Reviews

Why I’ll never shop at Lowe’s again

29 August, 2012 (12:00) | Reviews

Honestly, I’ve never been impressed with Lowe’s.  I grew up on 84 lumber, and now Home Depot is closest.  Anyway…

In my LEGO storage efforts, I found Stanley cases to be awesome.  I’ve found a couple different models of these portable containers to be just what I needed.  In my online searching, I found a particular case that would be perfect for my needs, the Stanley 014006R.  I set out to find it online and found it at Lowes.com.  Infact, as of this writing, you can still find it here.  It said it was in stock at my Waterfront store.  As I passed by the next day, I stopped in, but didn’t see it on the shelves.  All I found were the 014026R, which I already had, and did not give me the flexibility that I was looking for.  I was in a hurry, so I just left instead of speaking with an associate.

So I got online at home and ordered with a “ship to store” option to save on shipping.  About 3 hours later, I got an email that said my order was ready for pick up back at the waterfront.  I thought, “Oh, I must have missed them, or they had them in the back room and just pulled from stock.”

So I stopped in the next day to pick up my order.  When the lady behind the counter brought me my order, it was just 3 *26R models.  STRIKE 1.  I explained the possible confusion to her, and she looked at me like I just magically grew an umbrella from my forehead.  She had to call her manager.

A few minutes later, when the manager (whose name was Josh, as if this situation wasn’t confusing enough), came up, he saw that I could pull up *06R on my phone, so I wasn’t just mistaken.  He then saw that when he put in that model number in their system, it “redirected” to *26R.  He wasn’t sure what to do for me, and I wanted to know how I could get the correct case.  He told me to go home and order it online again, but this time chose ship to my house.  STRIKE 2.  How does that guarantee me I’m going to get what I want?  I foresee me getting exactly what I don’t want and then having to deal with someone over the phone instead of in person.  That’s a terrible answer, Josh, I’m disappointed.  He called someone internal number to try to get an answer on how I could get the right product.  He was placed on hold for a while, which gave him the out he wanted, I’m sure.  He took my number and said he’d give me a call when he got an answer.  It was about 4pm when I left the store.

Around 10pm, I sent an email through Lowe’s.com, having given up on Josh getting back to me at this point.  The next day, Josh did call me back. He got on the phone with someone from “corporate” and found out they’ve apparently tried to remove this item from their online offering before, but they haven’t been able to remove it.  That’s all he could do for me.  That’s fine, Josh, your job is done here.  I got an email response from customer care that morning, and when I replied saying Josh said it was discontinued, Adrienne S replied with –

“I sincerely apologize that the product you wanted has been discontinued.  I would like to research this further to see what options we do have.  I will follow up with you within 1 business day to provide additional information.”

That was May 18th.  On June 11th, I got a generic email asking me about how my online order was, and asked for my opinion.  STRIKE 3.  I had moved on and forgot all about it.  I filled out their little survey to reflect my sentiments.  I also replied to Adrienne S again, asking her what customer service says they’ll contact you within 1 business day and doesn’t follow up.  STRIKE 4.  She then replied with 4 links to other products, 1 of them being the *26R organizer.  STRIKE 5.  For all the hassle, poor information, LIES, and frustration I’ve been through, they can just send me a couple links and expect me to buy from they again?  STRIKE 6.   I’ve had restaurants comp my meals because they didn’t refill my drink quickly enough.  Really, I think the situation warrants a discount or something.  Heck, send me a free *26 model if that’s your solution.  I replied to Adrienne with my thoughts on the matter.  she replied with a 10% off code.  I’m pretty sure I get 20% off coupons in the mail.  Strike 7.

I sent the code to Deirdre and Jordan, who just bought a house, so I told them to make sure they use it on a big purchase.

You can still pull up the *06R on their site.  http://www.lowes.com/pd_238895-82673-014006R_0__?storeId=10151&Ntt=238895&UserSearch=238895&productId=3027237&N=0&catalogId=10051&langId=-1 STRIKE 8.

All that to say, Thanks to Larry over at DIYAnswerGuy.com, I went to Jegs and found their product to give me the storage solution I was looking for.  The “locking” mechanism is useless, it feels a little cheaper than Stanley products, and I had to pay shipping, but it works.

And just to be icing on the cake – It’s a Tuesday at 1:45pm, and I just went to Lowes.com and I was greeted with a page that says it’s down for scheduled maintenance.  Really?  STRIKE 9.  You plan an outage to your website during the day?  What kind of establishment are you running there?  Heck, why do you need downtime at all these days?  Ridiculous.

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Comments

Comment from Matthew Redfield
Time December 5, 2012 at 11:26 pm

I think you meant to have “Strike 7” in bold, no?