I will preface this by saying that the vast majority of appliance installations by Lowe’s here at The Nerdery have gone relatively smoothly once I’ve gotten past the tears of spending money I don’t have on an appliance that wasn’t particularly stressed and should have the build quality to last longer than they do these days.
This will not be one of those happy tales and the truly sad part of it is that all of this was completely avoidable had Lowe’s sent an installation crew who actually knew what they were supposed to be doing and then took much more effective accountability when everything starting going completely south.
Welcome to Hell (Refrigerator Edition)
The descent into appliance hell started early in the week with the unwelcome blinking number on the indicator of the refrigerator and warm refrigerator and freezer sections. Three attempts at resetting the hardware failed to resolve it so I figured after 10-12 years of surprisingly faithful service for a Samsung that only recently had the ice maker that’s been the subject of several class action lawsuits fail, it’s the turn for the compressor and goodness knows what else to be knackered and this Samsung is ready for the scrap heap.
Two trips to Lowe’s later and I’ve got the replacement refrigerator set for installation today.
Or so I thought.
Oh, it made it on the truck and the new LG refrigerator made it to my driveway.
Prior to their arrival, I had shut off the main water supply and was draining the water from the system from the taps downstairs which is actually above and beyond what even Lowe’s required of me to do. Memories of a house destroyed long ago by a toilet tank cracking in the upstairs washroom whilst we were on holiday is why I tend to be very paranoid when it comes to plumbing and it’s why I always shut off the water at the main valve when there’s any plumbing to be done.
In fairness, I probably should have started that process much earlier and we might have gotten lucky with the debacle that was about to unfold.
The old refrigerator was already pulled away from the wall and the installer lead slips back there and immediately starts undoing the metal hose to disconnect the refrigerator from the water supply.
The little tap starts spewing out a fair bit more water than was reasonably expected which a handy towel puts right but he reconnects the hose and says that a plumber has to come mend the valve and that installation can’t proceed.
A more handy observer than I would have instantly noticed something was very wrong with this situation.
In fact, two much more mechanically-inclined people I trust implicitly did catch what I missed.
You know when you absolutely know to the core of your being that something is wrong with a situation but you just can’t quite put your finger on it?
Sadly, whilst I’m reasonably handy in mending relatively simple things round the house (especially the electric stuff for which I did get training in high school), plumbing isn’t really one of my more expert-level skills at the best of times and certainly isn’t when I’m more than a little stressed.
That’s what I’m feeling right at this moment when I’m confronted with now having to shell out a lot more money I do not have and have even more of my time wasted for what should have been one of the most trivial appliance installations.
OK…Now What In The World Do We Do?!?
The installer rings up his supervisor at the distribution centre in Clayton and she’s equally unhelpful and wants me to get a plumber out that I can’t afford any more than this refrigerator is already financially screwing me and then advised me to ring up the Lowe’s store to get the situation sorted out.
At this point, I offer to have them leave the new refrigerator and I’d deal with hooking up the thing to the water supply and complete the installation myself (and then deal with compensation for my effort at a later time) if they’d kindly haul away the old refrigerator which I’d already paid them to do.
And…they were completely unwilling to be reasonable and compromise on that point!
At that point, hypoglycaemia from not eating in about 24 hours and stress is kicking in hard and I’ve got two people giving me a bunch of policies on why they’re not going to do anything instead of actual solutions and that equals me needing the situation to be de-escalated in a hurry.
I was so done with the poor and negative experience and prospects of not having a working refrigerator in my kitchen for who knows how long and tell them if they’re not willing to at least get the old refrigerator out of the house and leave me to hooking up the new one, then they can leave so that I can prepare for the joy that is what modern corporations euphemistically call “customer service”.
In desperation, I ring up Miguel and explain what’s been going on as they’re packing up and kick over to FaceTime where he can see that the water in the system has finally completely drained out.
I try catching the installation crew and tell them so and that in a general contractor’s expert opinion we could probably make a go of the installation again but it’s made very clear they’re not interested in trying to salvage the situation for a happy ending.
I’d like to be charitable and believe that may well have been due to other deliveries on his schedule and not being able to linger and try to complete the installation.
Based on a couple of things the installer said, I really get the impression that he probably tried a couple of times early on in his installation career to do right by the customer rather than policy and was spanked hard by his management for doing so and he’s now all about just following policy (whether it makes any sense or not).
