I believe I’ve come to the conclusion based on the last several weeks worth of experience that Lowe’s idea of “customer service” is completely incapable of getting out of it’s own way.
It seems shocking that it was only about eight weeks ago…it’s felt like years dealing with people who are at best indifferent and generally wholly unaccountable (with very few exceptions along the way such as Ms Kayla who is handcuffed by policies that are ludicrously stupid and the second installer who knew what he was doing).
When we left off in this saga of abysmal failure, an assistant manager named Scott at the Knightdale location that I’d talked to out of sheer desperation because their “Executive Customer Relations” team couldn’t be bothered to do something as simple as answering the electric telephone was dead set on following his bureaucratic process to reach out to their “Customer Care Team”.
That’d be the same lot of useless individuals I went through the first time on the day off the failed installation and have occasionally had the misfortune of having to try to engage them in a honest negotiation to settle the compensation for the inconvenience I’ve suffered at their hands pretty much ever since.
And no amount of trying to point out that doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result is the very definition of lunacy was going to dissuade him from slavishly following a process I had no doubts was doomed to failure.
I was so over him at that point that I figured I’d let him go ahead and do it though honestly I’d given up any pretense of caring that he’d have any more ownership and follow through on this problem than most of his colleagues had shown to date.
So I’ll confess to a bit of surprise when I saw an EMAIL at 1520 hours dated 10 Sep 2025 that read: “We have submitted you information to our Customer Care Team. Please allow 24-48 hours for them to contact you.”
That’s nearly nine days ago and as anyone who has been paying attention so far will know and find not at all surprising, the “Customer Care Team” has not bothered to respond in the time frame I was given by ASM Scott.
Even allowing for the tail end of that SLA landing on a Friday afternoon and figuring that they’re probably into extended pub lunches and working banker’s hours, I let it go until this week.
Crickets. Nada. Zilch.
So in a fit of morbid curiosity and knowing my blood pressure is likely to end up elevated to near blowing a gasket dealing with the people on the “Customer Care Team” line, I feel I’ve really got to know if Scott really did submit a ticket and the “Customer Care Team” just dropped the ball (entirely plausible given their behaviour to date) or if the ticket was never created at all (which seems equally plausible with an offshore call centre).
But first, I have to see if the “Executive Customer Response” line still just summarily dumps it’s victims to voicemail as if it’s some sort of Maginot Line between them and customers seeking redress for their grievances.
And…that would be a big, fat, stinking YES IT DOES.
Back to the regular customer service line and Carlos graces me with his presence on the blower where I give him a basic recap of the situation and then ask him the $64,000 question: was there a customer service ticket created in the system on 10 Sep 2025 on my behalf?
There’s really only two possibilities:
- If the ticket was actually created, then why is it that I’ve not heard anything from “Customer Care” well after the SLA that I’d been given in Scott’s EMAIL?
- If the ticket wasn’t created, then that’s even more troubling because it means whatever process that Scott apparently used to create the ticket he said he had (whether it be a back-end web application or calling the same offshore call centre I’ve had to deal with) clearly didn’t work.
What’s even more appalling is that there was no follow-up from Scott to close the loop on whether or not I’d been contacted. It was really clear during the conversation that he’s busy and I get that but if you’re supposedly going through the trouble of creating a ticket and have the time to EMAIL me that you’d done so, then you should have the sixty seconds it would have taken to follow-up a couple of days later.
Try as he might, Carlos couldn’t find that hypothetical ticket in the system so we’re left with scenario #2.
We end up going through the four possible paths he offered to work this problem with my take on each:
- Create a ticket and assign it to the Knightdale store to work
- Considering that the store already had two bites of that apple already where one ended up in the useless “Appeasement Team” and the other went nowhere at all, it seems that trying to handle this at the store level which had already given the maximum offer they’re allowed which was deemed not acceptable seems pointless.
- Transfer me to the installation department
- I can’t imagine those people caring about an installation that eventually happened about seven weeks ago when they sent a team that knew what they were doing. The supervisor on duty during the failed installation certainly didn’t instill me with confidence with her insistence on a plumber that turned out to be completely unnecessary as well as a complete lack of flexibility and willingness to try to salvage the problem on that day.
- Transfer me to the “Appeasement Team”
- How do I put this delicately? Not only *NO* but *INFERNAL REGIONS NO*! Not only did they double-down without any of my side of the dispute on an offer I’d rejected already and then refused to even negotiate in good faith coupled with the first real villain of this story supposedly being a supervisor or manager in that department, I think it’s safe to say that I’d be just as happy if I never hear from them again unless it’s news that Joe has been made redundant and frog-marched out of the building. I wouldn’t mind hearing that happy ending but short of that, I’m done with them.
- Recreate the ticket already created over a month ago and work it through the normal bureaucratic processes of the “Customer Care” team.
- This was my third trip through that bureaucracy which is two times too many. I refer you to the definition of lunacy I mentioned a few days ago…
At this point, it is clear that we’d exhausted everything Carlos was capable of which is really no fault of his own.
He even admitted at one point that his supervisor has the exact same tools he does (and presumably same lack of authority when it comes right down to it) and it seems absolutely criminal negligence on the part of the person who thought this arrangement was a good idea to utterly fail to equip these people with effective tools and escalation paths when the customer service problem to be worked does not neatly fit on the script.
It’s like sending come condemned bugger into the Circus Maximus to face several ravenously hungry lions buck naked with no shield or sword to defend himself. Even as bloodthirsty as their bestiaries and gladiatorial games could be when they were used to execute unlucky prisoners, the Romans would still at least give the poor guy at least adequate tools to try to defend himself in the interest of fair play if nothing else.
Well, as fair as can be when they’re going in against ravenous predators or professional killers, that is.
I’ll give Carlos full marks for being a good sport and amazingly polite even though he had to know with the questions being asked within five minutes of him picking up the phone that he’d been cast into the lion’s den buck nekkid. I’d also give full marks for a fluent command of the language which is not the experience I’ve normally had with offshore call centres.
If corporations are going to continue with them, they’d do well to ensure real fluency on the support lines rather than just handing the phone to anyone who has mastered the art of breathing.
So after 48 minutes with Carlos, it’s time to admit a small tactical defeat and finally play the “we’re going to do voicemail and phone tag” thing with the “Executive Customer Relations Team” which was done at 1153 hours, 19 Sep 2025.
One can dare to dream once I’m done playing this round of phone tag, we might well be able to finally put this dispute to rest so I can get on with writing the happy ending and other posts I’d rather be penning.
One can dare to dream indeed.