So the wife worked her summer vacation in order to save enough money to get the living room floor replaced (and the kitchen shortly after hopefully.)
Anyway, back at the beginning of the month we finally ordered the hardwood (laminate flooring actually). Right around $1000 worth of floor. It’s been a fucking nightmare dealing with them from the get-go. I posted something on Twitter about it last night and they immediately responded with an email address to contact them with.
Here’s the email I just sent:
Hi, I posted a nasty tweet about Home Depot and Estes Express yesterday and it was recommended by Home Depot’s social folks that I send my contact information and order details to you.
My info is:
Richard Miles
some stuff like my address….If you call and don’t get an answer LEAVE A VOICEMAIL. I operated three 24 hour restaurants and can not always get to the phone but I will return the call.
My order number is ….
The issue is currently that my entire order was not received and I would like to receive the rest of it. I will go more into all of the details below.
I ordered 21 cases of laminate flooring the evening of October 3rd.
On October 6th I received an email that my order had shipped and the tracking number was …. I tracked it and no information was available for a couple of days when it updated to a projected delivery date of October 14th-15th. I took both days off of work so that I would be here and could receive the order. It never arrived.
On October 16th I received several emails from ….@homedepot.com that “the delivery team was not able to contact you with the number given, please contact this number to have your package from the home depot delivered” Her contact info was given as well. I received these emails at around a quarter after 1pm. I immediately called her back and left a voice mail with my contact information. I called back yet again shortly after 4pm and was told that she must have left for the day. I was put on hold for several minutes while the lady who answered the phone attempted to go ahead and schedule a delivery time. Up until that point I was not aware that I had to schedule a specific delivery time and was never made aware of that during the process. When she got back on the phone she said that I was scheduled for Monday the 19th between 12pm and 6pm. I took yet another day off work so that I could be there when the order arrived.
6pm Monday came and went and I called …. back again and left yet another voice mail. I then called the main online help number and asked to track a delivery. I was connected to a gentleman who looked up the tracking number and I was told that there was nothing about a delivery to my address scheduled. I was then told to call back the next day. I emailed …. The body of my email is below:
I need to find out when this delivery is going to happen. Other than the two emails you have sent nobody has attempted to contact me via email, text or phone. My original date of delivery according to the tracking information was to be Oct 14th or 15th. I took both days off work. When I received your email Friday the 16th I attempted to contact you at approximately 1pm and ended up leaving a voice mail. I called back again at 4pm and was told you had probably gone for the day but the lady I spoke with put me on hold to get in touch with someone else. When she came back on the line she said that my delivery would arrive today, October 19th, between 12pm and 6pm. Yet again I have taken another day off work to wait for six hours.
At 6pm I attempted to contact you again and once again went to voice mail, so I called back the main number and asked to track a delivery. I was connected with a gentleman who looked up the tracking number and told me there was nothing in the system about a delivery today and that I would just have to call back tomorrow. This is completely unacceptable and unprofessional.
I can’t afford to miss any more work and will have no days off until I leave town on the 28th. My delivery window is now anytime AFTER 4pm the next four days but they will need to contact me ahead of time so that I know it will be there.
Thanks for your consideration,
I called back twice on October 20th and was finally able to contact …. who set a delivery time for the 21st between 12pm-6pm.
The driver contacted me the morning of the 21st to let me know he would be there after 2pm and said that he would call me when he was about 30 minutes out. He did so. The product arrived, shrink-wrapped and on a pallet. I signed for it and he left. At that point we removed all of the shrink wrap and started carrying it to the house. There were unfortunately four rows of five cases each on the pallet, which I was not able to tell until we got the shrink wrap off.
I then called customer service again and was transferred to online customer service. I was put on hold while the gentleman I spoke with contacted Estes. When he finally came back on my line he said that whoever he spoke with at Estes had no idea what he was talking about and couldn’t help him. He was told to call back in the morning (of the 22nd.) because they would have to search the warehouse. The gentleman from the helpdesk also recommended that I call back today as well. I asked if they could just ship me another case of the missing flooring (about $43 worth if I recall correctly.) I was told that no, they couldn’t ship anything, that it had to be looked for first but that he could put me in the system to start a refund and that I could order another case. I told him no, I didn’t want to be put in for a refund and that I just wanted to flooring and that I would check back with Home Depot the next day.
Really? I just spent $1000.00 on flooring and you are going to quibble over a $43 case of flooring?
I called back this afternoon as soon as I arrived home from work. The lady I spoke with transferred me to online help, who then put me on hold while she contacted Estes. When she finally came back on the line I was told that the woman she had spoken with, …., was on her way out the door and that she would have to get everyone there to search the warehouse TOMORROW. I was given her email address and told to contact her directly tomorrow. So basically you guys are so worried about your $43 that instead of fixing my problem and then figuring out what happened you are going to make me wait while everyone searches the warehouse?
I’m in customer service and I am aware that things unfortunately do not always go as planned and people have awful experiences. It’s my job to correct those and do whatever it takes to make the customer happy. Sometimes you can’t make them happy but I do everything in my power to do so. The buck stops with me for everything to do with my product, my employees and anything else to do with my business. I do not allow my customers to be passed back and forth between my food suppliers, my corporate office and anyone else that I can pass the buck to. That’s just shitty customer service. I will say that the social media people with both companies were pretty quick about responding once I put this online. I appreciate it but unfortunately that seems to be the case with companies that aren’t interested in their customers. You have to go through the people that actually deal with customers daily.
At this point I don’t care how I get the wood. You can ship it via UPS, have Estes bring it to my house or have the local Home Depot manager put it in his car and drive his happy self over here. I don’t care.
Since I haven’t been able to get any sort of resolution I am sending this to Home Depot as well as Estes (who also contacted me via Twitter.) I am leaving town on Tuesday night so this has to be resolved prior to that. My next step if this isn’t successfully resolved prior is to contact Visa and dispute the entire $1017.44 transaction due to not receiving the product I paid for. Visa and Bank of America are OK, if not pretty good, at working with their customers to resolve issues. You are then welcome to come to my house and pick up the 20 cases I did receive and I’ll just go to Lowes.
Thank you for your time and I apologize for being so angry about the situation, but I am.
Richard Miles
My original draft of the email contained a considerable amount of profanity in it. Anyone that knows me would recognize it for being my normal happy demeanor lol. I decided that it wasn’t particularly professional and took the bad words out, leaving at least a little snark because I’m so pissed off right now. Three fucking weeks to get 21 cases of wood and still don’t have it. Fucking asshats.
Hopefully it’ll be taken care of pretty quickly. I shop at the local Home Depot often for work and home stuff and have never been anything but happy with them. Obviously it’s an entirely different set of ideals on the back-end than in their stores.