cute fuzzy bunny
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
I think I've already figured out that getting any sort of service is a waste of time and an expectation thats only going to be disappointed.
Now we're getting into negative service.
I already outlined my four month odyssey in trying to get GE to repair an 11 month old refrigerator that ended with them acknowledging that whatever is wrong with it, they cant fix it, so just give them another $100 and they'll send me a new one. The BBB and AG's office are working on that one.
I decided to get a new fridge. Went to home depot, picked one out, the nice lady told me it would be delivered 4/25, I paid for it. 4/25, nothing happens. I look at the paperwork, it says 5/2. They're supposed to call the night before with a time. No call. No show on 5/2 either. I call on 5/3, they tell me "yeah the truck broke down last week and we dont have the refrigerator yet". No explanation as to why nobody thought to clue me in about it. I call home depot to cancel the order. Although their employee gave me the wrong delivery date and their contracted delivery company failed to deliver or notify me, they want me to pay a 15% restocking fee. I have a nice argument with the shipping supervisor who tells me their employee would never have told me that it would be delivered on 4/25, and the company they hired to deliver the appliance screwed up, not home depot. So its not their fault. After I ask to speak to the store manager and tell her that she knows nothing about how to deal with a customer problem, she hangs up on me. Store manager apologizes and quickly credits me.
I guess the big saving grace is that I'm not taking days off from work for all these appliance repair and delivery days. I would have taken 13 days or partial days off from work for this. I'd have been fired by now.
So I go to sears, order a new refrigerator, they surprisingly tell me they can deliver it the next day. I get a call with a time. Guy shows up a little early. My wife and I are both taking guesses as to whats going to go wrong as its all going too well. Refrigerator has a dent in the middle of the door you could drop a football into. "Yeah, we used to put these on the truck in the shipping cartons, but management has us taking them out of the cartons to fit more on the truck now, and everything gets dented all the time". Nice. Shipping calls to tell me they're out of that model, order another. That ones 10 days out. After we agree on a delivery someone with an accent so heavy I can barely understand her at all leaves me a voicemail that they pushed it out another 3 days. Note that sears web site says they usually deliver everything in 2-7 days. I guess 'usually' is the key operative word.
That will make it slightly longer than a month from when I decided to buy a new appliance to when it shows up; two attempts to charge me service fees for the manufacturer or retailers inability to repair or deliver a product. And a bunch of suspect customer policies along the way. Not to mention if the retailer sequentially screws up everything in the process, I'm either supposed to reward that by concluding the transaction and if I dont want to do that, I'm expected to pay them for the pleasure of taking my business away.
I'm about ready to pull out all of my big coolers and try to schedule a daily ice delivery, except that would probably lead me to some other previously unseen level of hell.
Now we're getting into negative service.
I already outlined my four month odyssey in trying to get GE to repair an 11 month old refrigerator that ended with them acknowledging that whatever is wrong with it, they cant fix it, so just give them another $100 and they'll send me a new one. The BBB and AG's office are working on that one.
I decided to get a new fridge. Went to home depot, picked one out, the nice lady told me it would be delivered 4/25, I paid for it. 4/25, nothing happens. I look at the paperwork, it says 5/2. They're supposed to call the night before with a time. No call. No show on 5/2 either. I call on 5/3, they tell me "yeah the truck broke down last week and we dont have the refrigerator yet". No explanation as to why nobody thought to clue me in about it. I call home depot to cancel the order. Although their employee gave me the wrong delivery date and their contracted delivery company failed to deliver or notify me, they want me to pay a 15% restocking fee. I have a nice argument with the shipping supervisor who tells me their employee would never have told me that it would be delivered on 4/25, and the company they hired to deliver the appliance screwed up, not home depot. So its not their fault. After I ask to speak to the store manager and tell her that she knows nothing about how to deal with a customer problem, she hangs up on me. Store manager apologizes and quickly credits me.
I guess the big saving grace is that I'm not taking days off from work for all these appliance repair and delivery days. I would have taken 13 days or partial days off from work for this. I'd have been fired by now.
So I go to sears, order a new refrigerator, they surprisingly tell me they can deliver it the next day. I get a call with a time. Guy shows up a little early. My wife and I are both taking guesses as to whats going to go wrong as its all going too well. Refrigerator has a dent in the middle of the door you could drop a football into. "Yeah, we used to put these on the truck in the shipping cartons, but management has us taking them out of the cartons to fit more on the truck now, and everything gets dented all the time". Nice. Shipping calls to tell me they're out of that model, order another. That ones 10 days out. After we agree on a delivery someone with an accent so heavy I can barely understand her at all leaves me a voicemail that they pushed it out another 3 days. Note that sears web site says they usually deliver everything in 2-7 days. I guess 'usually' is the key operative word.
That will make it slightly longer than a month from when I decided to buy a new appliance to when it shows up; two attempts to charge me service fees for the manufacturer or retailers inability to repair or deliver a product. And a bunch of suspect customer policies along the way. Not to mention if the retailer sequentially screws up everything in the process, I'm either supposed to reward that by concluding the transaction and if I dont want to do that, I'm expected to pay them for the pleasure of taking my business away.
I'm about ready to pull out all of my big coolers and try to schedule a daily ice delivery, except that would probably lead me to some other previously unseen level of hell.
