone. But you aren’t alone. There are a lot of us out there.
I didn’t set out in life to become a grassroots activist on any level, but eminent domain is an issue that, as an American, I found I simply could not ignore. I loved Ardmore, where eminent domain threatened a block of small businesses in a local historic business district. Ardmore to me was a quintessential old fashioned main street-oriented town. It represents the bygone days of small town America.
The township (Lower Merion) had declared this block “blighted,” and it intended to acquire these properties in a certified historic district for inclusion in a mixed-use development project to be owned by a private party.
One of the first lessons we learned as SAC was that when you are fighting a battle like this, you become an instant pariah. SAC next contacted the Institute for Justice and newly formed Castle Coalition, who gave us a crash course in grassroots activism.
We held rallies, protests and community meetings. We wrote letters to the newspapers until we had writer’s cramp. We took every opportunity to speak at public meetings. We lobbied government officials on a state and national level.
My friend Si Simons with Susette Kelo, June, 2006. My photo.
And we hit roadblocks. Although eminent domain had become a national issue when Susette Kelo took her case to the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Philadelphia area we discovered it was hard to get media attention from anyone other than the local papers. Eminent domain wasn’t sexy enough—it was just “a local issue”. We were called NIMBY and castigated publicly by certain local elected officials at public meetings, who referred to us as “a small group of mean spirited individuals.”
When someone told us in a letter if we didn’t like how government was run we should “change the face of who governs us,” our resolve as a group was strengthened. We decided to change literally the faces of those who were governing us. We had an upcoming election. We didn’t back one candidate in particular but decided they should all adopt our position and take IJ’s pledge against the use of eminent domain for private gain.
We were successful. In November 2005, we watched as five new faces against eminent domain were elected to the 14-member Board of Commissioners.
During this whole time before and after the election, we had the good fortune to finally get some national and even international media publicity. We networked further with other eminent domain fighting citizens locally and nationally. Members also gave testimony before both the Pennsylvania Senate and the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. We submitted written testimony to the U.S. Congress and became part of the record on HR 4128.
February, 2006 walking Congressman Sensenbrenner (left) around Ardmore. Scott Mahan (right). I am behind them on the left with then Congressman Jim Gerlach on the right)
In February 2006, then Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner came to town with Congressman Jim Gerlach to discuss eminent domain. In March 2006, the five new commissioners who came to office promising to end the specter of eminent domain did just that: they proposed and passed a resolution to end eminent domain. The businesses were free.
I will not lie. It was an exhausting process fighting eminent domain. I went to so many municipal and other meetings during this time, that even today I have a hard time going to meetings.
For me, there was also the fact that I hid my activism from my employers. I was working for then Wachovia Securities (now Wells Fargo), and while not officially forbidden, such outside activities were seriously frowned upon. We were supposed to be good little examples of Corporate America at all times, no matter what our position.
Susette Kelo is and always will be one of the most courageous people I have ever met. I have been waiting for this movie to be finished. (See Little Pink House Movie website too!!)
Seriously….see this movie. This can happen to anyone. It happened to people I know and people I met. And if you follow the current pipeline debacle, how do you think Sunoco has gotten land from Chester County residents? It certainly wasn’t candy and chocolates, it was the threat of eminent domain, wasn’t it?
These are literally screenshots of the calls I received all in a row from the same number starting at 9:48 AM.
This isn’t some collage I created off of like two photos, this Robocaller aggressively called me literally multiple times in a row until I could get the number blocked on my phone.
I answered the phone the first time because I have friends that live in New York. It was a New York number.
The voice the greeted me on the other end of the phone was heavily accented and after murdering my last name announced that he was calling me about “unsecured debt”. I said I am not interested please put me on your do not call list and hung up the phone.
They called back. Before I disconnected the phone I could hear a whole tirade of four letter words in a heavily accented voice.
They call back a third and fourth time before I was able to add the number to the call block list. They tried to call back after the phone number was blocked and have not called again.
I called the FCC and registered a complaint about this number. We get Robocalls all the time like most people. But I’ve never had them call me back multiple times in a row after hanging up on them the first time.