I really got the “spanked puppy” and “I’ve got to keep my job” vibe from him and if that’s truly the case, I can understand completely why he might not want any more negative reinforcement from his management.
Trust me, I can emphasize *COMPLETELY* after the last couple of years.
However, it’s hard to be charitable and I’m even more convinced about that vibe when I would later hear of the the installer’s version of the encounter in the installation notes being described as “throwing them out of my house” which is a vile and diabolical slander that I most certainly did not do and seems far more in line with covering their ass as you’ll soon see.
If I’m actually throwing you out of my house, you will have no doubts of it! Any solicitor who has come to my doorstep at a most inconvenient time (which is pretty much *ANY* time!) and not even made it in the house knows the difference between throwing someone out and a very calm and measured delivery of “you can go now”.
One of the few amusing things in this lousy experience is that the warehouse supervisor kept talking about policies and customer support on the installer’s phone speaker for a few minutes to no one in particular after even after it was crystal clear that the installation attempt had failed and that she’d done absolutely nothing to help salvage the situation.
I even asked out loud why she was doing this as the installer is trying to reattach the front door and I’m holding it to make it easier for the pins to go back into place and yet she still kept talking until the installer finally had the presence of mind to hang up after the door was back in place.
I can only ascribe that to the supervisor being far better at speaking than actually actively listening and sadly that seems to be a skill that is quite abundant amongst the people we’d deal with in the next hour or so.
Miguel Comes Riding To The Rescue
I felt something was completely off about the installation but it wouldn’t be until my mate Miguel very kindly came more than a few miles down the hill from Wendell on a Saturday afternoon he could be doing far more interesting things with until we were able to conclusively determine and prove that the installer had NEVER TURNED THE VALVE OFF prior to disconnecting the hose from the little spigot!
We might have gotten lucky had I started draining the water from the system earlier in that there wouldn’t have been any water left other than what was in the short length of hose to the refrigerator which wouldn’t have been very much.
But that does not excuse in the slightest the breathtaking incompetence of a supposedly professional and trained appliance installation technician failing to perform what is literally the first step in the actual installation process!
The document and the video Lowe’s provided does not mention shutting off the water at the main valve from the city at all.
As noted above, I’ve just been used to doing so whenever I’ve needed to fiddle with the plumbing (or going on holiday for an extended period of time) before usually ending up throwing in the towel and ringing up Miguel to do it more competently like he did when the master shower needed the valve replaced.
If anything, Miguel pointed out something I’d not thought of as I’m beating myself up for missing something so obvious.
Had I not turned off the water at the main valve, this technician’s mistake which is at best incompetent and annoying could have been far more disastrous with water spewing all over the kitchen and beyond and causing potentially thousands of dollars of damage (between the flooring, the cabinetry, and the piano located just on the other side of a dividing wall as a start)!
The success of the installation and avoidance of thousands of dollars of potential damages to the home shouldn’t be left to a customer going above and beyond what their documentation said they had to do and sheer bloody luck!
You’d Think They Might Listen To Reason…And You’d Be Wrong!
Once Miguel who is a general contractor with above average plumbing skills had ensured that all of the valves (the main shutoff valves and the valve to the refrigerator water spigot) were functioning properly, he was kind enough to stick around and help with the conversation with Lowe’s on how to recover this dreadfully awful installation experience.
I rang up the Knightdale store where I’d made the purchase and arrangements for delivery and installation and after two attempts over a 15 minute period, they never picked up the phone. It rang through a few times but then would roll back into the hold queue. I’d be interested to know how many people in that store were on duty that day that could have spared perhaps 30 seconds to bother pick up a phone even if it was to ask for us to stay on hold until someone could be made available.
It’s not entirely out of the realm of the possibility that the installer and/or his supervisor had tipped them off that the installation had gone south and that they were intentionally ignoring my call. If that’s the case, then that not only speaks very badly of their character when they share responsibility for the success of installation when they were the ones that help initiate it but frankly would be worthy of disciplinary proceedings.
Miguel rings up Lowe’s on his own phone via the professional support number and Ronaldo is the one who answers first so we abandon the attempt to talk to the store.
Ronaldo looks up the order and that’s when we’re told of the “cover your ass” version of the events that were written into the record as well as the demand that a plumber mend the valve to the refrigerator water supply.
