The underground man and I are slowly working our way through what I am calling a “superficial bathroom renovation.” I’m calling it superficial because although the man in my life is dying to rip out the tub, tiles and vanity and begin anew with the space, we can’t. We can’t because it is the sole bathroom in our house with a shower and I refuse to live without a shower for however long a start-from-scratch job would take. Someday, when we’ve refinished the basement and put a brand new full bath down there, as we plan to do, I will be happy to start from scratch on our main floor bath. But for now, some esthetic improvements are about the best we’re going to get.
I plan to write an entire blog post about our bathroom redo once it’s done but for now, I just want to talk about one small element of the changes we’re making and why the company that makes the so-called ‘Smart Rod’ is really not so smart.
When I’m undertaking a renovation I like to do a lot of research. Well, my husband would say an inordinate amount of research, but whatever. I like to read through decorating books and magazines for ideas. I spend a lot of time online looking at pictures and reading reviews of products. And I like to browse through all the relevant stores to see what kind of products they have and get a hands-on feel for them.
When I’m undertaking a renovation I like to do a lot of research.
So in this superficial bathroom renovation we’re doing, we’re planning to swap out our standard expandable tension shower curtain rod for a curved shower curtain rod. You’ve seen them in the hotels – they start and end essentially at the same place on the wall as a standard shower curtain, but have a nice curve out in the centre that just gives you that bit more elbow room when you’re standing in the shower itself. After all, there is little as startling and unpleasant as brushing up against a cold, damp shower curtain liner as you exit the hot water.
So imagine my delight when I was in a big-box bedding and bath fixture store and found what looked to be a double curved shower curtain rod. There was an inner rod for the shower curtain liner, and an outer rod for the decorative shower curtain, separated by about an inch I would estimate. And it said on the box it was easy to install and didn’t require any drilling. I wondered how this could be so. And that’s when I noted the scan-able code on the front of the box, under words that said, and I quote, “Scan with your smart phone to view a video demo.” Now I may have mentioned in a previous blog post that I’ve become quite addicted to my smart phone. So, quick as a flash, I pulled out my smart phone and scanned the code. Sure enough, it took me to a web site where there were links to videos for various types of curved shower curtain rods, including the double rod which had piqued my interest.
I clicked on the link and the video began playing. The only problem was, I could not see more than about a quarter of the image. I tried moving the screen around and changing the orientation, when the screen popped up a message “this video is not optimized for mobile.” Now, call me crazy, but I think if you’re going to go to the trouble of putting a scan-able image on the box for your product, accompanied by a message asking the consumer to scan it to see a video on their smart phone, you might want to go that extra step in optimizing the video player so it actually plays properly on a mobile device. Not so smart, Smart Rod. I lost interest – I haven’t even checked out the online reviews for your product. It’s really unfortunate when a good idea fails for lack of follow-through.
Smart Rod box image