It is super easy to report numbers like this to the FCC. See the screenshot:
Don’t make the same mistake I did by answering the phone. Especially since this is a Freaky Friday Robocaller who apparently doesn’t like being hung up on or asked to put a number on a do not call list.
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Our numbers are registered on state and federal do not call lists. But in the age of Indian and Pakistan and Philippine Robo calls it doesn’t seem to matter. And yes, these are a lot of the countries who perform a lot of the Robocalls for people in the United States.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 was passed by Congress with the intent to stop the crazy harassing phone calls and prevent slezoid companies from harranguing Americans on a daily basis. You can check out more on the FCC website.
A friend sent me some of the photos and some are mine. This is a brand new townhouse development. And it’s horrible looking.
Whatever happened to true quality of design and construction?
And people wonder why I have issue with a lot of this development? Look at it.
Linden Hall in East Whiteland- they call it Malvern but it’s Frazer. Surely the developer could have spent a minute more on them? Front end loaded lack of architecture and rickety rears is all they could accomplish?
This is the crap the developers are telling our townships we need. Shall we start the bets now on when they will fall apart? Look at the decks. So cheap.
Be sure to check out the “driveways”. If you noodle around in the development when people are home, you may notice what we did: they seem a little shallow don’t they? Would you want to have your car hanging out into the road when you were trying to park in your driveway? That is so urban back alley.
Even the downspouts seem short, but hey what’s a little water in your foundation over time?
The irony is these townhouses look cheap but they’re not cheap. They are not top-of-the-line expensive, but they’re not inexpensive, either. And they add how many to the school district?
And as I wondered what would happen when they were proposed, everyone is crammed in like lemmings. So you better like all of your neighbors because they are practically sitting in your lap.
Can all emergency vehicles truly navigate this development from all sides and angles?
Welcome to the modern tenement. And here we are in beautiful Chester County and there is also barely a blade or two of grass.
Years ago when we were in our dating and going out dancing days, one of my friends was the subject of a Glamour Magazine article on blind dates (seriously.) Now this was before the advent of social media, etc, so people literally wrote letters to comment on an article. The letters I saw on this article were hysterical.
The letter above (redacted to protect the memory of the person who wrote it and the person who forwarded it to my friend) was sent to the magazine and subsequently forwarded to my friend, who then forwarded it to many of her friends. At the time we had many giggles over it.
Flash forward to today. Twenty-one years later. Too funny.
I will note my friend has been happily married with her own family forever at this point. She met her husband on a blind date, I am fairly certain. As a matter of fact she and her husband have this wonderfully sentimental practice of renewing their vows regularly – on vacations, and with friends. I believe the count is 60 vow renewals as of this past February!
The woman who wrote the letter died in the early 2000’s. She never married, and her career was amazing.
Anyway, I stumbled across the copy of the letter my friend sent to me long ago and wondered what happened to the person who wrote it. We could never do that as easily back in the day.
This fell out of a cookbook where I had stashed it who knows how long ago. File under the things you stumble upon.
I love Philadelphia history. As a child born in the Society Hill section of Philadelphia in the 1960s I was literally raised in it, with it, immersed in it.
My late father worked on the Continental Congress reenactment. That was 1974. It was super cool. I remember it. We got to meet Jimmy and Roslyn Carter before he was President among others. (I found a video on YouTube about it, actually .) The First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1774, so in 1974 in advance of the US Bicentennial, there was this reenactment.
Circa 1975 I was 11. And my parents somehow convinced the then Superintendent of Independence National Historic Park, Hobart Cawood, to let me be a volunteer tour guide of the Todd House (Dolly Todd Madison’s Philadelphia home way before she was a First Lady- I was obsessed with her as a kid and even have a China doll my mother made for me from a kit still), and the Bishop White House (the Philadelphia one, not the Rose Tree one White sent his family to during the Yellow Fever outbreak in late 18th Century.)
I gave my tours in Colonial garb. My mother made me a costume that included a mob cap (from a pattern similar to the one above I saw on eBay). I was a kid, but I loved Philadelphia history so I did research and made sure what I said was historically accurate. Grown-ups who took my tour told me then that my tour was better and more interesting than a lot of the grown-ups like Park Service folk giving tours. Regular lay volunteers were nice to me the precocious kid. Actual Park Service guides? Mmmm they tolerated me. Sort of.