Miguel makes the very reasonable suggestion that this particular crew needs to be re-trained to do installations properly and points out that there is nothing wrong with the shut-off valve to that water outlet provided the technician bothers to turn off the water first.
I’ve got pictures of how he left the old refrigerator when he packed up and left and the valve is very clearly in the OPEN position and another picture that clearly shows no water is coming out when it is in the CLOSED position.
The tech never closed the valve and I wish I’d thought to film that as he’s holding the hose as the outlet is spitting out water that was draining from the system as a whole.
I didn’t think I’d be forced to film an installation from someone who is supposedly professional and trained.
I’ll not be making that mistake the next time especially if porkie pies (“lies” in Cockney rhyming slang) are going to be told about me afterward!
Thinking that we’d gotten Ronaldo to finally understand that the responsibility for this installation failing so spectacularly was completely on the Lowe’s installer not properly shutting the valve and that I had actually averted a much bigger crisis as well as the valves being certified as operational by a proper general contractor, we were at the point of trying to figure out when they could make another attempt at installation and figuring out what compensation for the inconvenience would be in order.
Personally, I’m thinking an installation that went this badly wrong would be worth Lowe’s at the Clayton distribution centre doing whatever they could do by putting a new-in-the-box refrigerator on a truck and sending it round with people who know what they’re doing in the five or six hours we had to play with in their installation window.
Of course, their corporate policies and that distribution centre both being examples where the customer comes last and the lunatics seem to be running the asylum made that effectively impossible.
Ronaldo offers up a Sunday installation but for a few reasons that’s just not a possibility (that’s why it was scheduled for today which was the most wide-open I have to accommodate a four-hour delivery window!) and we make it very clear Sunday is a no-go.
He next offers up Monday but again finding a four hour window when I’m schlepping Alex to summer school and back and then taking him to work is equally impossible and both Miguel and I tell him that Tuesday is probably the better option.
This is where Lowe’s needs to really up their game, IMO…they need to find a way to get a much tighter control over installation times and availability. I understand that occasionally installations go to hell (after today, I’d say I’m exceptionally familiar with that possibility) and things take longer than planned but having zero ability to tell the warehouse that they need to make sure this particular delivery is at an actual convenient time especially when they’re trying to rescue a frustratingly failed installation seems woefully misguided at best!
Meanwhile, Ronaldo shows more initiative than he’d shown to that point and sets the new appointment for…you guessed it…Monday! And I had *NEVER* agreed to that date…I was still going through the various things on my schedule trying to figure out if it would actually work!
When we pointed that out to him and that Tuesday was the better option, he then starts in on this song and dance about how he is not unable to change the appointment to Tuesday.
If that was a joke on his part, it was in exceptionally poor taste. If you were able to magically set an appointment for two days that I hadn’t agreed to, surely the system must allow him to actually set the correct installation date.
Alas…no.
I figured I’d leave that aside for a moment and see if I could get him to sing on the same page of music as far as compensation for the inconvenience and his statement of policy was that the installation had to be completed before compensation can be discussed.
That seems even more insane and is absolutely the wrong time for that discussion to occur!
What possible incentive does that leave for Lowe’s to actually negotiate in good faith rather than just take the position of “installation done, everything is totally fine now” regardless of what the massively inconvenienced customer might think and try to walk away from any accountability whatsoever?
Even leaving that aside, there’s the practical aspect that any business that allows an already very angry customer to have three more days to stew in rage about a situation that’s already well past disciplinary action for more than a few employees are incompetent per se!
I Really Hate Having To Do This…
With Ronaldo effectively reaching the pinnacle of uselessness, I didn’t feel I had a choice but to try to engage his supervisor and suggested that he needed to do whatever it takes to get them on the line immediately if not sooner.
I really should have known better.
I’d say seven minutes of silence pass and we’re blessed with the presence of Marvia on the line and we give her a summary of the situation.
The presumption is that she should a) actually care about the situation and b) be in a better position to try to recover this customer service failure on their part.
And it’s clear from the start she is no more interested in showing any sort of initiative and understanding than Ronaldo was.
She’s also seemingly hung up on the plumber needing to mend a valve that a general contractor that specialises in renovating kitchens, washrooms and other areas where he’s also required to work on the plumbing has already determined does not need mending.
