Friday, December 19, 2008
By the Way / Kotz Dishwasher Held Hostage: Do Not Buy from Home Depot, GE
Posted by Pete Kotz on Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 5:35 AM
It could happen to you: You spend good money on a major purchase at a store that shall remain unnamed (the 100 Oaks Home Depot). Said store (the 100 Oaks Home Depot) promises to deliver said item by a certain date in exchange for your money. A deal is consummated.
But as soon as they have your money, the promises vanish. You are no longer a valued customer. You are an irritant on the telephone. So you spend the next few weeks harassing said company (the 100 Oaks Home Depot) to force it to simply fulfill its end of the deal.
Such is the predicament we now find ourselves in at Scene HQ. A few weeks ago, our dishwasher broke. This presented a small problem. Many of our employees believe their mother works here, so they just dumped their dirty dishes in the sink. The pile became so great that we petitioned the city to rezone our office for commercial waste.
So we bought a new dishwasher from the 100 Oaks Home Depot. It promised delivery, via GE, four days later. Then it's true, evil, possibly anti-American nature appeared...
The day before delivery, GE called. It hadn't processed our paperwork. Could it delay delivery a day?
Sure, we replied cheerfully, since we're generally cheerful people here at Scene, where cheerfulness is Job No. 1.
But the next day, GE called again. It now wanted a delivery window between 5:30 and 9:30 p.m. Our business manager, the lovely and very pregnant Liz Holly, politely explained that this would suck, since it would entail having someone stay late for a delivery that may or may not come. (These delivery windows, as we all know from waiting for the plumber, are not exactly etched in stone.)
Could could we please schedule for earlier? Liz queried angelically. After all, we told you about the time thing when we bought the damned dishwasher.
But GE showed up at 8 that night anyway. Naturally, no one was around to receive them. Internal communication at GE is not Job No. 1.
So the lovely and very much pregnant Liz Holly called Home Depot again, alerting the store to GE's general shittiness in the art of appliance delivery. But Home Depot offered no remedy. There was nothing it could do--except blame GE. We'd have to wait another week for our dishwasher.
That's when we understood: Home Depot and GE are aligned with the Taliban, attempting to rip the very fabric of this great nation by soiling the good name of American customer service.
"Meanwhile, dirty dishes pile up, I've wasted a couple hours of time, and we still don't have a dishwasher," says Liz Holly, sighing with way extensive anguish.
So let this be a warning to you, fellow citizen:
Do not buy from Home Depot or GE.
They suck at customer service.
And they're mean to pregnant ladies.
The End.
Comments (26)
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Wow, that's quite a rant. Yes,I said rant.
By the "higher than thou" tone of this blog, I fuly expect that you would have been regarded as a harrassing bunch by nearly any purveyor of murchandise.
I almost felt sympathy for you. This was until he part where you effectively said: "No one wiated around for the delivery that GE scheduled with us because we all know that large corporations scheduling deliveries are inherrently lying and want to make us look like fools."
Well, sound the alarm, because you are fools.
They gave you a window that, while an inconvenience, was definitive and relatively immediate. And yet, you failed to pick either another evening, or work out a better time during theday. You chose the 8th grade blind date route and stood them up. Congratulations.
I don't think you needed a dishwasher at all. I think you just needed something to rant about. And you certainly went out of your way to do it. For this, I say good show. Fantastic. Best of luck to any other retailer you happen to do business with. May they do exactly what home depot has done to you. Recognize you as an arrogant buffon and punish you for it.
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Oh we NEED a dishwasher sir. This place is a WRECK -- and we had a problem with mice BEFORE we were leaving food-encrusted plates all over the office.
Today I thoughtfully brought in a new scrubby brush for dishwashing by hand only to discover that someone had used the last of the detergent and not replaced it or told anyone else (me) to buy more.
ARGHGHGHGHGHHHHHH!!!
Shoulda gone to Lowes. In-house, not contracted, delivery by very courteous folks.
Remember that next time...or this time if you can cancel your pending HD order.
I would recomment NOT to buy any GE products. They're NOT good quality. GE's greedy executives only wants to make fast money and not great products!
GE is trying to sell the GE Appliances Division and they can't sell...since 90% of the world knows that GE products are shit! Don't believe or have any trust in GE products. Do a google search on GE appliances and you will see how many unsatisfied customers they're in this world...check out the recall sites too.
I would say STAY AWAY FROM ANY GE PRODUCTS! The president of GE Immelt doesn't believe in GE since he is trying to unload his shit :)! Sorry Immelt you suck on how you're running GE to the ground!
I would recomment NOT to buy any GE products. They're NOT good quality. GE's greedy executives only wants to make fast money and not great products!
