I’ve talked about this before, but now is a good time for a reminder. A couple of people have emailed in about issues they’ve had with online orders, and the advice is usually the same whether you’re talking about tools, electronics, or almost anything else.
Unfortunately, Best Buy presented me with a great example to share with you.
I ordered a new phone on December 2nd. I wanted it fast, so I skipped the free shipping and opted for in-store pickup and a December 3rd pickup date.
Advertisement
December 3rd came, and my order wasn’t ready. The website now said I have to wait until December 10th.
I called Best Buy, or at least I tried to, since their chat didn’t work. I left my number and received a call-back in 39 minutes.
If I changed my order to shipping, they were seeing a January ETA on their end. Best Buy’s website said I would get it in a couple of days, but I figured they were seeing more accurate estimates and didn’t want to risk it.
I was angry, but polite. I asked if they could offer me anything for the inconvenience, and a gift card is on the way to me. It doesn’t hurt to ask – sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no.
It’s (almost) never the customer service agent’s fault. Be polite and civil. Sure, you could yell at them and be angry, but that’s just rude. They’re there to help you, and not to be abused. Yelling at customer service can only hurt you.
December 10th came, and my order still wasn’t ready.
Advertisement
In the late afternoon or evening, I received an email saying there was a delay and that if my order wasn’t in by January 9th, 2020, I could cancel.
Best Buy’s chat didn’t work, or rather it told me I was #100 in line, gave me a time estimate, and then when the time limit was up it told me to refresh the page and start over. This happened a couple of times.
I tried to call Best Buy. The option was to hold. Their call-back service wasn’t accepting my phone number. I tried again later, no luck. And then again, it worked, and I was called back in about a half hour.
I spoke with an agent, and they said my order would arrive before midnight the next day (Wednesday 12/11). Okay, great. This means I’d be able to pick up my order on Thursday, maybe Friday.
Thursday came, no order. I finally go through to chat, and they gave me a tracking number, saying my order would arrive by Friday. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Then why did they say it would arrive at the store Wednesday?
Friday came around, and my package was delivered to the store! Or rather, the package my order was supposed to be in was delivered to the store.
Saturday morning, 24 hours later, no pick-up notice.
I tried chatting, it didn’t work – it reset after a 12 minute wait, telling me to wait again.
I tried calling my store a couple of times that week, and the phone just rang and rang. I guess that’s understandable, it’s a very busy shopping week, but it’s still frustrating.
Okay, so I called Best Buy, again, on Saturday morning. I put my phone number in for a 41 minute call-back.
After 41 minutes, what did Best Buy do to help me? They gave me the extension for my store’s mobile department.
Best Buy also has social media support, but I guess nobody is monitoring those inboxes, because I have yet to receive a response to my direct message. I did poke fun at them in a tweet, since sometimes this can help with all the frustration.
Armed with a 4-digit extension, I called my local store.
I spoke with one person, who listened to my inquiry, took my order number, and disappeared. I spoke to someone a few minutes later who asked who I was on hold for. I then spoke to a third person who seemed to have been from corporate, and who I’m guessing passed me back to the store, where I spoke to a fourth person who took all my information down again. She was investigating and put me on hold. After a total of 35 minutes, someone took my phone number and said the associate would be calling me back in about 20 minutes.
Three hours later, I went to the store.
At this point you might be asking why I was going through all this. Well, because with Best Buy’s promo, I was saving hundreds of dollars off the price of the Samsung phone I wanted. My phone has also been glitching a little, and I wanted a quick replacement.
At the store, the customer service agent got the ball rolling. They said this had happened to someone else, too. She went to the back room and came back, telling me that the mobile manager and another manager were looking at the boxes for my order. She said things weren’t unloaded or unpacked properly because of seasonal help.
They were looking, looking, looking. The box was back there, because tracking showed me it was signed for the previous day, and by whom.
A manager took down my name and phone number and said they’d call me in about 45 minutes to an hour, since it’ll more time to go through all of the boxes again. It was 3:45pm, I agreed and said I hoped to hear from here by 5pm.
