One Sunday afternoon
my husband decided to stop into our local home imporvement
store to look at the kitchen cabinet selection. I had already
been looking at unfinished cabinets to replace the current ones in our
kitchen & we wanted to see what they looked like. When we arrived
in the cabinet department, we met, a kitchen designer. We asked about if there
were any unfinished cabinets in stock. As
she was guiding us to the shelves, she mentioned that the store had
FINISHED Portland Cabinets at a GREAT price, although she didn't know
why the price was SO low! My husband even asked, "Are they a clearance
or discontinued item? If we decide on these, do we need to rush to
purchase?" Her response was that we didn't need to rush because they
weren't a clearance item. We selected the Portland Oak cabinets that
are
on sale and called home to have our son collect measurements & send
pictures. The designer said that she needed to go over the measurements, and confirm what was in the store, and what would need to be ordered from the warehouse or,
possibly purchase, at nearby stores. We learned on Wednesday
that the cabinets which we chose WERE a discontinued item and that was reason for 50% off sale. The designer
put together a list and suggested we purchase what our store
has in stock check around with other
stores to see what they have to complete our project. We were told that if we
couldn't find the remaining 5 cabinets,we could return the purchased items.
Looking on
company website at
stores from Tampa to Daytona it appears most of these items are now out
of stock!
As we reviewed the list, some things just didn't
add up. It looked like the associate was trying to give us options, but I can't fully
tell, so we went to the store last night at around 5:30PM in an effort understand the list a little better. (We knew we want an Utility Pantry
between the Fridge and Stove, so
that could be where some of the confusion is coming in. Also, some of
the item numbers were showing a different finish which didn't seem right.) The designer we had been dealing had already gone home, but we found 2 other associates in the kitchen
area. One woman was playing with her cell phone & the other was on
the store phone, presumably with a customer. We waited for a couple of
minutes, and, finally, the woman who appeared to be on a business call,
acknowledged us over her phone call asking what we needed. When we briefly
explained the situation, she responded with a laugh & said, "Well,
I'm too busy trying to put this order together right now!" It might
have been the shocked look on our faces at such a response, but she
reluctantly ended her call telling the person on the other end that she
would have to call them back in a minute "because hopefully this won't
take long." At that point I was pretty much DONE! We looked up a few
items missing on our list, and didn't find them in stock anyplace. We
came home and searched the website AGAIN checking stores across the state of
Florida & couldn't find all of the pieces to complete our kitchen
remodel. I was very disappointed! I now had visions of pieces that I hadn't even thought of before our first store visit. Not only would I probably not get those pieces because they weren't available anymore, we were back to square one!
It was time to start looking at how to stain & finish cabinets again. That is until I told my oldest son about our experience the next day! After I explained all that had happened over the past couple of days & how frustrated I was about it, he replied, "Did you tweet the company?" Ummm... no, it hadn't occurred to me to TWEET the company! I'm not in my 20s, so twitter isn't the first thing that comes to mind as a customer service tool! My son, however, has tweeted the big car companies to get a test drive of a specific model car! He has also tweeted while standing in a store unable to find an associate. The cooperate twitter responded asking the store number, and he had an associate to him in a matter of minutes! I handed my him my iPhone and he composed three simple Tweets:
Within 40 minutes I had this response on Twitter:
I emailed our experience to them and the NEXT day we had a phone call from our local store management team. It turns out it WAS possible to have the missing pieces shipped to our local store! We determined what pieces we needed with the management of our store, and placed our order. Thanks to Lowe's Customer Care & Twitter we were able to gt ALL of the pieces we wanted! I even posted a THANK YOU Tweet when we finished the project!
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