Week ending 7/27/12

On Wednesday, we stole some time from the day and went for a fabulous mid-week hike.  Calvin was all tired out:

Well probably not that tired, but he did look cute in his bed.

During the week, I had a heck of a time buying the glass tile.  It boggles my mind how so many people across so many fields in the home improvement industry can be so incompetent.  I found an online distributor who sold the glass and as I mentioned before I abandoned my cart during the prior attempt to purchase.  They had a "pick up at a local warehouse option" that I wanted to choose, but nowhere on the website do they list where those locations are.  Since shipping on $20 worth of tile was close to $100, I wasn't going to buy if I couldn't pick up.

After exchanging numerous emails with customer dis-service, I finally did decide to buy and pay shipping since the price was still cheaper than I could get locally and it saved me a trip to the tile store.  When I placed the order, it let me order in an odd square foot amount which would equal about 2.2 boxes.  I was expecting to be locked into ordering full boxes, but since they let me order an odd amount I went ahead and did it.

The next day, customer dis-service emails me and says 1) you screwed up by ordering incomplete boxes, you have to order in complete boxes, and 2) we don't have this tile anyway and have no idea when we can get it.  Ugh, such incompetence.

I got on the tile manufacturer's website and emailed their customer dis-service department to find out if this product was still made and if everyone was out of it or just this one dealer.  Customer dis-service sent me to their "find a distributor" link and said to ask there.  I asked the person to please re-read the email as I already asked my seller and they could not answer.  That was the whole point of going to the manufacturer - to find out if this dealer was full of crap or if it was a company-wide thing.  She again replied with "you need to talk to a DISTRIBUTOR not a DEALER."  So let me get this right - a customer who is ready to make a purchase asks you a reasonable question which you COULD answer but choose not to and then you correct the customers vocabulary?  What are you thinking you moron?

This is why home improvement sucks.  I spend a massive amount of time handling other people's incompetence.

I called a local "distributor" I found on their website and while they didn't have the product in stock, they did have access to it in a ware house in Texas.  GREAT, can I give you a credit card over the phone?  Uh, no, we only sell to industry people like designers and contractors.  Can I give you my contractor's license number?  Uh, well, we don't really do this but if you have access to a fax machine I can fax you a form that you can fill out and fax back and we can make an exception for your contractor.  ARGH!  That is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard.  You have an eager customer on the phone who is ready to make a purchase you expended zero effort to get and you say no?  Again, morons.  And yes, they really wanted a fax - I asked and they would not accept a scanned and emailed document.  Seriously, is this 1995?

I came to expect this when the economy was booming, but home improvement is still a really weak industry so I just can't understand why people still treat customers like crap.

I finally decided to buck up and pay the extra to get the glass tile from the local store I've been dealing with.

On Friday, I went and picked up the floor tile and ordered the glass.  Of course it didn't go smoothly.  The floor tile had the wrong stock number on it, didn't look anything like the sample and they couldn't even find the sample board I had taken home and based my order on.  I was there for an hour, and couldn't keep the attention of anyone helping me.  Each time we got close to figuring something out they'd take a call or help another customer.  It was very irritating and I finally had to put my foot down and make the person stay with me until we were done.  I ended up taking what they ordered for me and I am hoping it works out.  I just didn't have the energy to fight anymore.