This is the first year that my wife and I put up a Christmas tree since we’ve been married. This is also our first year in our new house, and our first year with a new dog. So we decided to get a really nice, albeit fake… Christmas tree. I didn’t want the hassle of dealing with needles, lugging the thing into the house from the tree farm… and out of the house to the garbage…watering it, the potential fire hazard… so we opted for an artificial tree.

These guys at Balsam Hill are supposed to be the best flockers around… so although they are also probably one of the most expensive, we decided to get one from them. We also decided to get a matching wreath and garland. At first we were a bit disappointed with the tree, but then after looking around at some of the alternatives that are out there, we realized that it is actually a VERY nice tree. Most of them are skimpy and bare… and the needles never seem to look realistic. Both my wife and I are from the northeast, so we know what a Vermont White Spruce looks like… and the needles on our tree come very close to the real thing.

Setup was fairly easy, the tree came in 4 parts that fit together one on top of the other. Melissa got busy shaping it while I hunted around for the plugs for all the lights. (each tier of the tree has a plug that connects to the lights from the adjacent tier). There were a few branches that were a bit loose in the center, but that was pretty simple to fix with the extra parts they include. We also had to replace a couple of the bulbs that had gotten broken during shipment.

The wreath was just as easy… just hang it and plug it in! i used some locking suction cups i got from Lowes to hang it on the glass door on the front of our house.

Remember the garland? well… this is where the experience begins to go downhill.

We never actually got the garland. My card was charged for it, and everything else shipped… but the garland never arrived. That wouldn’t be so bad, but I’ve now called Balsam Hill 5 times to find out what happened, and have only gotten through to a human 3 times! We ordered all 3 pieces on the 7th of November. The tree and the wreath showed up on the 16th. When I called them on the 17th, they told me that customer service would call me back within the next 24 hours. The 17th was a Saturday, so I figured they’d call me back the following Monday. Nope. So I called them back Monday and was told again… ‘Customer service will call you back within 24 hours’!

So who the heck was I calling if not customer service?! Why does customer service need to call me back? Why can’t I just settle all of this in one phone call? Is ‘customer service’ just one 80 year old guy dialing a rotary phone all day? Is the staff just not empowered to make decisions? All of this is a mystery.

I called them again on Tuesday the 20th, and was told: ‘With it being the season, I know that they are very busy… but I’ll make sure that they call you’. So hire more people! I let her know that we were hoping that we would have the garland around our fireplace so that we could take pictures the day after Thanksgiving, and she seemed to say that they would probably put the $ back on my card? I don’t want my money back… I want the garland I ordered!

So… no callback Wednesday, Thursday was Thanksgiving… Friday, Saturday, Sunday were probably vacation time for them… so I picked up the phone to call them this morning, and was in the hold queue for 20 minutes the first time, and 15 minutes the second! I figured … ‘maybe these guys are in California… so they haven’t gotten in yet’ … but after looking at their website… they claim 24 hour daily service! Surely with 24 hour service SOMEONE should have gotten back to me by now!

Balsam Hill, if you’re reading this, my order number is #12944. I’m customerID #10917. You should be able to reach me via the cellphone number attached to my account.