I had mentioned to the customer service agent and manager that I had a “Plan B,” which was to ask for my order to be cancelled and for a discount to be applied to a new purchase I’d make at the store. I checked prices and determined this before I even left the house to go to the store.
There was one left of my “Plan B” phone, and the manager put it aside for me before I left the store.
I took my daughter to the nearby supermarket for a snack and a treat, as she’d been trying very hard to be patient the whole time I was chatting with customer service.
5pm came and I went back to Best Buy.
Bad news, they can’t find my ordered item anywhere.
The cynic in me has a theory that the phone that was meant to be earmarked for me to pick up was instead sold in-store – perhaps the one I was supposed to pick up on the 3rd, and then again with the one that arrived on the 13th.
But, it is possible that the phone was supposed to be included in the shipment, but wasn’t.
The bottom line was that the store didn’t have my phone for pick-up, and didn’t know when it’d be available.
So, I cancelled the order on my phone, and purchased my second choice phone. (I decided to give iPhone a try, switching from Android for the first time. I’ve been with Android for 10 years, since the original Motorola Droid, and had already been thinking about switching. It was the big discount on the Samsung phone that convinced me not to, but with all this hassle, I took it as a sign maybe it was time to switch.
Best Buy had a $100 discount compared to the full-price at the Apple Store and elsewhere, and the manager was able to give me an additional $100 savings over the huge hassle I endured.
Saturday morning, I was furious and ready to swear off Best Buy forever. But here’s the thing – mistakes happen. I was annoyed that the chat wasn’t working, that there’s no email option, and that the phone call-back system (so that you don’t have to wait by the phone the whole time) wasn’t perfect.
But, at the end of everything, the customer service agent at the store and the manager were able to help me.
At the end, what really helped me was knowing what I wanted, and asking for it.
If your optimal resolution isn’t possible, what else would make you happy? For me, I determined that if the store’s best efforts to track down my phone wasn’t successful, I wanted to choose a different phone, buy it in-store, and receive a discount that would soften the blow of the whole experience.
If thy said no, I would have maybe asked about a different color or version of the phone, price-matched to my original order, or maybe discounted a little further.
But they said yes, and I found the amount to be acceptable.
I read a forum post the other day, where someone was going on a tirade about Kreg because his recent pocket hole jig was missing an accessory. They didn’t even wait for a response or resolution before bashing Kreg up and down the web, with “DO NOT BUY” messaging. That’s not productive.
I was extremely frustrated throughout this whole Best Buy experience, but in the end I knew what would make me happy, and the issue was resolved. This doesn’t automatically erase the frustrations and aggravation, but overall things are resolved.
Do you think they would have looked for my order in the back room if I were hostile and angry? Do you think they would have set aside my second-choice phone or applied an extra discount to it if I were yelling at the associates?
My belief is that most stores will be polite, reasonable, and willing to compromise if we as customers are polite, reasonable, and willing to compromise. And the stores that aren’t? They don’t need my business.
I have witnessed screaming, tantrums, cursing, and other such unpleasant behaviors towards customer service associates. Don’t do this.
Hepdog
I tried an apple phone once – I only made it a day. The Verizon store clerks said I was the only person to ever return one to go back to android.
Hope your experience is better!
H
Stuart
I stuck with Android over the years because it could do a lot of things that iOS could not, but this isn’t true anymore, at least in the ways it mattered to me.
Little things about Android bug me, and new issues and frustrations have cropped up in recent months. Little things about iOS bug me. Each system does different things better than the other.
Luckily, it’s not an irreversible switch, I’ll see how it goes.
Matt J.
I just made the switch as well since my new job mandated it (company purchased phone). I was on android since 4.4 KitKat, so there’s definitely been a lot that I’m getting used to. Sadly, the thing I miss most of all is a back button and the google now feed. Otherwise, it’s much better than I thought it would be. Hope you get used to it as well!
Stuart
There’s a Google app you can download that gives you a search bar and news feed with a button-press. It takes longer to open up search (but I’ve started using Chrome instead before this because the search would often lead to apps taking over when I wanted a web-search, such as Amazon’s app loading instead of sending me to Amazon.com as intended).
