Lowes – Never Stop Improving.
The home improvement big box REALLY should heed the advice of their own slogan. They have a LOT of room for “improvement.”
This is an open letter to anyone at Lowes who cares enough to actually respond in a real way to try and engage with a customer who’s now been soured-for-life from EVER wanting to have anything to do with this company who seems rather annoyed that the unwashed masses might want them to expend a modicum of effort alongside the exchange of goods for money that is the rock bottom bare minimum of retail.
I’ll try to keep this to the highlights, as I’ve spilt too much digital ink and wasted too much breath on this tone-deaf organization as it is. Here’s how my story started:
My Mother in Law bought an $80 Hitachi drill from the Lowes in Oneonta NY as a Xmas present for me. She (and I, and my wife) were all very impressed by how light the sealed-packaged-drill was (can you see this was going?) but we all chalked it up to the advances in material science that make so many amazing things possible.
But no. When I finally cracked it open to charge it up, it turned out that not advanced-chemistry, but rather age-old-shoplift’ery had lightened our load. Here’s the run down.
-The drill packaging which consisted of a hard-plastic case inside of a cardboard POP sleeve was absent the expected ziptie(s) to keep the case secure, and was sporting a brand new set of over-the-top and around-the-sides plastic strapping. This strapping looked professional enough to avoid arousing suspicion, but in retrospect, the way it was obscuring and deforming the cardboard overwrap certainly seems suspect.
- Upon opening the “drill” I’ve got 1 Charger base. 2 Batteries (one of which has a OEM plastic contact-cover, the other was missing it). 1 Small set of bits as pictured on the overwrap. 1 random loose-bit slotted into one half of a paired set of storage slots. A manual, a little loose plastic wrap, and exactly zero hand tools.
- For those of you who don’t work retail as career-professionals like my wife and I, this is what we in the business call a “repack”. Some sleazeball buys a product they want, takes it home, takes OUT the good stuff, puts in a brick (or just enough of the original low-value contents to be convincing) very carefully and professionally re-seals the package so any store clerk wouldn’t even think to open it for verification, take it back to the store and get a refund of their full purchase price.
Protip- Lowes is more focused on getting rid of customers than doing their d**n jobs, so any aspiring thieves out there should practice this technique there.
So, we discover this, and immediately realize what’s happened, but we’re not fussed, we know this happens all the time, and are SURE we can waltz into any old Lowes and get a refund or an exchange. Because THAT’S HOW THE BUSINESS WORKS IN 2016. I call my Mother in Law to see if she has a receipt, but tell her not to be fussed if she doesn’t because this happens all the time and shouldn’t be a problem.
She finds the original receipt and mails it to us, so we wait for it to arrive. Once we have it in hand, on her next day off my Wife goes down to our local Lowes (Kilingly CT) and explains the situation.
The following series of events are what have happened since this point-
At this point, we both reach out to Lowes to try and resolve this. Parallel events-
Myself-
My Wife-
48 Hours Pass (Saw that coming, didn’t you?)
We have a day off so we grab our empty drill box and receipt and drive on down to Lowes in Killingly. On the way I tweet at Lowes again, and am asked to update my Rant or Rave (This is annoying to do on a mobile device, and a little ridiculous to ask a customer to do but whatever), and I do so, explaining the lack of contact and am promised that the issue is being escalated.
We proceed to the service desk-
Any guesses how many hours it’s been? 48+. No calls. No emails. No tweets. Nothing.
Here’s the deal. We’re retail professionals, gainfully employed, and spending all day every day doing everything possible to make OUR customers happy and loyal. I do it from the corporate office (with 11 years of field background), she does it every day at the store level. We can AFFORD an $80 drill any day of the week. The money’s not an issue. In fact we received as a wedding and housewarming gift a $200 Lowes gift card. That Killingly store is the one closest to our home, and when spring comes I’m sure we would have given them that gift card and how many other hundreds of dollars we’ll be spending in preparation for our first spring in our new home (patio furniture, riding lawn mower, grill, all on the list).
Anyone with a primary school education can see that giving us the $80 drill (for which I’m sure they can get at least 30% credit from their Salvage Vendor if not Hitachi themselves) in exchange for our future business would have been easy math.
Instead, Killingly will not get ONE PENNY of our $200 gift card. And Lowes writ-large won’t be getting that Drill purchase, nor any of our other future business. And I’m transparently on a social-warpath with their brand now, maybe not enough to cause any real pain, but certainly not a benefit to them.
But Mike in Killingly sure did keep that $80 in his P&L bottom line. Oh wait…yeah he didn’t.
Definitely room for “Improvement.”