Hobie Cawood allowed me to have memories to carry with me forever. It was a magical experience. Better than any camp I could have gone to that summer.
Around the same time I also helped a Philadelphia gardener named Bill Spann plant the kitchen garden at the Todd House. I contributed one of the plants to the garden from my own garden – Irish Camphor. My paternal grandmother had smuggled it home from a trip to Ireland and gave me a piece to grow, and I split part of my plant and donated some to this garden which was planted then to be historically accurate for a Colonial kitchen garden. I do not know if they still have a garden there or not.
Flash forward to the mid 1980s and starting to look for a “real” job. One of my great aunts had been a Civil Service employee her whole life (starting in World War II) and she used to get these paper catalogs of job listings for government jobs. She used to give them to me because to her a government job was the best kind of security. I looked through one of the catalogs and they had jobs that were either GS3 or GS4 grade Park Ranger jobs at Independence National Historic Park. I applied for a job, and to my surprise, got it.
I got this job as my friends were getting ready for one last post-College summer at the beach. I didn’t really want to go to work, but my parents were insistent. I went and got my polyester Smokey The Bear uniforms (complete with hat.) I will admit Main Line friends at the time mocked me.
I remember going to report for work at the visitors’ center. As an entry level baby Park Service employee, I had orientation and also shadowed park ranger tour guides and was tasked with also creating my own tour. I went back to my first Independence National Historic Park first loves – the Todd and Bishop White Houses. I was shocked at how historically inaccurate or historically sloppy the tours were at that time. I actually found it depressing.
So once again, now as a young adult, I researched and created my tour. No one really checked it, but I made it historically accurate. I did not embellish. It was tough being a new kid though. The established rangers viewed new kids on the block much like you would view a pesky younger sibling and were very cliquish. I will admit that was pretty much the only job I never really made friends.
Working for the Park Service in the cradle of American liberty in the mid 1980s did come with a pass key. I happily on breaks and lunch times explored photo archives that existed on upper floors of either the First or Second Bank (I forget which.) One time I also went with people to the tippy top to the wooden bell tower where the Liberty Bell once hung. That was super cool. All around inside the bell tower at that time were the signatures of famous people and regular people who had climbed to the top. I signed my name in ball point pen near where Ronald Reagan had signed his name. I have no idea if my signature or even his and others still exist as restoration work was done a few years ago.
In the post 9/11 world, I doubt as a Park Service employee that you can just wander at will like you once could. One of the drawbacks which I don’t know if it has changed was dealing with the unbalanced and homeless who frequented the historic sites. That was hard and sad.
I will admit that while I loved giving tours of my favorite houses from my childhood and it was a kick, I hated the job. I hated the scratchy and super ugly polyester uniform. I did not like the government worker cliques I encountered. So I maybe lasted a couple of months. And I quit and much to my parent’s anger, went back to the beach for the majority of one last summer.
Many years passed and I remember another time years ago now doing the tourist thing with a friend in from out of town. I remember taking them down to the Independence Hall area. We went on a tour of houses, Independence Hall, Carpenter’s Hall, and even a carriage ride tour. It was so historically OFF that to this day, I have never recommended those tours again. I recommend self-touring.
Well, in April’s Philadelphia Magazine there is an article about these tours. It’s worth reading. Thanks for stopping by and below is a very small excerpt:
….Sightseeing tours of historic Philadelphia are like blizzards of candy factoids raining from the sky. As the landmarks whiz by, guides shower visiting pilgrims with history-book facts, anecdotes about the founding fathers, incredible backstories about public art, impressive and begging-for-fact-check firsts and biggests and oldests….It turns out not every truth, at least when it comes to Philadelphia history tours, is self-evident. Based on my small sample size, I’m putting it at about 83 percent. That means — good news! — our city sightseeing tours are mostly accurate. But there’s still a fertile area of dare-you-to-disprove sketchiness and just enough whacked-out face-palmers to keep the city’s vital tourist audience entertained. What could be more American?