There’s also Google News on the swipe-left Siri page, but if I have to swipe left, I may as well press the G app button and see the feed as it looked on Android.
I started with Android 2.0 and my Droid in 2009.
I remember at the time I was considering the new Windows Phone (Samsung Omnia?) but then the Droid and Android seemed more compelling and that’s what I went with.
Bill
The one thing I miss the most with my Samsung Note from several years ago, you know the one that was self combusting, is the stylus and the ability to take notes or draw a quick sketch just about anywhere in the system. I switched to the iPhone when I could no longer fly with my Samsung and I’m still frustrated that Apple will not give me the ability to write/draw with a stylus. I keep hearing, it’s coming, it’s coming. Just wait for the next model, but it never happens. Over the next year or two, after the 5G standard is firmly in place, I will switch back if Apple still doesn’t see fit to give me a stylus and screen writing.
Morgan
I did this exact thing a few years back. I believe it was on the Iphone 4. I didn’t last 3 hours before I was back in getting a Galaxy. I think both platforms are fine, but very different experiences. Experiences the average person cant break. Good luck Stuart in your exchange – I’m sure its a nice phone
Stuart
Actually… I’m liking it so far.
Notifications are as bad as everyone used to Android says they are.
Carplay is going to take getting used to – I need to create a “shortcut” to use Google Assistant for voice commands.
But I like that text messages come in through to my laptop, and that I can FaceTime from my phone.
Moving my custom ringtones over was a pain. It required Itunes syncing via USB cable and audio conversion work that I had to read up on. Siri isn’t as useful as Google, but I figured out some tricks.
Can’t double-press the power button for the camera. But… no useless Bixby button.
Ken
Just my opinion, mind you, but I wouldn’t have been in that situation. If you have a Plan B, use it at the first opportunity. That’s why you have a Plan B.
Stuart
My Plan B wasn’t formulated until I was determined to visit the store.
I figured:
I’d ask them to explain what happened, and then ask if they could look for the phone that tracking says was physically at the store. I) If found, I’d leave with my new phone. II) If not found, then what? More waiting wouldn’t be acceptable, so would I ask for a different color, different memory size, or different model entirely? So the Plan B was to ask for a discount on the iPhone I had been considering alongside the Samsung. If they said no, I’d either ask for a different alternate option or likely cancel my order and stay mad at Best Buy for a while.
Some stores give their customer service associates the flexibility to solve problems in ways customers find satisfactory. Others can’t do anything but say “there’s nothing we can do, sorry, better luck next time.”
I’ve learned that, whether I’m dealing with damaged orders, missing parts, or other issues, things are better resolved if I know what I want.
I’ve witnessed quite a few incidents where customers seem more eager for an argument than a resolution. For a resolution, sometimes better associates or managers will offer a solution, other times it’s up to the customer, and that’s the point I want to convey.
If I had not come up with a solution, I probably would be left waiting who knows how long? With the system believing that my order was in-house when it wasn’t, how long until a replacement would be sent out, if one was sent out?
Jared
Sounds like a nightmare.
I had a bad experience with Bosch recently, but nowhere near your level of frustration. I went on the website because I was having trouble with my heated jacket. They have a toll-free number or a text option. I decided to text thinking I could avoid having to be on hold and could provide the details at my own convenience.
After supplying my details, I submitted the form and waited. I waited so long I forgot about it until four days later I got a text from Bosch. The texts begin by asking me for my name and to describe the problem – steps I already completed on the online form.
After some confusing back-and-forth with the customer service agent (because I kept asking questions, only some of which were getting answers, requiring me to keep repeating myself), she finally told me they could help – all I needed to do was call the toll-free number and explain the problem I was having.
Jim Felt
I’ve had extraordinarily good results over the past decade simply calling them. No IM no email: calling.
First with 12v and now with 18v
Out of actual warranty repair, free stuff and a great attitude from literally all the CS people I’ve spoken to.
(I’ve added so much Red lately I’m hoping they’ll be as good if and when I need their help).
Adam
Milwaukee’s customer service is excellent, in my experience.
