Magda Vicente: Disponibilidade e simpatia.

Jamey M. Hopkins: Here’s a little story about Carsportif. Sometime around 2012, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, I happened across a beautiful denim jacket by LRG in a local skate shop, Plush. It was the most beautiful denim jacket I had ever worn. I took it home, and over the following years, wore it religiously. It became a part of not only my image, but of my personality. Needless to say, I loved it. I loved it literally to pieces. It held up to five years of wear and tear, without blinking, and aging gracefully. To countless kilometres of motorcycle adventures. To countless days of wedding photography. To more life that I could begin to recount. But in more recent years, it began to wear badly. At first, holes appeared in the elbows. I patched those. But before long, holes were wearing through everywhere, beyond repair. It was seven years later. There was no way would I find that jacket again anywhere. Was there? It was a bit of a niche article of outwear. But the Internet is big, I thought. So what the hell, let’s try this! I googled away using combinations of the brand LRG and the description of the jacket and the specific product number I found sewn on an inside label. And in all the the returned search results, I found ONE lead where it appeared I may be able to order the exact same, brand new jacket. In all of the Internet. One. It was a Portuguese-only website. For a skate shop in Torres Vedras, Portugal. It was Carsportif. What are the chances, I thought? But it was a lead, and the only one I had. Let’s do this. Thanks to Google translate, I navigated through the ordering process and hit submit. Later that night, as I lay falling asleep, I chuckled and thought “what if...?” The next morning, I awoke to a furry of email, all in Portuguese. As I copied and pasted furiously to translate them into something readable to me, I soon realized that it appeared the item had been shipped. No way. It had a tracking number for a Portuguese courier. For the next two days, I tracked it as it made its way to Lisbon. And then it disappeared. A week passed, and then two, and I occasionally wondered if that was the end of it or would *something* eventually make its way to me. Then, about three weeks later, a package arrived, neatly wrapped, from Portugal. Shoebox sized, and seemingly too light to be it. The brain is a funny little thing. Because when I opened the package, IT WAS EXACTLY THE ONE! Crisp and dark and new. I could not even believe it. And for days, I have worn my new old denim jacket so gleefully. Thank you, Carsportif, from the cockles of my heart. You brought so much silly joy to me in a world that can sometimes feel so bleak. Eu te amo. – Jamey

Minha esposa e eu estivemos comprando móveis o dia todo hoje, para cima e para baixo da fileira de móveis e mostarda de centavo foi uma das nossas paradas. Devo dizer que fiquei chocado ao ver que a cotação deles era $5000 mais cara do que todas as outras 11 lojas estavam. Eu entendo que você recebe pelo que paga, mas $5000 a mais do que qualquer outra loja está fora de linha. A nossa vendedora tentou dizer-me que todos os móveis de madeira foram processados e montados no Wisconsin, o que descobri mais tarde que era falso. Eles me ofereceram uma cerveja que eu achei um toque agradável, mas a loja inteira cheirava a caril do restaurante vizinho Melting Pot. Nós não vamos voltar.

Este era o primeiro negócio deste tipo em que eu tinha estado. Havia uma variedade de produtos que ia desde produtos de limpeza, e é por isso que eu fui, até produtos de cozinha, e outros vários produtos de serviço alimentar.Outros aqui comentaram a falta de um serviço de atendimento ao cliente com brilho, e pelo que pude dizer a maioria das reclamações não eram sobre o proprietário, exceto uma que eu conheço. A minha experiência nisto foi exatamente o que eu teria esperado de uma pequena empresa. Basicamente, não foi estelar nem horrível. Apenas um tipo de experiência de baunilha. Para mim isto não é nada de especial, mais uma vez um pequeno negócio. No geral fiquei impressionado e consegui encontrar os tipos de produtos de limpeza pesados que não se encontram em grandes retalhistas de caixas, entre outros produtos especializados.