I’m a pretty big champion of good customer service. To me, that’s more important than whether a company is considered “the man” or not. If Home Depot gives good customer service, they deserve to be at the top of the heap.
Today’s experience made me wonder:
a) should I only go to Home Depot on weeknights?
b) is it a matter of departments? (ie. some departments are more properly staffed than others)
Last night we bought a chandelier. Got it home and realized that it must have been a returned purchase… the electric wires had already been cut short. This was not going to do for us, so I went back to return it. After completing the return, I proceeded to look for two things– a length of chain for making a flap stop, and a replacement chandelier.
Could I find an associate? Not a chance. I must have stood around and/or wandered looking for someone for 45 minutes. Aggravating to say the least. At least once, I almost put aside self-consciousness and yelled aloud “AAARRRGGGHHH! SOMEBODY ASSIST ME!!!!” But I refrained.
Decided on my own replacement chandelier (they had no more stock of the exact one I had returned), gave up on the length of chain, and went to the checkout. As they usually do, checkout guy asks, “Did you find everything you were looking for today?” “No,” I replied, “I could find neither the chandelier I was looking for, nor a piece of hardware I needed, nor even an associate. I found almost nothing I was looking for today.” Surprised, he asks, “would you like me to find someone if you’re not in a rush?” “Sure,” I reply. After getting on the phone he indicates to me, “apparently there are associates in hardware as we speak, or we can wait for them to call back to the cash here.”
I elected to just go find these alleged associates. Nobody. Not a soul. Stood around for another 10 minutes with nobody around. Wandered. No luck. Went over to lighting and finally found someone there, which resulted in me deciding against the replacement chandelier I had chosen.
Walked out with nothing. 1.25 hours of basically picking my nose waiting for someone.
Which brings me back to my original point…
a) I think weekends are probably bad for Home Depot… too many people, too few associates. At least on weeknights you can usually find someone, or at least it seems. I don’t know for sure, but that’s what it seems like to me.
b) Whenever I’ve had excellent service there (and I have), it has been in a more specialized area like plumbing or flooring. You can’t just be any shmoe and speak intelligently about plumbing, so they probably put knowledgable people in there. Ditto for flooring to a certain extent. But lighting? Most people can pick up the basics of lighting in moments. And hardware? Maybe the staff just doesn’t care about that section.. who wants to spend the evening helping a customer find nails and mundane crap like that?
Bwah. I remain frustrated. At least the lighting associate found an identical unit at another location, where I’ll go to pick it up later.
In other news, the powder room is done. Pictures to follow when the final touches are totally complete (dusting and a good cleanin’).