Among other things, they cover shipping both ways for repairs, and offer free upgrades when a new battery is introduced that physically won’t fit a tool (like the M18 12AH battery and the lunchbox vac or lights with enclosed battery compartments).
Patrick
I called in to Bosch a few weeks back about an out-of-warranty 18v hammer drill. There was something off with the bottom contacts that interface with the battery. Instead of letting me buy the part I thought was wrong, they sent me a pre-paid label and told me I could send it to them for a free fix. I had the label in my email inbox within a few minutes of talking to them. Super impressed.
Jared
Prompted by these replies, I just called Bosch. The telephone service was better than I expected. A long menu list to navigate, but no hold whatsoever (which is impressive).
My complaint therefore is limited to this: Why have a text option if it can’t actually solve my problem?
Gary
Back in the early 1980’s, I bought a new Honda Civic, with ‘official’ Honda, but dealer-installed, fog lights. 90 days they were badly rusted, all the paint gone, looked terrible. I asked the Dealer to take care of it. No dice, because they were below the bumper and subject to stones, etc. So I escalated to the Honda Rep. No dice. So I wrote Honda East. No dice. So I wrote Honda US. No dice. So I wrote the President of Honda in Japan. A month later I get a call from the owner/dealer, inviting me in. I show up, get a new set of genuine Bosch foglights, and a full refund for the original set of foglights. Butter wouldn’t have melted in the owner’s mouth. He had one question for me: “How do you know the President of Honda Motors?” It pays to be patient, civil and persistent.
Cody
My Plan B would be to shop somewhere else.
Wayne R.
For me, that’s been Plan A for a long time.
Jim Felt
You’re a better man then I. And that’s just for even trying to buy anything from “Best” Buy.
National Big Box chains are in customer service free fall. They just can’t (on average) hire good people.
That said I’m tapping away on my 8th or 9th iPhone here and have bought each one through exactly one vendor: AT&T. And being a cell user since 1984 with the exact same number since I’m not changing any easy resource that’s not broken.
Motorola to Nokia to Sony-Ericsson to Apple.
Though Apple did install a new free battery once. Took an hour at an Apple Store.
AKA as my old man used to say “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”…
Now off to the actual Post Office. I kid you not.
TonyT
I hope you do know that cell phone companies are required to port your number to a new vendor (LNP – Local Number Portability). I’ve done this a number of times, with no problem. However, there are a few things to watch out for, such as that you have to port your number to the new carrier before you close your account with the old carrier.
Chris I
You cannot be that naïve thinking big box chains are in free fall because “they just can’t hire good people.” You honestly cannot be that naïve about macroeconomics. Please…..
DC
I’ve had similar issues with Best Buy years ago and vowed never again.
fred
After couple of bad experiences at our local Best Buy – dealing with rude and antagonistic employees – (antagonism started immediately when I asked for help with a purchase) – I’ve never returned. They are still in business – so maybe they just did not like my face and/or treat more tech-savvy folks better. But I did not need 3-strikes to decide against going back. We have a local small chain appliance store where service is much friendlier and they often make Best Buy prices not a best-buy. They get my business.
Unplugged Toaster
Speaking as someone who has worked in customer service in all it’s forms (in store, phone, live chat, email, etc.) for too many years, thank you so much for this post.
Thom
You had my sympathy until you mentioned you chose the iPhone instead!
Charles Stopczynski
I phones are good but can be very annoying. Some text message features are strange. Their updates fix bugs, and introduce new ones, and improvements I don’t want. After the most recent update dealing with photos has become a bit of a nightmare.
Tonights newest software release (IOS 13.3) is supposed to contain improvements, bug fixes, and additional parental controls for Screen Time. That may be a wonderful thing, more parental control.
Stuart
Android and Samsung aren’t any better.
They change things every now and then, and something will break or become unfriendly.
The new phone I was going to get instead that started all this wasn’t even due to get the new Android version yet. My 2-year old Galaxy S8+ won’t even get this update at all.
iPhone and iPad updates over the years gave me headaches at ToolGuyd because I had to find workarounds for some “updates” and other bugs couldn’t be helped. e.g. https://14cyiuhvcgv.com/bug-notice-front-page-image-swaps-with-ipad-ios-8-and-safari/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Android Auto changed twice in the past year and tried to force YouTube Music over Amazon Music, and that was a huge pain trying to figure out how to disable YouTube from even being an option.
