15% Restocking Fee? For what?

Finally I had arranged with Christine to return the excess finish work that I was sent with my order. 12 boxes were returned the majority of which are spacers and fillers and there is absolutely no where they could possibly fit into my kitchen. Another example of the content returned is two 96 inch pieces of toe kick. I was sent 4 x 96 inch pieces of toe kick. I have a maximum of 101 inches of toe kick in my kitchen. Why would I ever need up to 384 in. of this item. Here is the straw that has broke the camel’s back. I receive a message from Christine on 7/14 saying she would like to discuss the credit back to my account for the returned pieces and she wanted to let me know that there is a 15% restocking fee on custom order items. Again I am being asked to pay for the incompetence and mistakes of your employees. Are you kidding me ? Who creates the SOP’s within your company?

More Big Boxes in a Small Apartment

The replacement glass doors for the pantry arrive on 6/28/08. Guess what? My contractor is long gone so now I have to have these doors leaning against my living room wall until my contractor can come back.

Can I get someone who can make a decision?

I asked Jessica to submit my case to the next level of customer service because I was expecting more compensation than this. It has now been 4 weeks since I asked that this case be escalated and I have not received a call from anyone. Once again a steller example of your company’s outstanding customer service. I will not accept a token gesture to compensa tion for all of the time and in convenince I have endured over the past 4 months. Did I mention that I live in an 800 square foot apartment in NYC, work out of my apartment and for the better part of 3 months about 400 sq. ft of my living space was taken up by kitchen cabinets that could not be hung because I did not have a corner cabinet.

$500...ha ha you must be kidding

Jessica from customer care told me that she had been authorized to offer me a 500.00 gift card to compensate me for my trouble. You have got to be kidding me. I token gesture of a 5% discount on my cabinet order. What on earth would I do with a 500.00 gift card to Home Depot at this point? Do you honestly think I would ever spend another dime in your stores? And frankly I find compensation in the amount of 500.00 to be an insult. However there is something else going on here as well. This 500,00 offer was made based on the fact that my cabinet purchase was around 5000.00 according to what Jessica told me on the phone. Please note this is half of what I actually paid for these cabinets. Ironically my dad has been saying all along that I did not get the cabinets that I paid for. Then this descrepancy appears in the total paid for the cabinets I think he may be right. I have pictures documenting all the problems my dad had to fix on these cabinets ( frames bowed out because pieces that were too long were jammed into the cabinets, glue intended for the seams in the cabinets that is no where near the seams etc etc.) before installing them. In short these cabients are nothing but junk and the assembly is even worse than materials that were used to make them. So much for buying American made products.

Fed up

Christine calls to tell me that my replacement glass doors had been reordered. I question because I had been told by her they were reordered on 5/20 with the replacement corner cabinet. It turns out they weren’t reordered then because Christine had to get an approval from the store manager to reorder these doors and they had to verify that what had been sent to me was in fact wrong. Keep in mind that they were first told these doors were not what I ordered back in March. Why does it take 28 days ( 5/20-6/16) to get an in store approval to reorder items that were sent wrong? Is this good customer service? The inconvenience that this delay in reordering caused me was clearly felt to be inconsequential and irrelevant to your employees. Why am I repeatedly inconvenienced because of incompetence, broken systems, and too many levels of bureaucracy which prohibit the simple execution of simple tasks to correct errors?

You should have listened to me in the first place

New corner cabinet arrives. It is finally correct. It is a 30 in corner cabinet. Ironically, this was how I had suggested we could accommodate for the corner vent initially when we were in the design process. Scott told that he could not do it like this. It would not work. Ironic isn’t it? I called to notify the store that the corner cabinet was correct however I did not receive the new glass doors for my pantry.

