My daughter has an original Leap Pad unit by Leap Frog. It’s been in our house for over two years now and still gets plenty of use. I suppose that is because the books grow with her and as she needs more challenging tasks, we buy more challenging books.
I have no idea what go into my daughter, but a couple of days ago she came to me saying the pen would not work. She showed me how it would no longer trigger responses when touching the green Go button and otherwise. I looked at the unit, checked the connection of the tape and then looked closely at the pen. It was frayed, for lack of a better word, at the cord near the pen itself. My daughter informed me she had chewed on it.
Let’s put aside for the moment that she will be five next week and should be well past chewing on her toys. I know that. Let’s skip to yesterday when I went about the task of getting a new pen to fix the Leap Pad unit.
First, I called the Leap Pad Company and made sure a new pen included the full length of cord, because in our case it was the cord that was damaged. I was assured the new pen would indeed be a new pen with a new cord and the whole thing affixes to the Leap Pad near the battery case. Good enough.
I went back to the toll free number; because I remembered how difficult it was to get past the automated operator once you tell the system you are after a new pen or stylus. I kept asking and asking to talk to a live person and the system would acknowledge that I wanted to speak with an operator, but tell me that I should just stick around and order my new pen through the system.
It took me nearly random pushing of tens of buttons to get the operator in the first place, so this offer for a free new pen was burned in my head now. I thought my second call would be a breeze.
I called and started through the automated system to order the replacement pen. There was no problem when I put in my credit card number to pay for shipping. The problem happened when I had top speak my address. My street has a super unusual speaking and the system would not let me spell it out. It just kept registering a garbled name. So, I completed the process, thinking I could just call back with my confirmation number and speak, to a live person to get it corrected.
No dice.
When I called back and gave another operator my confirmation number, which I had written down twice, it pulled up another person’s order. The girl informed me she had no way whatsoever to get into the system for the automated orders to try and find my order and that I should just wait for the pen to arrive. Arrive WHERE? – I asked her. I was going to be charged for a pen that would inevitably be shipped to another person or returned to sender. She suggested I order a second pen thought her (for which she wanted to charge me more than the automated system charged me) and just call later and dispute one of the charges. WHAT!
I asked to speak to her supervisor. She informed me, tersely, that it would do me no good. They cannot find my order for me.
So, at this point I just have the one pen on order, though I have no idea where it will be delivered. I will NEVER use the Leap Frog automated system again. And, I still need to get a new pen for my daughter’s Leap Pad.
I suppose I am back at square one, plus the added aggravation of a charge on my credit card I need to dispute.