GE is trying to sell the GE Appliances Division and they can't sell...since 90% of the world knows that GE products are shit! Don't believe or have any trust in GE products. Do a google search on GE appliances and you will see how many unsatisfied customers they're in this world...check out the recall sites too.
I would say STAY AWAY FROM ANY GE PRODUCTS! The president of GE Immelt doesn't believe in GE since he is trying to unload his shit :)! Sorry Immelt you suck on how you're running GE to the ground!
My husband and I bought GE Profile appliances for our remodeled kitchen and actually couldn't be happier with them. We've had them for a year and haven't had any problems. No issues with delivery we got them through Lowes.
The oven we got is called a Trivection oven and it cooks like a regular oven, but also uses microwaves to cook food faster... On Thanksgiving we cooked a 19lb turkey in about 2 hours. None of the other appliances we looked at had features like this and it makes weeknight meals goa lot quicker for us, leavingmore time to do other things.
Regarding Jim's comment:
Pete, I've long suspected you were a buffon. In fact, aren't you the uncle of the great Italian soccer player Gianluigi Buffon? And Jim, let me point out that all the Buffons are arrogant. Gianluigi's Uncle Lorenzo (Pete's brother) was a legendary goalkeeper, and married Czech model Alena Seredova.
And don't forget Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, the great 18th century French naturalist and cosmologist. He was a big influence on Darwin.
Jim, if you were a Buffon, you'd be arrogant too.
Jack,
Your mastery of Google and / or Wikipedia is refreshing. There are few people in this world would be capable of researching and reporting so much information about the Buffons in only a 4 hour period of time. Clearly you and Pete are in kahoots. I won't hold it against you.
Be it Buffon, buffoon, or baboon, it doesn't really matter because Pete may actually be all three in the same flesh and bone. The point of my initial comment is relatively simple:
Pete somehow believes that the rules don't apply to him. Even baboons know that in order to actually receive a dishwasher you have to be present at the time of delivery. But somehow this basic concept has escaped Pete. By standing up the poor delivery man (who was kind enough to make an appearance exactly when he said he would), Pete had to know that he was only going to hurt himself in the end.
Honestly, I feel bad for the pregnant lady involved in all of this nonsense. Pete must have, at one point, calculated the risks and rewards of "Dishwasher" versus "Rant for my blog." Either he is bad at math and calculated wrong, or he consciously chose the rant over the dishwasher. (Pete strikes me as the kind of guy who would have chosen the latter.)
Ultimately, it comes down to a simple truth: By miscalculation or by arrogance, Pete does not have a dishwasher...but I do.
Oh yeah, and to reiterate: I feel no sympathy - no sympathy at all - for the plight of Pete. He brought this on himself . And best of all, he openly admits it!
Pete should use this experience as an opportunity to be more culturally aware of doing business in a free market economy.
And don't buy any Apple products either. The proprietary assholes that they are, offered no solution to my 6 month old crashed Mac-Book. "That's it. Tough Shit. Good luck."
Thanks, but I'll stick to my PC any day!
I've worked with a handful of folks designing their house and inevitably they want to use Home Depot for some portion of their redesign, build out, or other improvement of their abode. Based on my history of using HD or their evil, more upscale, sister company, Expo Design Center, i feel comfortable in stating their idiots. You don't think so? Hear me out. When ordering a special sink, they didn't mess it up once or twice, but four...that's right, four times did they misorder the sink with a myriad of reason as to why. None reasonable. In fact of the 5 special orders from Expo only one was correct. Being correct 20% of the time wouldn't cut it in any other industry and yet, they stay in business. Wait, it gets better. When I went to them to order my carpet with exact drafted measurements used to build my addition (good enough for hte builders, but not for the carpet guy), they said they couldn't use those measurements and had to send someone out to measure to ensure the measurements were correct. And so, the nice guy came, made measurements, carpet came in, it was to short. Wrong measurements! I had them correct the first time! Livid. I have at least 4 other incidents of this nature, but will spare you. As a business guy, I can only imagine how much it would effect their bottom line if they just had decent customer service--or even employees who seemed as though they gave a shit. They don't. So, I don't mind posting on here that I wholeheartedly believe them to be incompetent. Shop local if you can, but most importantly, shop some where other than Home Depot.
To The Satisfied GE GE Customer: GE products are made to only last tops 3 years...than you need to puchase new ones! GE it's self is trying to sell the GE appliances because they're NOT GOOD products. Besides the appliances...look at the stock what it's is today...at 16....years ago it's used to be at 40+...GE products are shit and am very happy I don't have any GE products in my home! Did you know the wall unit ovens are on recall? I hope you don't have one.