I figured that the hassle in trying to get my Samsung order was a sign it was indeed time to try an iPhone. If it doesn’t go well, phones have good resale value (in good condition at least), and I’ll switch back later on.
Wayne R.
Seems to me that *everything* with software in it is continually updated with features that are a step back – or too convoluted to say to myself, “Hey, that’s great! I’ll use that a lot!” Nope.
I’ve spent too much of my life keeping fingers off my laptop screens, but now, everything’s designed for fingers to be right there. Big giant menus, still gotta dig for too many things hidden by the “Big Beautiful UI Experience”.
And the things I want/ask/beg to be fixed are ignored. The future’s looking brighter every day…
Robert Adkins
I’m always polite to customer assistants… after I pull off their arms and eat their children.
J/K, they’re just doing their jobs, which is cleaning up after the mistakes of others. Our culture is losing their civility at a high rate, and I try to do my part to slow it down.
Merry Christmas to all.
Wayne R.
I do try to do the same, but I know a lot of frustration creeps in my voice when calling about tech stuff – gotta endure the scripted “Did you disconnect power? Did you restart?” even after explaining that all the usual tricks were tried.
But that’s the only way to get to second or third tier support. Unless there’s a trick out there?
Eric S.
Looks like it worked out for you. I work in customer service so I’ve seen both sides.
Russ
Well I’m glad you’re satisfied with that experience. I would have given up much sooner and never come back. Just listening to what you went through I don’t want to shop at Best Buy.
Stuart
I probably could have changed my order early on, but at the loss of several hundreds of dollars in promo discounts.
carl
But at the end of day, you didn’t get those big discounts, got a phone you didn’t really want and BB still got your money.
Stuart
At the end of the day, knowing what I wanted and asking for it helped me walk away happy.
I’m sure that I could have gotten a slightly different version of the phone – either a different color or with more memory – at a matching discount – or better – if that’s what I wanted. Or I could have sat tight and waited and waited a while longer.
I’ve witnessed enough customer service interactions to have seen that a lot of people don’t know what to ask for when faced with tough situations. That’s the whole point of all this.
RCWARD
Those unreal prices at Best Buy are a scam. Same thing has happened to me TWICE. Great price on paper but you never get the goods. Never. Always coming but never show up. Then they will be happy to cancel your order. You are right about getting upset with “phone people” they are there as a buffer between you and the real A holes. They know that , that’s why they have them. It’s a waste of time yelling at them.
carl
That’s because as Stuart found out, BB can still pull the chain of enough customers who for whatever reason will still do business with them, buying a product they weren’t initially shopping for at a higher price then they were initially willing to pay. Typical bait and switch.
Steve
I have two Best Buy-er beware horror stories, one was a cell phone story, much worse than the one you went through where I ultimately had to drive a long way to a UPS facility to get my phones before they were returned because Best Buy’s system super screwed up and left them undeliverabl to me or the store, the second was a TV price adjustment they couldn’t do over Thanksgiving weekend last year (their policy is not to price match themselves between Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday). In the second instance they dropped my TV price $100 on Cyber Monday, they couldn’t match the price, ok, easy solution, simple return and repurchase, all you know what breaks loose. Long story short, at one point I was charged twice, before I was refunded twice, and ended up with the TV without being charged unbeknownst to me, with them calling me a week later to get my credit card info again. Bottom line, Best Buy’s corporate customer support is completely useless, and, in the first instance in store support was completely useless. In the second instance a store manager was the one who fixed it and was actually on the ball.
Be advised if you need customer service from Best Buy corporate, you’re probably not going to get any, their policies are almost adversarial to their customers. Also, cell phone purchases through them are asking for trouble.
Adam
I use to work at BB eons ago, and not that this is a regular thing, but it happens unfortunately. It’s not like any store or company wants this kind of thing to happen. They don’t know who might have a blog with millions (lots of thousands) of viewers.