Ten years ago, Philadelphia City Council passed a law, and mayor Michael Nutter signed it, that said anybody who wanted to give a paid sightseeing tour in Center City had to pass a Philadelphia history test to get a license. That ordinance remains on the books, and this April we celebrate the 10th anniversary of its never being enforced.
I have to say no one should bother with Best Buy because their customer service and delivery is the pits. And I will tell you why.
One of my best friends ordered a new washer dryer stacking combo from the Plymouth Meeting PA store. The store was fine, but let’s talk about their delivery people.
With regard to delivery, first there was an understandable cancellation due to snow. But instead of giving them a delivery priority AFTER the snow, they just shunted this family to the back of the line. And when they finally showed up they arrived without the right install stacker kit (or whatever you call the pieces that make a set “stack”). Did they come back with the stacker kit? That would be a NO. They instead left my friend’s new washer and dryer sitting in her dining room and made it all the customer’sproblem.
So my friend has three kids. Which means A LOT OF LAUNDRY. So there was all the time at the laundromat, the fact her husband had to go find the proper stacking kit at one of the Best Buy stores and subsequently hire someone ELSE to install it because wait for it…..Best Buy customer service and delivery people couldn’t be bothered making it right! My friends even had someone to take the old washer and dryer out of the house to make it easy when Best Buy people were SUPPOSED to come pick up the old set. Best Buy could not even do THAT and for Easter my friend’s guests and family were greeted by dead appliances in the driveway…..you know what everyone wants on a holiday when they are hosting friends and family. A Hillbilly Holiday.
I told her honestly she should have used Sears or a local appliance store in the first place and I will certainly never use Best Buy personally after this horror show.
I have dug up some comments (people are from ALL over the country) I saw posted on social media regarding Best Buy, so I know my friend is not alone. And she is one of the nicest people so I am indignant on her behalf. Best Buy did not even offer to compensate her for her additional costs and time! Smart customer service would have apologized and offered a gift card equal to what they paid for having to go purchase the install kit and hire someone else to install and gotten someone out to her home ASAP today to pick up the old appliances. But no…they didn’t.
I will note my friend said the people physically in the Plymouth Meeting, PA store are super nice, but these are things outsourced to faceless customer service people and whomever does their deliveries.
Here is also what I dug up regarding executives of Best Buy, because when you call corporate ((612) 291-1000) , they are super unfriendly and will basically not transfer you to executive escalations. So this is what I found (in addition to Facebook@BestBuy.com):
At the end of the day, this is WHY it is so good to SHOP LOCAL. There are plenty of excellent businesses who sell appliances. Yes, maybe you will pay a little more because they are mom & pop or regional but at least you get good service. I will also give a plug to the Sears Outlet. We have used them several times and they have been terrific. We have also used Queen Appliance and they are terrific.On my own in years past I have also used D & K in Newton Square and I love them – they are old school. I also used Gerhard’s once.
There are options. Even Home Depot and Lowe’s aren’t bad. I guess I just do not get how Best Buy stays in business because I never hear positive stories about them any more.
The moral of this story is shop local because Big Box can be a Big Bust, or at least that appears to be a regular occurrence with Best Buy, unless of course all the negative reviews are figments of customer imagination?
A friend sent me some of the photos and some are mine. This is a brand new townhouse development. And it’s horrible looking.
Be sure to check out the “driveways”. If you noodle around in the development when people are home, you may notice what we did: they seem a little shallow don’t they? Would you want to have your car hanging out into the road when you were trying to park in your driveway? That is so urban back alley.
The irony is these townhouses look cheap but they’re not cheap. They are not top-of-the-line expensive, but they’re not inexpensive, either. And they add how many to the school district?
Circa 1975 I was 11. And my parents somehow convinced the then Superintendent of Independence National Historic Park, Hobart Cawood, to let me be a volunteer tour guide of the Todd House (Dolly Todd Madison’s Philadelphia home way before she was a First Lady- I was obsessed with her as a kid and even have a China doll my mother made for me from a kit still), and the Bishop White House (the Philadelphia one, not the Rose Tree one White sent his family to during the Yellow Fever outbreak in late 18th Century.)
Hobie Cawood allowed me to have memories to carry with me forever. It was a magical experience. Better than any camp I could have gone to that summer.
