Erin wanted to hike the Grand Canyon, so we planned a day hike from Bright Angel Trail and see how far we were able to go. By the time we reached Plateau Point, it was about half way down the canyon. So Jeremy suggested that we should just continue the hike down to Phantom Ranch and spend the night.

Amazingly, we were able to get online with Jeremy’s Blackberry to check the contact info for making reservation for Phantom Ranch, and Erin called to book us the rooms and dinner for the night. This is why Verizon Wireless rocks! The staff was amazed that we were able to call from Plateau Point!

It was a 11.5 mile hike day~ We were really tired by the end of the day, but also really happy that we did it.

It is true… across cultures and countries, we all know – you are what you eat. Today, through the fast food chains, over-processed food, frozen dinners, unbalanced diet, we are heading into a world constantly managing poor health and weight issues. Let me correct myself, we ALREADY ARE in a world constantly managing poor health and weight issues.

A good start is to start supporting organic farming by finding out about your local farmers markets, purchase from local farmers who practice organic and sustainable farming. Learn more about how well balanced diet can help increase energy.

Since we are now staying in Phoenix, AZ area for a while, I have found out about the Arizona Community Farmers Markets. They post a calendar for all the dates and locations for you to see.

I have been to half of the locations they offer and I am in heaven!

The latest one I went was the Skysong Farmers’ Market at ASU Skysong Center (Thursdays from 3pm – 7pm). I saw a few of my favorite vendors there!

Big Happy Farms for their wonderful selection of locally grown fresh produce and satisfying collection of locally grown citrus. I am addicted to the Meyer Lemon they have at their booth. I have been making fresh squeezed Meyer lemonade with a few leaves of fresh mint for a refreshing and healthy drink. Tastes much better and healthier than store bought juices and sodas~

Gibson Girl Greenery for their great selection of beautifully potted herbs and plants. Josie, the owner, is incredibly kind and helpful. Please stop by to say hello and start your own herb garden today!

Arizona Buffalo Company for their selection of all natural Arizona buffalo meat products. I got a 1.5 lb of buffalo tenderloin and made a Japanese Steak House style stir fried rice with it, oh~ I can’t wait to make it again… Jeremy and I were both extremely happy with how that dinner turned out~ If you want any particular cut of meat, they recommend you call ahead and tell them, so they can check availability and bring the meat to you or the market you are going to be visiting.

I wish I have photos to show, maybe next time I go, since every time I went, I ended up buying so much my hands were too full to hold the camera too~

Another great thing I have learned from the movie Food Matters, is about Andrew W. Saul, the author of Doctor Yourself. The mega dose vitamins treatment is in ways much safer than prescription drugs. You will be amazed with what high dose of vitamin C can help you recover or even prevent the most common cold and flu. However, I don’t want to claim that it works for everyone. So far it has worked awesome for me. Whenever I feel the start of a cold/flu, I will take roughly 3000 mg of vitamin C and about 90% of the time, I don’t have to deal with being sick, or if I do, I recover from it within 24 hours.

For example, I woke up with a swollen right tonsil and it hurt really bad whenever I tried swallowing… not sure what to do but I took in 3500 mg of Vitamin C and lots of water to see if I can fight it off~ ( I think this was a result of having party food from the night before, double dipped hummus…)

By that evening, the swollen tonsil was almost gone and I did not have to take anything beside vitamin C with lots of water.

All I wanted to say is that Food Matters offers information that you might find helpful and surprising, and if you are willing, give their advises a try, and see if it makes any difference for you. I have asked Blockbuster to add the movie to their collection and they did, so you can get it from their online rental. They even offer the film to be viewable online for $4.95 if you would like to watch it now!

Amazon is one of the places that we purchase a lot from. For years now, I have been extremely happy with the purchases and never had to return a single item, until we made a purchase of an air mattress from CMS WorldWide Sales, an Amazon merchant based in Tempe, AZ.

From the research we did, the Intex Deluxe Pillow Rest Rising Comfort Twin seems to be perfect for our needs. We purchased the mattress for Jeremy’s dad to stay with us since we removed the original bunk beds in the back room. Plus, I saw that it will only take one day for CMS WorldWide Sales to ship to us, so they win out from the other merchants. I thought that was great, especially that we won’t have to wait too long for the item to get to us.

