First let me start by saying that I pride myself on having an abundance of patience. To a fault I have a high threshold for waiting and often make rationalizations for poor customer service. I can count on 2 fingers the times that I've been so aggravated to the point where I want run home screaming and write a scathing review. The first one was TIme Warner Cable, and now Sherwin Williams is the second.
So here goes.
I can't say anything about their actual product, (which I've HEARD great things about) because after 2 trips and tedious amounts of wasted time, I walked away empty handed and vowing never to set foot in a Sherwin Williams again..
The project was refinishing the deck. Easy enough. You go online, see what products they have, pick a color, go buy the stuff at to the store and get started.
FIRST VISIT.
They have one guy working in the store with customers waiting and phone ringing off the hook. Although annoying, I can deal with it because he seems nice enough and acknowledges we are waiting.
We tell them we'd like the Oil Based Deckscapes Stain.
"Ummm... Sherwin WIlliams doesn't carry oil based deck stain"
"Well, your website says you do (showing him website on smart phone)
Which launches us in to 30 minutes of him searching around in the store and on their antiquated system from 1983. (Seriously, you don't have a normal computer with internet access so you can see your own website?) We discover that not only are we dealing with a language barrier, he also has particularly bad eyesight and can't find anything in the "system". So we decide to give up on the stain and pick up the other supplies we need for the job and leave.
Okay, maybe it was a fluke, as we later discover after much research that apparently they don't sell oil based stain in California. So we go back to their website and decide to go with Sherwin Williams Acrylic Deckscapes Stain. The color swatches are so small on the site that we decide to begrudgingly go in to the store to view them and buy the stain, hoping that our first experience was a one-off.
Second Visit.
Store is still busy with customers and phone ringing off the hook. Same near-sighted employee. We search the displays for the range of colors we saw on the website. Nowhere to be found. We ask Mr. Magoo where the colors shown on the website for the acrylic deck stain are. His reply?
"Sherwin Williams doesn't sell acrylic deck stain"
"UM. SERIOUSLY? IT SAYS YOU DO RIGHT ON YOUR WEBSITE. ACRYLIC DECKSCAPE STAIN"
"Oh, can you give me the code for that?"
WHAT???? DO YOU GO INTO MCDONALDS AND SAY " I WOULD LIKE THE BIG MAC, AND THE PERSON BEHIND THE COUNTER ASKS "CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT IS IN THAT? DO YOU HAVE THE BAR CODE FOR IT???
How can they not have a CLUE what products they sell?!
Then he tries to convince me that the waterbased stain IS the acrylic stain because it has "acrylic resin" in it. Noooo, that's a completely different product sir!
Okay, so you don't sell the stain. Can we look at the colors at least since they are so hard to see on your website? Maybe we can find it at another store? We don't see them displayed.
Blank Stare.
Sigh. Okay, I YOUR CUSTOMER will look up your website and give you the codes for the colors of the stains. Fast forward what felt like 15 minutes later (bad eyesight, remember) he finds them buried in a cabinet somewhere. We go through the swatches to discover they are completely out of order and half of them that were on the site aren't in the swatch sample booklet.
Okay. You got me. I am officially at the end of my patience. I'm outta here.
If you don't mind knowing more about the product than the person working there and if you are fine with the likelihood that they don't carry the VERY PRODUCT their website claims they do (or if you are a MASOCHIST) then by all means, patronize this store.
If you value your sanity, don't walk.... RUN AWAY! read more