More Run Around

It seemed that they couldn’t figure out what to reorder to fix my problem and it took days for it to be resolved. I hate to say it but this is not rocket science. I was able to figure what needed to be done to fix this problem and kitchen design is not my business. I finally receive word that the replacement corner cabinet was ordered around 5/20/08 along with the replacement doors for my pantry with the correct glass. Finally arrange for pick-up of incorrect cabinets (27 days after it was delivered). Is waiting 27 days for the pick up of an incorrect cabinet acceptable and almost a month to reorder an incorrect cabinet acceptable? This is absolutely absurd. I left countless voicemails and had numerous phone conversations to finally get this to the point where they reordered this cabinet and finally came to pick up the old one.

The Run Around

I contacted customer care number listed on the web site to try and enlist some assistance in getting my situation resolved. My contact at customer care was Jessica. Anecdotally Jessica had an much trouble dealing with the store as I did. She never was able to speak with the designer Scott. He never returned her calls and would not accept her calls when they came. It is amazing that he was never in the store when she called. She kept calling me apologizing for all the delays and the fact that it seemed impossible to obtain resolution and action on any of the problems I was having.

About One Month Later)

Two new cabinets are delivered. Corner cabinet is wrong again. They sent a 36 in long cabinet. This does not allow for the vent in the corner. They should have sent a 30 in. cabinet. I called the store on the 24th to tell them the corner cabinet was wrong. Spoke with Rhonda who said she would need to speak with the designer and get back to me. I had many conversations back and forth with Gerry and Rhonda trying to get someone to come and look at the cabinet and come up with a plan for resolution. Of note they can’t reorder a new cabinet or send someone to pick up the incorrect cabinets until a zone manager comes to verify that what is an error is an error. This is fine if it doesn’t take over two weeks fore someone to finally show up. Long story short is that the zone manger finally came to assess this situation on 5/9/08 (16 days after initial call). Do you consider a 16 day turn around good customer service? I also forgot to mention that I was charged for the remake of the corner cabinet. I would like to emphasis that this cabinet had to be remade because of an error in judgment and design made by one of your design specialists. Why should I have to pay for your employees mistakes?

Reorder

Incorrect cabinets are returned ( 4 total) on 3/27 and a new corner cabinet and side cabinet are ordered.

Maybe this will all work out...maybe not

We reconcile initial kitchen design with new floor plans that Lupi has. Discover that an extra cabinet has been sent. Also over the course of 48 hours it is determined how to make the cabinets that I was sent work. These kitchen design works on paper but practically speaking it is problematic for several reasons. If you ever required access to the corner vent in the future you would have to take a cabinet down to get to it. Because the corner was designed at a 90 degree angle when you open the doors on one of the cabinets it hits the cabinet on the other wall. There is simply not enough clearance and Scott indicated that spacers could have been used to fix this except there was not room for any spacers. I also suppose that corner cabinets were invented to overcome the problem of having cabinets on perpendicular walls installed at a 90 degree angle.

Can I get some help?

Lupi one pf the zone mangers finally comes to look at the cabinet order. We discover that the floor plans I have are not the same as the ones she has. I was never given a copy of the final floor plans. Nor was a provided the list of names and numbers that I was to use to contact people if I had problems or needed assistance once my order arrived. I also indicated that my pantry doors were incorrect and did not contain the glass I had ordered.

The Order is Wrong

Cabinets delivered 3/3/08 and I opened the boxes on 3/16/08. Immediately determine that there is something wrong with the order and call Home Depot twice on the 17th. Left messages with Fred Spath who returns some of my calls but never really addresses the content of my messages and keeps telling me that the floor plans they have in the store are correct. Implying that there could not be anything wrong with the order. Frankly I am not really sure what the floor plans have to do with me explaining that the cabinets that were sent can not possible fit in my kitchen. Finally my dad and I go to the store in person to try and get someone to address our problems and take action. This is when we spoke with Gerry Thomas and he got involved in the process.
The fact that my calls were basically dismissed and that my dad and I had to go to the store in person for someone to take action is really indicative of great follow through and great customer service isn’t it?