I worked customer service and did everything I could to rectify a situation when possible, and even sometimes when not. You never know how a mgr might be feeling/thinking that day, it shouldn’t change the response, but it can.
Franco
Ah, dear friends….be prepared for much more of this in the future. Speaking generationally, customer service has gotten worse and will continue to do so. The level of incompetence out there is staggering. I honestly don’t know how people make it through the day being so dopey. Stay healthy out there because if you think dealing with CS at a store is rough, wait til you need to deal with CS at an insurance company or medical billing.
PJ
I bought a TV from Best Buy on Amazon during the Cyber Monday deals. They ended up cancelling the order with the reason given “customer cancelled”. I told Amazon I didn’t cancel the order and still wanted the TV. Best Buy still had it in stock on Amazon but at a higher price. I was told I am welcome to repurchase the TV… at the now higher price.
That kinda pissed me off.
Will
I think BestBuy was having issues on the 10th company wide. I ordered a Apple Homepod as a Xmas present on the morning of the 10th and had free next day shipping. I didn’t even get an order confirmation until the following day, then got an “unexpected delay” email saying it could be up to Jan. 9th, just like you got. I tried chat, like you, but had the same issues. Finally after trying for several hours I got someone on chat. He said he sees the order, confirmed it was paid for, but could not see why it was still pending/ delayed. He guaranteed me it was all good and I would have it by Xmas. Two hours later I got a shipping email with tracking through FedEx, marked as overnight by 10am. Sure as hell, next morning at 9:20 fedex dropped it off. As much hate as BestBuy gets, they have always done right by me and I continue to shop with them.
Steve
Their system takes forever to get order confirmations out to the customer. I have experienced this
RKA
As others have said, I wouldn’t have had the patience to deal with this. It requires too much time to follow up with them. I’ll give them one, maybe two chances to get the product to me. And I will not sit on hold for more than 10 minutes trying to get resolution to a product I’ve already paid for. I would rather pay more and avoid the headaches. That post in the other forum was a whole different level of behavior. It took some restraint to not say what I was really thinking.
Beyond that I couldn’t possibly reward your experience with a sale. But I suppose when you’re that invested, at some point you don’t want to cut bait. Or you’re more persistent than I am! 🙂
On the plus side, it looks like your daughter is learning from your example. Her patience got rewarded as well, so dad and daughter went home happy!
Joe
I work at best buy, and after seeing and being on the receiving end of many a temper tantrum, you did the right thing. times are changing enough that less people are shopping in our stores and more online, so every morning we’re already backed up by 400+ online orders once we’re open. that, combined with the fact that people don’t tend to walk into the store to pick them up in the same few days after they place their orders creates mountains of misc items behind our cs counters. then, when people come in 5 minutes after placing their order (it usually takes 45 minutes to an hour to process an order for pickup, because there are Real Humans behind the act of finding the item and picking it off the shelf) and expect to have it in their hands right this minute because I Paid For This Item, it makes people divert their attention from getting the backed up orders to getting the order for the guy that wants immediate attention or he’ll start bitching.
it’s not that we’re understaffed, or incompetent, it’s just that there’s usually a line of orders or other people to take care of before they can get to others. so op, I’m glad you wrote this, and I’m glad your unpleasant experience wasn’t blamed on us, cus honestly man we do our best but the holidays are probably the worst time to order anything online.
also you’re right, we do tend to be nicer to people that are nice to us, if someone spends a ton of money in our stores and ask for a discount like 10% or somethin, we’ll probably just give it to you if you ask nicely enough. mind you some managers don’t like approving that kind of thing unless you’re insuring your product with us or if you’re buying your tech support at the same time or if you apply for that credit card that you were probably pressed for a million times before you even got to your products, but it can happen, just be nice, good things come to those who wait, and you’re gonna have to wait anyway people, so why spend your wait time huffy?
I could rant for days about what we have to deal with honestly, but yelling customers are fun because we get to laugh at them.
