Wednesday, May 21, 2008

The incompetence of people

I'm not going to sugarcoat it; people as a whole are incompetent. Customer service is horrible and if you want to talk with someone on the phone, well good luck to you.

It is 6:54pm EST. Let me explain why this matters. I am waiting for a delivery from Lowe's. Yes, the new playset for my children was to be delivered "this afternoon". In that vein, I waited here ALL AFTERNOON for the delivery. The only time I left my house was to drive 1300 feet to the end of my road to pick up Meg from the bus. And when I picked her up, I promptly turned around and drove home again. Still, no delivery. At 4 pm I tried calling the department at Lowe's that handles our playset, but I had two screeching 16 month olds, one of whom unplugged the phone while I was on hold! At 4:30 I asked my darling husband to make a call for me since I obviously had my hands full. He spoke with the sales manager, who said he'd call the delivery driver and find out the scoop.

We are STILL waiting for someone to call and let us know where the playset is (6:59 pm). Now, this wouldn't be such an enormous issue if the ONE AND ONLY playset installer in all of Lowe's wasn't arriving on our doorstep at 8 am tomorrow to put together said playset. Hard to install something that we don't have in our possession. Doug and I are taking bets about where our playset is. See, we live on a private road that we named ourselves (ok, I had no say in it, but that is totally beside the point). There is another road, in another town, with the SAME NAME (and this is not a common name. It's a sports name. A hockey name. But that's all I can tell you). When we moved here, Time Warner Cable actually sent the cable installer to the street in the OTHER TOWN. Do you know what is on that street, in that town? A HOCKEY RINK! Not a residence. For the love of Pete. So, we fully expect that the lovely people at Lowe's will tell us that when they went to deliver said playset to that other road, lo and behold, there was no house. Hi. I have a PHONE. One that rings and everything. If you are confused, call ME. I will be glad to set you straight. I might even be polite if you call me 7 hours ago to let me know where the playset it. Again, beside the point.

It's now 7:43 pm EST and I have not seen a delivery truck, nor heard a single word from Lowe's. It's taken forever to get the swingset installation scheduled because my awesome parents had Lowe's order an extra long beam so all 4 kids can have swings. And that had to be specially manufactured in Virigina. And shipped by horse and buggy or some load of crap from Lowe's as to why it's taken so long to get it. When I was working as a lawyer and did something wrong, my boss let me have it (he didn't believe in sugarcoating either). I think Lowe's is going to get an earful.

8 comments:

creative kerfuffle said...

ugh. i just emailed you before i saw this post. how freakin incompetent can people be? i am firmly convinced that customer service has totally gone out the window all across the board. awesome that your folks ordered that for the kids but what a nightmare!

Heather said...

Raise hell, Kristin!!! Make me proud!

Anonymous said...

Oh NO! They ticked off the Krippymonster. They's in trouble now!

I'm glad I'mm not around to experience the wrath of Hurricane Krippy in full blow.

DAYMN!

Cass. Just Curious said...

Lowes, Home Depot, Sears, Cable Companies all of these places need to get their stuff together. I mean the time windows are INSANE...if they can coordinate 155 flights an hour coming into JFK airport and tell me the exact MINUTE of landing then why oh why can't they figure out a 2 hour window that a delivery service will be our houses?

Astarte said...

Customer service is the worst misnomer EVER. Ugh, don't even get me started.

I hope you ream them about fifteen new orifices tomorrow morning. Delivery problems are the worst!!! I am personally waiting on a new kitchen island AND a fence which was 'loosely on the schedule for this week'. Great. I hope they're having a good time with MY deposit, because I'm certainly not recommending them to anyone ELSE to spend THEIR money there!

Tigriswillreign said...

*tee hee* "horse-and-buggy"

Anonymous said...

I hope you can goup one side and down the other to them!!! My friends had some stones for a patio delivered last Saturday from Lowes and they were told it would be there in the afternoon. I the late moring a huge Lowes Truck (from the same store) went to a neighboring hous with only a little bit of shingles on it--they did not put the stones too. They called complained. Were told the delivery was on its way blah, blah and then at 8:40 at night it was delivered. They informed them of how unhappy they were. The delivery guy said he had been making deliveries all day non-stop. My friends called to let them know that they needed to organize how things go out better.
I hope you get your playset in time for the installer--those things are not easy to put together!!!
Rose

Jess said...

Oooh this is one of my biggest pet peeves!! And I won't even start in on Comcast (stab voodoo doll repeatedly. burn incense.) or Sprint. But whenever their commercials come on tv I start to twitch. Please bless your swingset comes soon.