If you don't know it, don't show it.

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 16:05:26 -0700

So I just bought a shiny new monitor and as you can imagine I am eagerly anticipating it's arrival. I got an email update from Dell letting me know I could check the status of my order. When I got to the page it said "Shipped 08/08/2006". Awesome!!! And then I noticed on the side bar it said

Estimated Delivery Date is:8/10/06

Any estimated delivery date contained in this "Order Status" section is for information purposes only. Changes to the "Shipped by date" shown may occur. We recommend that you visit this site again 24 hours prior to the date provided for confirmation and further updates.

Well it's 5:30pm on the 10th and no monitor so I call Dell and after 20min on hold they tell me it won't be arriving until the 18th!

So I know the estimated date is "for information purposes only" but if it's that far off why show it all. I would much rather just have a Fed-Ex tracking number.

Going Home Sucks Sometimes

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:11:32 -0700

I ordered a wine fridge online from the Home Depot and hoped our it would arrive in fairly short order - within a week or so. That was not to be the case.

After a couple days, I received an email that my order had shipped. I tried to track it online, but no dice. I called the Home Depot to ask why it wasn’t working, when I was informed that it was being shipped by a “Common Carrier” and couldn’t be tracked online. Could I have the name or contact information of the carrier? Of course not. Despite multiple requests.

The only thing I was ever told was that the carrier (who would insist on remaining nameless) would contact me 24-48 hours before delivery to arrange a time to receive the order. Fine then. Turns out the carrier was Canadian Freightways for anyone who's curious.

Nine business days after my intial order, I received a very cordial call from the freight company and set up a delivery time. Not a convenient one, but a time nonetheless. Between 11am and 1pm on Friday. So I went into work early, and packed myself up to get home by 11am to work from home and wait.

And wait.

And wait some more.

Until 2:09pm.

That’s when I got a faint knock on the door. The delivery driver was there, saying my buzzer didn’t work. Too bad he tried the wrong buzzer entirely, even though the correct number was written on the delivery slip. No matter, the fridge is here!

Fridge is unloaded, delivery guy leaves, I rip open the packaging like a kid on Christmas!

And find…. the dent.

A huge unsightly gash in the side of my pristine fridge!

So I call the Home Depot, which is where they had a chance to make things right, and instead did absolutely everything wrong.

I’m instructed to keep the original packaging (have you seen how much stuff comes packaged with a fridge? I’m going to have to sleep with the stuff!), box it back up (are you kidding me?), and the carrier will be instructed to contact me to set up a time to pick up the busted up appliance. There goes another few hours off work.

But instead of sending another fridge to a valuable customer in good faith to exchange the units, the Home Despot insists on waiting for the broken unit to arrive back in their Burlington ON warehouse (a mere 4500 kms away) before sending the replacememt back across the country to me.

No, there is apparently no way around this. I can’t work with a local store to make a swap, and there’s no way they’ll send a whole extra unit (I mean, I’m sure having that extra $250 out of the warehouse makes a HUGE dent in their bottom line, right?) as a replacement at the same time as the pickup.

I replied that I would arrange a time for them to pick up the fridge and would like them to promptly cancel my order. It took two weeks to get the original fridge, I’ll be damned if I’m going to take yet ANOTHER day off on top of the return pick-up and wait about four weeks to receive an appliance I can get at innumerable other places.

I also asked for a supervisor or customer service person of some sort to contact me to discuss the issue, since I find it all pretty ridiculous, and I’m hoping that someone other than their friendly but ultimately useless call centre monkeys can actually find a reasonable solution to the issue.

Much to my surprise, after leaving my request for a follow-up call on Friday, I received a call from friendly Kurt at the Home Depot on Sunday afternoon (a customer service call on a Sunday!).

I explained my experience, and told Kurt my major disappointment was in the fact that they couldn’t do a straight exchange for the item, requiring me to a) subject myself to further inconvenience with the shipping company and b) wait 3-4 weeks to actually receive my (hopefully undamaged) product.

Kurt listened politely and we chatted and settled a few things.

1. The shipping company (contracted by UPS) is supposed to offer everyone a 30 minute delivery window up until 7:00pm Monday-Friday. Not offering those options and then showing up over an hour late is completely unacceptable. Home Depot just dumped Purolator for similar issues, and will be launching a formal complaint with UPS because of this.

2. My feedback on their return policy has been recorded and will be passed on, for whatever that’s worth. They are currently working on an inventory interface that will allow homedepot.ca orders to be facilitated through local stores, but they’re not there yet. Fair enough. Because of my feedback and situation, Kurt assured me that though it’s not their policy at this time, they’ll ensure my exchange is quick and easy (and not requiring multiple shipments) or facilitate the pickup and issue me a credit for the order.

3. As an additional good faith measure by Home Depot, I have also been offered 10% off my next order online up to $100. When all I was expecting was for someone to hear and acknowledge my complaint, and to fix the current situation, the additional offer to incent me to shop again at homedepot.ca (and hopefully have a better experience) was unexpected, welcome, and really smart on their end.

Nice recovery Home Depot. If you can actually make the follow-up satisfying for me, I'll consider you forgiven. But don't think that I'll actually consider shopping from homedepot.ca a good option if you continue with your archaic shipping and return policy, when there are numerous other retailers who can and will ship large items and deal with any problems locally.

Sutori - Stories Tagged With 'Delivery'

If you don't know it, don't show it.

Going Home Sucks Sometimes