Ok, so water garden it is not. But pond it most definitely is (it has water, a dead water-lily and 15 live fish, including two sturgeon). Previously, the garden was a rectangular thing with some old fruit trees at the end near an equally old shed. Now it's a rectangular thing with some old fruit trees, a pond, a new shed, and flower-beds liberally covered in horse manure. And worms. They make the horse manure not horse manure.
And now for the product placement. Tetra. They make TetraPond products (fish food, pond pumps, filters, and all sorts of other things pond-related). Why the product placement? Because a nozzle was missing from the pressurized filter they supplied. So I emailed Tetra; a complex process which involved joining something called the Tetra Members Club. I guess it's a club not unlike any other, except that you never ever meet anyone. Sad really. But, joining them afforded me the privilege of an email address to which I wrote to ask what to do about my missing nozzle ('go out and buy another', I hear you say.. but it was a non-standard size. Although seeing as it was non-existent, it's a moot point as to whether it had a size at all). So I emailed on Saturday. On Monday morning I received an email from someone saying they'd send me one. On Monday evening I received an email from someone else saying they'd contacted head office to check they had it and could send it to me. And today, Wednesday, it arrived. Now that's what I call customer-service. And unlike Apple, I didn't have to return the missing nozzle to them before they'd send out a new one...
And in case you now wish to rush out and buy anything made by Tetra, I can recommend www.aquatics-online.com - because, returning to Saturday night, I'd assumed that Tetra wouldn't ever respond to my original email, and so I also emailed aquatics-online (they'd been really efficient when I'd previously bought some stuff from them - amazing stuff, as it happens, but that's for another post ). And on Tuesday, I received an email from them (aquatics-online) to say they'd been in touch with Tetra who said they had everything under control. I mean... is this service or is this service?
Ok, just so everyone knows.. I realize it does not reflect well on me that on a Saturday night, Saturday night, I'm emailing not one, but two sets of people about a missing nozzle. Sad or what? I deserve to be a member of that Tetra Members-who-never-meet-anyone-because-they-never-go-out-on-a-Saturday-night Club.