Andy
My problem is that when a mistake is made, all I want is someone to fins out specifically what happened, and to find out what happened to the employee who made the mistake. If an item I ordered for store pick up was sold to another custom er, the store would have to grow the inventory in order to sell it. POS systems at major retailers don’t allow sale to create negative inventory. In the case, I want the name of the employee that did this, and to be informed of what happened to them. If the item wasn’t actually shipped to the store, then an employee at their DC either picked the wrong item, or stole my item. Let me know who picked that item and again, what the company is doing to them.
There is no way a few dollars off my purchase is going to make up for wasting my time. I realize this isn’t really reasonable, but it’s the only thing that will ever make me happy.
Christos X
I gave up on Best Buy years ago when it was discovered that they had an internal “web site” with different (higher) prices than the actual web site accessed from home.
I also grew tired of entering a store playing too-loud music, staffed by people with exactly zero product knowledge, and aggressive upsell pitches for higher priced products and extended warranties.
Frank D
That … and at one point pretty much refusing to let me handle a DSLR camera in store. I was hoping to upgrade to a new Canon nD … no, it is the glass case, tge store manager needs to approve, yada yada …
This is in a low risk area, new store, where I used to have to drive 45 min and used to do so bi-weekly or monthly …
Was happy to show ID, etc … but those kind of hassles, not having advertised products, not matching online prices, losing my points, not getting into my own BB account … has meant they pretty much went from a split between BB and Staples for a lot of tech stuff, to zip nada. Can’t recall the last time I set foot in one.
And the last major major purchase was a washer drier set my wife ordered, that the washer ended up leaking upon first use, flooding the room, … all kinds of issues as we had bases for that brand we could not return and then ended with a different brand set … ugh.
Martin
My most commonly used tool is my Victorinox Swiss Tool. My old multi tool broke shortly before leaving for Afghanistan. With no time to pursue a warranty claim I chose the best of what the PX had. It served me well that year in a tool desert and for the 15 years since. I feel naked without it. Hardly a day goes by I don’t use it for something.
The tool that brings me the most joy in use is a tough one but probably my 199lb double horned Mousehole anvil for what it can do, what it has done, and how I came to be it’s caretaker for however long I’ll be around.
Martin
Sorry. Wrong thread. Hazards of having multiple screens open.
eddie sky
I feel the same way about Lowes and their Professional Installations. Lowes Blows. Period. I gave their Customer Service every benefit of the doubt. There was one CS person that knew something was wrong and did her best. Until I lost it, and used the “sue” word. (when you spend over $7K or more on Windows and they are installed by sub-Subbed contractor (Son hired father that supposedly he fired later) and some under-handling (greased palm of The Lowes Rep, The Lowes Store Manager, The Lowes Customer Support Supervisor) results in the poorest customer service that took a Pella Rep to light a fire that only smoldered. A year went by before I was proved Correct (improper installation of Pella products) and then correction (not by the installer I requested) which is to say, I am still not satisfied. I left several emails and voicemails (I was stern but polite) that I should have been offered a $250 Gift Card (which I would gladly buy kobalt tools, etc) for the acknowledged failure and “ball dropped”. Thanks for nothing, Larry.
I will still shop at Lowes *Hillsborough* but not this store *West Windsor/Princeton NJ* which shows incompetence and poor screening of contractors. If Lowes plans on cutting any stores, I have an excellent letter for corporate to start on.
BTW, the Lowes in Hillsborough NJ left me recently with the best experience I’ve had at any of the big boxes. I needed a new Chainsaw ASAP and didn’t realize Ace Hardware had STIHL models (not on sale though). I found a 20″ Husq 455 for $349 and must have looked dejected as I waited in the self-checkout line…and the person in front of me had item not scanning. Sigh. The ONLY checkout available was waaaaay down in Contractor #1 line (I could see a guy with cart filled with sheetrock). Then a clerk came over and waved me to his station (he was the guy that assisted the Self Checkout errors). He was polite and prompt. Told me “don’t worry if sensor in box sets off door alarm, I have no way to erase it” and even gave me 5% off the item AND 6 months payments/no interest using my Lowes card!
Door alarm did not go off and I was on my way home to finish cutting logs before dark. That has been the exception and now my reference that ok, Lowes has some bad stores and some good stores. Thank you Hillsborough Lowes! You are worth the drive!