And how exactly is that supposed to work in practise? Is Lowe’s genuinely going to die on the hill of refusing to do the installation without a signed note from a plumber like a parent getting a note from consultant to excuse their child from school due to illness?
She also tries the “set the appointment up shell game” and then tries to sell Miguel and I on the notion that she can’t fix her mistaken assumption of summarily setting a date for Sunday and then Monday on her own initiative and then actually put the appointment on the day we said from the start it needed to be.
That is until she does somehow fix it by either a) magic incantations or b) realising that the idea that she can’t fix her two errors is utter bollocks!
So we turn again to the discussion of compensation and she’s equally obstinate that the installation has to be completed before compensation is agreed.
It’s just as inane and utter nonsense coming from her as it was from Ronaldo!
Do they seriously think that the number I have in mind as a starting point is going to go down when I’m effectively being blown off for three whole days plus however long it takes to come to temperature presuming it’s not a lemon?
Not when I’ll have a reminder every time I go into the kitchen and look at a non-functional refrigerator sitting in the space that a presumed serviceable refrigerator would be sitting now!
Nor is that number helped in any shape by watching her completely miss the plot as Miguel is once again trying to tell her that this situation is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be the installer’s incompetence rearing it’s ugly head and that he is more than capable of making that determination based on professional skill and ability.
Now, let me tell you something about Miguel. He’s arguably one of the most pleasantly social people I’ve ever met that isn’t my younger son Alexander. I have seen him show much more grace than even I am capable of when faced with intolerable stupidity and rudeness beyond belief. He’s the sort who dropped everything on a Saturday afternoon including time with his family which is sacrosanct to one who works as hard as he does to come down the hill to try to help me through a very stressful situation.
So what does it tell you when Marvia was so hell-bent on talking over him and ignoring what he was saying that even him saying the word “STOP!” ten times in a row failed to get her to actually take the hint and stop talking? And that happened multiple times in the conversation to the point where he’s genuinely considering reevaluating his preferred choice of vendors in his renovations business!
(BTW, did I tell you that Prestige Home Renovations is truly awesome and the company you ought to ring up when you need something mended or renovated round your home? (919) 637-3723 and ask for Miguel. You won’t be disappointed!)
Anywho, when you’ve managed to royally piss off *MIGUEL* to the point where he is angrier at your company than *I* am which really took some doing, you have seriously made an error of elephantine proportions!
A supposedly professional supervisor should know better!
Theoretically the installation is now set for Tuesday. It’s been made exceptionally clear on the record they need to send a different installation crew and one that actually is competent and that I’m not going to back down on demanding compensation not only for my inconvenience but that of Miguel who lost four hours of a Saturday he had better things to do thanks to an installer who didn’t know enough to turn the shut-off valve to the OFF position.
And should they think I’m not serious, I would remind them that the refrigerator leaving my house was a $3,500 refrigerator that they paid for (all I paid was the four year service agreement) after a previous repair technician Lowe’s had hired intentionally crimped a copper line to the compressor and destroyed a refrigerator that likely could have been mended
Thank goodness for the second technician being honest to the core and being willing to testify under oath that the only way the compressor could have been in the state he found it was that the first tech had intentionally destroyed it. It took a bit more effort to get back a very concerted and stubborn effort on the part of Lowe’s to stonewall me but the fact that their own repair tech was willing to drop a dime on them ultimately did the trick.
Whoever has that conversation would be well-advised to have a metric tonne of authority and a very big number in mind when they finally deign to have the conversation.
I will not under any circumstances be stuck with the bill from Miguel’s time having been wasted by Lowe’s employees having very little clue about what they ought to be doing and how they should be doing it.
The number I have in my mind is ticking up with the passing of the minutes until Lowe’s finally holds up their end of the contract and decides to act in a more honest and customer-focused fashion.
Lowe’s would be well advised to make much better decisions and that right soon!
One good starting point would be repatriating the call centre and customer support from the Philippines where I’m sure it’s located based on the agent’s names and their familiarity with spoken English.
And this tale certainly offers plenty of opportunities for improving the back-of-house support as well like getting control of the installation process rather than the other way round.
Lowe’s now holds all of the cards on how to turn this unhappy tale into an opportunity for learning and improvement on their part.
The only question in my mind is will they have the courage and the will to do what is right by the customer rather than what is merely expedient and try to cover their ass as well as defending the utterly indefensible.
I guess we’ll see which way this goes soon enough.