The air mattress arrived within a couple of days as expected, but the mattress won’t hold air. We looked carefully and found a hole in the seams that looked like a machine die that went a little too far and punctured the mattress. That really is nobody’s fault, I know how machine sometimes make tiny errors like this and not a big deal, so I called CMS WorldWide Sales to see if we can get an exchange. Usually, the vendor should be able to send this item back to the manufacture and give us one that does not have a hole in it.

The owner told me that they will be happy to take a look and wanted me to be sure that I have a serial number on the mattress so they can verify the item. I was extremely happy to hear that since I know for sure it came from them and I have nothing to hide. Especially we did not order the same mattress from anywhere else.

He gave us the address to their office, and it was in the Tempe area. When we arrived, the office was in an area that seems like a warehouse district, which is expected, we know how online business run since we tried selling t-shirts online and out of our home office before. There is no reason to have a retail space when you can have decent online presence.

An Asian lady answered the door and greeted us, then an Asian guy (I think his name is Terry) came out from the back. We told them that we were on the phone with them earlier that day, and showed them the punctured hole in the mattress.

He took a quick look, then went on looking for the serial number, then told us the most bizzard thing we have ever heard.

“You did not purchase this from us, we never shipped this to you!”

At first, I found it quite interesting, so I handed him the receipt that I printed from the Amazon purchase showing it was from them, with shipping info and all. A thought went through my head, he received our money, who else would have shipped us the air mattress without getting paid??? Then he went on and said, “We can’t be sure this was shipped by us, the serial number shows 2007, we do not ship the 2007 model to our customer since it is 2009.”

Now, I am pissed, because that meant he shipped me a 2007 model while I should have gotten the 2009 model!

Then he went on telling us that we were trying to scam him like all the other customers. He says that people abuse the products and then wanted to return the product and scam him for an exchange or return. This is the first time I have ever heard of this type of scam, but I know we did not do that!

I was so mad… you could probably see smoke coming out of my ears!

I asked, “is this serial number unique to your company?”
“NO” he said, “then how can you be sure about whether this is from your company or not? You can easily say that these are not from you just because you want to!”

“No, we will never mail out the wrong model, we don’t keep the 2007 model in the shipping department, we keep them in the front,” as he points to the three boxes sitting on the shelf next to us… “these are returns from other customers that we tested and were working.” It was curious to me that he kept those around instead of sending them back to the manufacturer if he does not sell/ship older models. (I found out from one of the comment he made from a negative customer review on Amazon, that he sells these returned ones on eBay!)

At this point, I did not know that the 2007 model and the 2009 model looked any different. “You could have accidentally mailed us the wrong one, which is fine, as long as we get one that works.”

He then inspected the bottom of the mattress, there is clearly no sign of wear since we just got it. So he then said.

“Sure, take one of these…” he started to pull one from the returned boxes. “No, I don’t want one that other customers had returned, I did not pay for a refurbished air mattress!”

His action make me think that he has likely shipped people the old model on purpose and hoped that when the item is not exchanged or returned, the unsuspecting customer will just be happy to use the older model without knowing!

“You can come to the back with me and see, we don’t keep the old models there!”
“No,” Jeremy said, “we don’t want to go back there with you, we just want you to replace the broken one that you mailed us and move on!”

The owner was really worked up at this point, “what? you afraid I am going to beat you up with baseball bat back there?”
“Yes!” Jeremy replied, “so far, you have been really shady, we don’t want to go back there with you and get mocked!”

After a few more minutes of arguing, the owner stumped to the back and pull out a 2009 model for us to see.

“Oh, this looks different from the one you mailed us!” I screamed. “You mailed us the wrong one to start with!” Now, I am sure he shipped out the old model on purpose!

Then we grabbed that mattress and left. The whole event was so surreal to me!

Then I went back home and was curious about how many negative reviews he had on Amazon and what other customers commented about this operation… oh, boy… I did not do my homework enough. It was the same story over and over. Whenever a customer needs an exchange or return, he claims that customer tries to scam him.

