I rarely, RARELY, ever speak ill of what I regard as my cook­ing Mecca – that being Sur La Table. How­ever, after what I went through last night, Sur La Table and I are break­ing up.

I’ve dis­closed before that when I get their cat­a­logs, I pore over it like it’s the lat­est issue of Vogue. I bought my Global knives there. I first fell in love with (and later took home) my Caribbean Le Creuset pieces via Sur La Table. Sur La Table has been my “online go to spots” for research here for Cook­ing in Stilet­tos. Not to men­tion, the price dif­fer­ence between here and Williams Sonoma is astro­nom­i­cal. Sadly, the near­est Sur La Table is 3 hours away. They haven’t built one in Orlando yet (and, last I heard, it will be QUITE some time). And, when I travel, I always research where Sur La Table is and if I have time to go, often leav­ing room in the suit­case to store the good­ies I find. The Sur La Table in New Jer­sey knows me well.

I placed a sub­stan­tial order on their site yes­ter­day, namely being the Lotus San­i­tiz­ing Sys­tem that I’ve talked about here before, a mar­ble pas­try board that I needed this week­end, a donut cut­ter that Diana @ The Chic Life rec­om­mended some great deals on bak­ing sheets and the apron I’ve been lust­ing after. I would have added more but I thought “eeeh – I still have the remain­der of the gift card that I need to use at WS. I’ll per­haps use it on the Bre­ville Cord­less Blender I’ve been eyeing.”

The key fac­tor to this drama is that I needed the pas­try board for this week­end. See, the Mar­ble Pas­try board at Williams Sonoma is $129.00. I was hes­i­tant to buy it but fig­ured I had to. You can’t find a good mar­ble pas­try board here in OTown at a decent price. At Sur La Table it was on sale for $32. That’s a HUGE dif­fer­ence. So, know­ing that, I fig­ured I’d upgrade to overnight ship­ping and have it sent to the 9to5. It was an extra $25 but I felt it was worth it with what I would have spent at Williams Sonoma. I couldn’t ship it to my house because we’re hav­ing prob­lems at our apart­ment com­plex with deliv­er­ies – namely UPS leaves the stuff on the truck, marks it deliv­ered and we don’t get it until 2 – 3 days after. We’ve com­plained and UPS gives every­one the same excuse, “We’re sorry – it got mixed up with the Dis­ney pack­ages”. I’d rather not have ANYTHING shipped there if I can avoid it.

My gut instinct, how­ever, kept bug­ging me last night and I called Sur La Table to check on the sta­tus of the order. I nor­mally would get a track­ing num­ber by evening. Williams Sonoma does it. Barnes & Noble does it. Other retail­ers do it. It was now around 8 and I had received nada, nil, nothing.

By chance, I encoun­tered Char­maine in the call cen­ter. All started off okay until she told me “Well, it should be shipped tomor­row.” Wait a minute – overnight means OVERNIGHT! Then she tells me that their overnight is, tech­ni­cally, two days. Well con­sid­er­ing that my ship­ping is about $50, we need to rec­tify that mess quickly – as in can­cel. She told me she couldn’t do ANYTHING and that I’d have to do it at 8:00 but there was the chance that the order could be filled and shipped by that time. To make the sit­u­a­tion every worse, I found that the woman was rude, con­de­scend­ing and just pissed me the hell off.

Yes, I flipped into cable cop mode whereby I told her to let me speak and then I’ll let her speak. Do. Not. Inter­rupt. Me. She goes ‘Well you inter­rupted me!’ Wait another flip­pin’ minute – I paused, recounted the con­ver­sa­tion in my head, could not not recall one inter­rup­tion, refused to put up with her atti­tude and shut. her. down. The next thing she heard was “Char­maine, I want to speak to your Super­vi­sor – NOW“.

Her super­vi­sor, Theresa, and I had a “Come to Jesus” talk. It was more than the ship­ping con­fu­sion (a nor­mal def­i­n­i­tion of overnight vs. their def­i­n­i­tion) or the need for this pas­try board. The rea­son for the “The Break Up” is and for­ever will be the crappy cus­tomer ser­vice exhib­ited by Char­maine. Theresa assured me that she would address Charmaine’s issues imme­di­ately and that she would do what she could to can­cel my order. How­ever, to be safe, I should call Cus­tomer Ser­vice in the morn­ing. She did every­thing she could on her end to try to help the sit­u­a­tion which, thanks to Char­maine, esca­lated well beyond what should have been done. She was beyond pleas­ant – DID NOT INTERRUPT ME and under­stood that I seri­ously was see­ing red. While I can get cranky, this was worse than when I shut someone’s cable off and they called me the “C” word. (They were steal­ing cable – where does that make me the bad guy for doing my job, right?)

This morn­ing, I had a quick break from the daily duties where I could give Sur La Table a quick call to make sure the order was can­celled. I wanted that money refunded stat. I resigned myself to the fact that instead of using that Williams Sonoma gift card for a por­tion of the Bre­ville blender or the Emile Henry Pie Plate or other good­ies I wanted, I HAD to spend it on that pas­try board and then take a hit for an addi­tional $100.

Well, Sur La Table’s rep, Jes­sica, answered the phone and I told her to can­cel the order. She told me I’d receive it on Mon­day and I told her “No. Just can­cel the order.” She talked to her super­vi­sor and again asked what she should do. Again, I had to tell her to CANCEL IT! She told me that if it had been placed at 1:00 EST it would have been sent but I placed it around 3:00 EST. OK – where does it say that on the web­site? It doesn’t. While I admit that I am blond, I do tend to notice these things and, if I had seen it, I wouldn’t have placed the order. Plain and sim­ple and Sur La Table and I would have been fine. The con­tin­ued lack of fol­low­ing a clear and explicit com­mand was astound­ing. What part of CANCEL THE ORDER does Sur La Table not get? No part of expla­na­tion by a CSR on their part can over­ride Charmaine’s actions. That’s the main issue.

Long story short, due to Charmaine’s actions, I just can’t sup­port Sur La Table any­more. So, it’s my deci­sion that until fur­ther notice, I’m not going to rec­om­mend them, fea­ture their prod­ucts here on Cook­ing in Stilet­tos, give them any link love on either of my sites and their cat­a­logs will go unopened. The two new Sur La Table cook­books I was plan­ning to buy will not be pur­chased. I will buy only from other online retail­ers i.e. Fantes, Cooking.com, Chefs, Jacobs Kitchen, Dean & Deluca, etc. I will pur­chase that Lotus Sys­tem through Chefs. I will send cus­tomers locally to Le Gourmet Chef, the Pre­mier Out­lets, Crate & Bar­rel and Williams-Sonoma. What was Sur La Table’s loss is now other culi­nary retail­ers’ gain.

Sur La Table not only lost a sub­stan­tial sale, but a long time fan and cus­tomer. Quite sim­ply, I am heart­bro­ken because they truly were my favorite store.