Thursday evening, May 3, I placed an online order with the Douglasville Lowe's store. The idea, of course, is to save time by having a variety of items pulled and ready to go. Among other items, the order included 6 pieces of crown moulding and 30 feet of vinyl flooring.
The entire transaction was a confused, time-wasting mess.
Around noon on Friday, a Lowe's representative called to alert me that only 25 feet of the flooring I had ordered remained in the store. OK... I get it: The quantity reported by inventory management software doesn't always match what's actually in the store. I opened the Lowe's web site and found a suitable replacement style. There was a price difference; I was told that the original floor covering amount would be refunded against from my original order and I would pay for the replacement floor covering separately. The 30-foot roll of the replacement floor covering would be waiting for me in the contractor section.
I arrived Friday afternoon to pick up the order to find that the order is incomplete. I ordered 6 pieces of 16-foot crown moulding, but only two had been pulled. The clerk checked inventory: 32 pieces in the store... so we walk to the back to find it. Although she sincerely wanted to help, the clerk didn't even know what crown moulding was. Seriously. Nevertheless, she gave it the ol' college try, which I realized was futile because she was vainly digging through the 12-foot millwork.
I explained that we were looking for something that was 16 feet long, so it couldn't possibly be among the 12-foot millwork. She found another Lowe's employee and asked him where the 16-footers were located.
"Uh, we don't carry it in that length."
So much for that. I keep looking and eventually find it myself. We pull the missing 4 pieces, carry them to the front, adjust the order to refund for the linoleum, and ... you guessed, yet another problem.
"Now it's not taking your card number," the clerk told me, looking up from her screen. "I don't know what's wrong." I used a Lowe's credit card to get the discount, but at this point, I just wanted to get my stuff and get to the job. I paid the amount with a different card, loaded up, and drove down to the contractor's loading area.
The fun was not over.
I approached a woman at the contractor's desk and told her my name and that I was there to pick up a roll of vinyl floor covering.
I got the "deer in the headlights" look, along with a "Huh?"
I repeated that I was there to pick up a roll of floor covering, and told her the whole story of how I had ordered online, the product wasn't available, I selected another (at around 1:00 p.m. earlier that day), and it should be waiting.
It wasn't.
Fortunately, I still had my notes from the phone conversation earlier, which included the product number for the floor covering. I shower her the number, she looked it up, entered a quantity of 30 feet, and totaled the transaction. For kicks, I handed her my Lowe's credit card. Amazing: It worked this time.
She told me it would be a few minutes, so I took the time to get some pressure treated 2x10s for a separate project. I paid for it, loaded it, and still no floor covering, and no sight of the woman I had been working with. She eventually walked past, so I asked her, "What's the status on the floor covering?"
She made a weird face, huffed, but said no words, and walked away. I couldn't tell what the heck she meant by her actions. I waited a few more minutes; the phone at the contractor's desk rang and Weird Face re-appeared and answered it.
She looked up at me and said, "They said for you to come back to Floor Covering."
I asked why.
She replied, "They didn't say. They said you just have to come back to Floor Covering."
I told her that I had been there at the store for close to an hour, trying to get an order I had placed, at this time, 24 hours ago. I explained that I was NOT going back there, that I was through having my time wasted, and demanded a refund on the floor covering.
She apologized and processed the refund.
First thing Saturday morning, I went to the Home Depot in Villa Rica. I walked back to their floor covering section, found an employee, and within 10 minutes they had cut, rolled, and wrapped my floor covering (yes, I timed them after my Lowe's experience), and I was headed out.
What a stark contrast.
In short, my experience at the Douglasville Lowe's was the proverbial train wreck. The biggest "fail" a business can make is to have a customer on site, money in hand, product in the store, and yet kill the transaction and drive the customer away through poor customer service. That's exactly what happened at the Douglasville Lowe's, and that's exactly why I won't be back. It's not so much that I'm angry and hold a grudge, it's just that when I need building materials, I will go to store that actually sells them instead of hording them in the retail sales area. read more