Here’s a few examples of the negative review interactions. The first one was my review.

1 out of 5: “BUYERS BEWARE! The whole story is too long to put here. If your item arrived defective, chances are you’re going to have a hard time get an exchange. The seller insulted us by suggesting that we were trying to scam them with a product they never shipped to us. We are now sure that they shipped us an older model (2007) of the air mattress instead of the 2009 model we thought we ordered. SHADY!”
Date: December 22, 2009     Rated by Buyer: jacqdesign

Seller Response: “She was not the first one(or the last one) trying to return item(s) that was not purchased from us. Customers who returned an item we sold and shipped, we would be glad to replace it. Trying to scam us, please do that to someone else. We track all inventories we shipped, just because of scammers like her. Why we stop trusting others? You got the answer right.”     Date: December 29, 2009

Can you see why I am so angry at this whole deal, not only I was sold a defective product, then I was disrespected by the seller who claims that I was scamming them! I was the one spending money here!

After seeing a few more negative comments, a pattern emerges~

1 out of 5: “DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT! The first time we blew this up we noticed two small pin holes due to it not staying inflated. I then contacted the seller back in December and now it’s January 19th in which I am still waiting to hear back from them! In the mean time we have tried to patch the hole but we are having other holes at the seams appearing constantly! We have finally given up!”
Date: January 19, 2010     Rated by Buyer: Tammy M.

Seller Response: “One email 1/4/10, 8 days after Xmas, which we reply asking customer to provide more detail on location of holes & got no reply. If you poke a hole, we will be glad to provide free patch kit. If it is factory defect, we will replaced it, but, fair is fair, not all holes/leaks were factory defects, and we never got email stating “oops, we poke a hole, can you do something about it, please?”" Date: January 19, 2010

2 out of 5: “I am still awaiting to hear from this seller regarding the defective product they shipped us. Seller requested we pay shipping again to return the item. We are still awaiting a response from this seller and will soon demand our money back and purchase the product from a different company.”
Date: January 4, 2010     Rated by Buyer: Dena M.

Seller Response: “We asked Customer to send the item back, if the item was defective, we will compensate reasonable return shipping cost. Too many returns claimed defective was cause by customer’s accidental punctures. If she is so sure item was factory defective, then she should not be concerned. Maybe she was not sure about it?” Date: January 4, 2010

1 out of 5: “The item leaked after my 3-year old son played on it a couple times. More than two weeks ago, I contacted CMS WorldWide Sales regarding the quality of the item and a replacement; however, there is no response from CMs WorldWide Sales. It looks like they just ignored my email. I will never buy anything again from CMS WorldWide Sales.”
Date: December 16, 2009     Rated by Buyer: Bing L.

Seller Response: “We asked the customer to verify the PDC code on the product, he refused to provide, therefore, we had to assumed that he attempted to return something that was not purchased and shipped from CMS. We responded to his email via Amazon message system.” Date: December 22, 2009

1 out of 5: “I purchase the air matress and did receive it on time, that was the only thing that went well. It did not stay infalted the first night so called the seller 3 times before he would talk to me and then I had to file 2 different claims through amazon to get my money back and I’m still short $40! This is a horrible company and I will NEVER do business with them again!”
Date: August 2, 2009     Rated by Buyer: Kristen L.

Seller Response: “Interesting, the air mattress was inflated on top of my air hockey table, and was stay inflated for the pass 3 weeks or so, we do not sell used and/or return item, and so I want to make sure it work right, so we can ebay it. We offer to exchange the product, the customer refused.” Date: August 2, 2009

It is a shame that there are be people out there who scam retailers (it is still shocking to me), but to assume all customers who tries to return a defective item a scam is just not right! An unsuspecting customer like us, who did not even know about these scamming issues, found out the hard way, and was treated disrespectfully is just uncalled for. But in this case, I feel like CMS scammed me!

My advise to you is to always Google reviews about the retailer or vendor you are purchasing items from and get a clear idea of who they really are and how they handle customers. If you read through the reviews and response for CMS’s Amazon Feedback page, you will see how he treats customers who has problem with their service. It seems like he always blames the customer.

Thank you for making it this far in my long venting session~ Happy shopping~ hehe…