Lowe's Customer Service Letter

Dear Lowe’s,

Just thought I’d drop you a line to let you know some things about your store. Yesterday I went shopping in your Morgantown WV Lowe’s on Tuesday 6-22-10 around 2-3 pm and really I have to say I’m exceptionally disappointed in the level of your customer service in the last couple of years. When my mom worked for your company in 1999 in another state, she was always told that you never ever tell the customer NO, that you always try to find a solution to their problem even if you have to special order it.

So with that in my mind I went to your Morgantown Lowe’s and looked for a solution to my problem… My sliding glass door in my house needs a security bar to help keep my children from wandering out onto my deck and into my pool. So I’m exceptionally motivated to find a working solution. My door is on one side 27” wide with the door shut. I went to the hardware section of the store where 3-4 employees were grouped and asked one to help me. At which point I was walked over to the children’s safety section (with outlet covers and kiddie gates) and after a cursory glance was told “nope we don’t have anything like that, sorry” and he walked away!

After picking my jaw up off the floor and spending the next 5 min fuming about piss poor customer service I walked LITTERALY 2 feet down and across the aisle was the bars that the kid had just said wasn’t available. HUH? So it wasn’t for a 27” door they started at 28” but he didn’t EVEN OFFER them to me.

So we continued to the rest of our shopping list and headed into plumbing for something to help my toilet to stop wobbling. We wander around plumbing for quite a few minutes and not one offer of help. Eventually I go stand by the desk in plumbing and the guy is talking to a sales rep from a company. OK so I go and wait, and wait and wait. Finally the employee walks away leaving both the sales rep and I standing there! After the sales rep leaves I stand there a couple of more min thinking he’s going to be coming back… NOPE his phone at the desk starts ringing and ringing and ringing… and after listening to that for about 4 min I leave that department. Unhappy and unlucky again!

Now I head to your garden department. I wander around while my husband and my 2 yr old go potty and spot some spa chemicals. At this point I’m looking for a 1” chemical floater for my hot tub. I was offered help from a very nice lady and found what I needed and more within seconds. She walks away to help more customers. YEA

When my husband returns we remember that we need a new safety gate for the top of my deck stairs. Buoyed by the decent customer service that we’ve received in lawn and garden I wander over to a lady watering plants. Without even removing her sunglasses I was informed that they “probably don’t have anything like that, but if they did it would be in aisle 4.” So I wander over to aisle 4 at which point my ever-observant 5yr old states “but mom!! We were just HERE!” And we were, this was the same aisle that I received your stellar companies advice on my sliding glass door. There were no hard mounted gates and none rated for safe outdoor use.

At the checkout I realize how far the mighty Lowe’s has fallen since my mom worked for the company. I wasn’t even asked if I found every thing ok. The employees (and management) were up front talking about another customer who had a complaint and mentioned IN FRONT OF OTHER CUSTOMERS (namely my family and about 3-4 other customers) “well he stared at your badge for a long time, and he must not have been too unhappy” Which tells me that this is not an uncommon occurrence.

So I have to say as a fair warning… I’m going to send you this letter. I’m also going to be posting it on my blog and my facebook page. I’m exceptionally disappointed in your apathy toward your customers nowadays. I might go in there to get what I need, but only if I can’t get it somewhere else first.

Toddler Shock

I have determined that there is a condition among parents that has been previously undiagnosed among the medical community. Since I'm not a doctor and have not a lick of medical training I'm going to call it PTTSD or Post Traumatic Toddler Stress Disorder, or in layman's terms Toddler Shock. Like Shell Shock or as it's later referred to PTSD it's when a parent (or in some cases the caregiver) lives in a war like conditions with a toddler. Only your war zone is now the battle of wills and the opponent, less than 3 foot tall.

Some of the symptoms:

• A nervous twitch when you see handprint waist high on the wall.
• An intense adversion to high pitched whining noises.
• A lack of sleep.
• Headaches, usually caused by stress or tension.

Case Study:
Today Subject 2 (Evan) requested an apple. After getting the normal "magic words" out of him. I decided to pick the apple off of the kitchen counter top (like I have done 1,000 times before) and hand it to him. At which point he descended into a mood swing that has not been equaled by anyone who is not a hormonal teenager. After the screaming and the foot stomping ended he declared that he wanted to "get it myself!" So I placed that apple on the edge of the counter top where he would have to stretch up and reach it. WRONG CHOICE as I was soon informed in the millisecond that he took to decide that this compromise was unacceptable to him. More screaming and crying continued along with the addition of the foot stomp. At this point I was about to put the apple back in the bowl out of the reach of the toddler and leave it there, when he screamed "I do it MYSELF!" and then proceeded to stomp into the dining room, pull a chair into the kitchen, climb the chair and fetch the apple out of the bowl. And thus swinging the moody temper tantrum pendulum back to a more normal orbit by taking the apple and eating it. Only half of it mind you the rest was left on the floor for Mommy to find.

Lemons into Cake Pops

We've always been told "when life hands you lemons, make lemonade!" right? Well I had such a lemonade moment yesterday. Evan (my 2 yr old) in his infinite wisdom decided to take all of the hard work that I had done yesterday making a book cake for Ian's school get together and sprinkle salt all over it. And when I say sprinkle I really mean that he took the entire 1lb container of salt and "made tracks" for his trains to run through. The only problem with that is that my cooling uniced cake was in the path for his tracks.

When I saw that I flipped out. That child was about 30 seconds away from being shipped off to military school. (except that they wouldnt' take him, he's too young) But then I remembered one of my mom friends made cake pops for her childs birthday. At the time I said that I'd have to try to make those. Now was the perfect time to try that. Since the first step is bake a cake and then crumble it up. So after I hacked off the salty bits and the rest of the cake was already in mostly crumbles... I proceeded to look up the rest of the instructions. It's better than throwing out an entire cake, right? Not everything came together smoothly. But it did come together. And my son loves the ones off of the stick just as much as on the stick.