Saturday afternoon, when Jon and I were at the street fair on Amsterdam Avenue, I encouraged Jon to visit the booth of a vendor selling goose down pillows for a good price. Before I encouraged him, I looked over the pillows, talked with the vendor and decided that the product was alright and that the vendor was a stand up guy. Jon bought two goose down pillows for $30.00 which I'm sure we would all agree is a pretty good deal.
On the way home from the fair, we went into a pet shop just to look around. The salesman had a parrot on his shoulder that kept saying "How are you? How are you?" He was talking to a little boy who was just thrilled that this bird was talking to him. The little boy tried to keep the parrot talking by asking him, "What's your name?" But alas, all the parrot could say was "How are you?". We wanted to see the pets they had downstairs but that part of the store was already shutdown. We'd walked in just as they were closing. But before we left, I made sure to met the big, fat, adorable lazy cat laying on the counter.
When we got back to Jon's house, we'd already walked quite a bit as I mentioned in an earlier blog. I was pretty tired so I plunked down on the bed. Jon pulled out one of his shiny new pillows and I quickly put it under my head to give it a test run.
I was watching the TV when I noticed that I still smelled like the pet shop and I even asked Jon if he noticed that I still had that pet store smell on me. He didn't so I assumed that the cat was smelly and that the smell was still on my hands. I washed my hands and returned to the soft pillow.
But then, the smell started getting stronger. I realized that the pillow stunk like a dirty pet store. Jon pulled out the other one and it smelled too.
The pillows were bad. So I suggested we wash them as a solution. So, we went to the basement, put them in the machine and left them alone for their 30 minute wash. At the end of the cycle Jon went down to put them in the dryer and came back upset. Apparently the smell hadn't gone away.
Deciding that he wanted to return them, I suggested that we dry them so he could bring them back to the crooked, sleazy vendor who sold them to us.
When I went down again to pull them from the dryer and I put that first pillow to my nose, I made a loud and disgusted noise. It was so loud this other guy in there asked me if I was alright. The pillows smelled worse than before the wash.
I brought them back up so Jon could repack them and research returning them.
Apparently, after a couple of hours of research, Jon learned that he has no recourse. There is no agency set up to hear complaints from people who have been ripped off by street vendors and the company that runs the street fairs refused to give him the name of the vendor.
Outside of going to every street fair left in New York City this summer and hunting this guy down, Jon has no recourse.
What a sham, what a scam, what a shame.
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