Jim, we're taking up a collection here at the office to buy you a sense of humor. In the meantime, you might actually want to, uh, READ THE POST.
Liz told them no one would be here at the SCENE office after 5:30, so they shouldn't come then. She asked them to come during business hours. But somehow this basic concept escapes you...
#1 - You people have no internal management structure intended to deal with the day to day operations, the bullshit of every day stuff, like dirty dishes, so GE and Home Depot take a credibility hit for that?
#2 - Doesn't the Scene have a single truck? You could pick it up from the Depot yourself. There are courier services that do this stuff all over town if you don't.
#3 - Who is going to hook it up? Put a stipulation in their contract to deliver the thing.
slow news day.
To the Wanna Be Designer: You're right Home Depot has poor customer services...you may not know this info...however, Home Depot president use to be a GE executive...now he is a chrylser...doesn't it tell you these greedy executives are only good to go in a company get paid top dollar and get fired once their 2 year contact is over and move on! I CALL HOME DEPOT the HOME CHEPO store....yes, correct it should be name Home CHEPO...no customer services what so ever...no integrity...nothing but bull shit stories.
Thank you for revealing that you are, in fact, in cahoots with Pete. Again, I won't hold that against you. But I will ask you to keep collecting that money...we'll need some left over in order to buy you a set of glasses.
The post doesn't say anything about Liz asking them politely come in during business hours. It actually says that she told the delivery agents that it would "suck" (how quaint) if they showed up in the evening. The article said nothing about a "mutual agreement at a time and location suitable to both parties." Nor did it imply that a rational conversation to that point took place.
This would have been an important detail for Pete to include in the article. But, alas, he did not. Therefore, the suggestion that this actually happened is more likely to be untrue than true - because, let’s face it, that was long rant. There was plenty of opportunity to get an important point like that one in there. Yet, there it isn't.
You can keep trying, but I am not going to open the amazing valve of sympathy... not even a smidge.
1) I've had positive experiences with that Home Depot Design Department (Ms. Terry is great!).
2) Delivery, on the other hand, wasn't great (30 days late on an appliance that held up our kitchen remodel= big effin bummer for us!).
3) Can we send Jim and Adam Gold to the Siberia of Blogging for re-programming?
4) TRUE: Former GE exec Nardelli walked away from 3 years at Home Depot with 200 million. Now he's at Chrysler. Go figure. (exact dates and dollars based on limited memory)
5) Buffon is indeed one of the top keepers in the world of football.
Seventeen comments and the crucial question has yet to be asked....Who's the hot babe in the photo? I imagine she'd get her delivery any damn time she wanted.
Oh. A cursory search for "Home Depot" in Google Images turns up the photo of the lovely Jessica Alba (I thought she looked familiar). The sclub next to her is texting a friend that he's with Jessica Freaking Alba.
You're right, Jim. People should be more aware of doing business in a free market economy. That means don't buy a dishwasher from a company that thinks they're doing you a favor by delivering it whenever they feel like it.
Now who gives me sympathy for having to read your whiny posts?
Dishwasher Sam is also in cahoots with Pete. Secretly, I think he is Jack. I won't hold it against him.
Again, I am pretty sure that the delivery guy was not like "Show up in the afternoon 2 days from now? Sure no problem!" While secretly thinking, "Heh Heh Heh, wait until I tomorrow night to screw them over! Muhahahaha!"
I am calling shenanigans on your rant here Pete. Clearly you guys failed to reschedule a time and hung up the phone thinking "Well, I know this is dumb, but I am going to stand that guy up tomorrow. I know I'll have to do dishes by hand, but at least I'll have something to Rant about tomorrow and people will give me sympathy."
No sympathy. None.
Who'd have thought a post about a dishwasher delivery would be the most discussed post in weeks? Here's the the thread that keeps on giving!
Jack,
Finally you've said one thing that we can both agree on. A post about a dishwasher generating such a response? I'd like to quote the bald dude from The Princess Bride and say "Inconceivable!"
Despite my argumentative stance, I hope that your dishwasher has finally been delivered and you will no longer have to use your hands to wash spoiled bits of food and cheese from your plates in 2009.
Happy Holidays to all of you at Scene!
Dear Home Depot Customer,
On behalf of The Home Depot I apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced in regards to your Appliance purchase and delivery with our company.
Please know that it is The Home Depot’s goal to satisfy all of our customers with our products and services. We look forward to assisting you and your family with all of your future home improvement needs. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
Christian L. Sagna
Agent Expert
2455 Paces Ferry Road/B-3
Atlanta, GA 30339
Phone: (770) 433-8211 or 800-654-0688 x84861
Fax: (770) 384-5038
