Tuesday, July 18, 2006

This is Why I prefer Lowe's

Here's a little backstory-
I am in the process of choosing paint colors with which to (hire someone to) paint my kitchen. I happened to be at Home Depot recently and found 6 colors that I wanted to try out by painting swatches in the kitchen so I could narrow it down to 2. Well, when I went back (kids in tow) I found out that Home Depot doesn't do 'test' cans, so I had to buy a quart of each. (Here's where I should have turned around and just gone to the paint store, but I didn't. Dumb me.) When I picked up my 6 quarts, I immediately noticed that two of them looked like the wrong color. I took them home anyway, thinking that maybe it just needed to be mixed or something. Well, they were in fact wrong.

So, I went back today. I took my two incorrectly mixed quarts back to the paint department, and Paint Department Boy and I puzzled over what went wrong, until it was noticed that he had used the wrong base. Okay then, he started the process of mixing two new cans and I went off and wandered around the store. When I came back, Paint Department Boy was very apologetic and said that he had one ready but he'd accidentally dropped the other can and it spilled, so he had to do a new one. Finally it was done, and he apologized profusely for the errors and marked my two original cans 'Ok to return' so I could go through the return line.

Here's the exchange I had: (I'll refer to as 'Chubby' and 'Chain Smoker')

Me- 'The paint department mixed these wrong, so I need to exchange them for these two new ones'.
Chubby (looks a paint cans and stares at receipt)- 'These aren't on here ma'am.'
Me (pointing at receipt)- 'It's right here. I originally bought 6.'
Chubby- 'Okay, but this says 'K&B' and this can is Behr.'
Me (pointing at can)- 'K&B means 'kitchen & bath''.
Chubby- 'Oh, okay.'
Now, Chain Smoker looks over from her checkout and says- 'We can't take paint returns. It's not allowed.'
Chubby- 'Well, they marked the cans 'ok to return.''
Chain Smoker- 'Well someone needs to tell that boy back there that it's not allowed!'
Suddenly, I feel bad for Paint Department Boy, thinking about him getting reamed by one of these geniuses.
I interject- 'Well I'm not really returning them, they made a mistake...' (they ignore me)
While common sense might indicate that they can just switch the erroneous cans and the corrected cans, but no. She had to do a cash refund on the first two cans, take the cash out of her till, ring up the other cans and then put the money back in.

I remember the days when Home Depot employees knew stuff and we used to joke about how Lowe's staff were just Home Depot rejects. Now, Home Depot has the *shittiest* customer service, and their return department is staffed with the staff who have the worst people skills ever.

Home Depot, YOU SUCK!

3 comments:

Kristen said...

Yep, I hate Home Depot too. There is one really close to my house but I go out of my way to Lowe's so I can be more likely to deal with halfway competent people.

Anonymous said...

And p.s. - they are supposed to take paint cans back, as long as they have not been used.
They keep them in a section where people can browse through them and buy them at a slightly cheaper price.

Seems we'll be painting at the same time. I'm doing the whole house except my room and the spare bedroom. I'm going for neutrals, taupes, because I've had chocolate brown and butterscotch yellow on my walls for 4 years.

Dorky Dad said...

I'm on my way to visit my local Home Depot right now. If Lowe's wasn't 20 minutes farther away, I'd never subject myself to the Home Depot experience again.