Sick and Tired of Home Depot

I've just about had enough with the way The Home Depot chooses to run its business. At my neighborhood location at Folsom Blvd. and Power Inn Road in Sacramento, the service has gotten progressively worse over the past few months.

My most irritating visit came just the other day.

I spent several minutes wandering the aisles looking for someone to help me with an exhaust vent. When I found someone she just said "I can't help you I'm a cashier" and kept walking past me and didn't offer to find someone who could help me.
I finally found someone who worked in the aisles. He was either a stoner or an idiot because he just stared at me with a blank face when I asked him my questions. His response, "I think we're out of whatever you need." Nice. Then he just stared at me until finally I turned and walked away. No "Sorry I couldn't help", no "Maybe we can order that for you"... just a blank stare.

Then came my absolute biggest grip about The Home Depot as of late: no cashiers. They don't open their registers anymore, they only have the self-checkout open. There's always a line full of people that just don't know how to work the system. And then there's the one employee that gets annoyed with everyone that hasn't figured out how to scan their own stuff. It's ridiculous and the company should be embarrassed.

I'm sure they feel they can get away with having a bare bones staff that doesn't know shit about home/construction products because they're they only store for miles around. There aren't even any Ace Hardware stores or the equivalent in the neighborhood and their closest competitors Lowe's and Orchard Supply Hardware are too far away.

I try to go to the mom and pop hardware store down the street, but they just don't have the things I need sometimes.

So I continue to go to The Home Depot anytime I need to get something for my house. And I continue to be frustrated.

If you want to share a customer service story send me an E-Mail.

Making a Discovery: This place sucks!

This week I took my daughter to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom for a day trip with my parents. I’d been there many years ago as a kid (when it was still called Marine World) but this was the first time I’d gone since they turned it in to an amusement park. I was extremely disappointed.

For starters parking and admission were way too expensive. It cost $15 to park on a hill about half a mile from the park entrance. That’s $4 more than it costs to park at Disneyland, which of course, is a far superior theme park. Tickets were $50 a piece, just $13 less than Disneyland.

As if that weren’t expensive enough, everywhere we turned, we were forced to spend more money. You want to feed the giraffe a carrot? $5. You want to feed the seals a fish? $5. You want to get up close to a dolphin? $25. Everything had its price.

I guess I would be fine with the high prices, if I felt that they were actually going towards what I assume is the high price of caring for exotic marine mammals. But the animal exhibits were all in disrepair, the animals looked miserable, and in some cases the exhibits clearly hadn’t been renovated in the 15 years since I last stepped foot in Marine World.

On top of my general irritation with the park, it didn’t help that every single employee I encountered was rude and disinterested.

When we stopped to have lunch, I waited in a long line to pay $25 for two corn dogs, fries and two drinks for me and my daughter. When the cashier gave me my food, I asked for lids for the drinks. She gave me the company line “we don’t have those for the animals sake.” Okay fine I can respect that. Can I get a tray? “We don’t have trays.” I asked: how am I supposed to carry all this food? The woman actually just rolled her eyes at me and walked away. Unbelievable.

Also, when you have someone that is teaching kids about marine mammals, they should at least SOUND like they give a shit. That was certainly not the case with the employees at Discovery Kingdom.

The last thing I’ll say is that the bathrooms were foul. Not only were they old and falling apart, but they hadn’t been cleaned in hours with garbage and piss all over the floors.

So, even though my daughter had a blast, I don’t think I’ll be going back to Discovery Kingdom. She can go with the grandparents!

Got a bad customer service story? E-Mail Me

Support Your Local Hardware Store

Since I've become a homeowner, I've spent a lot of time looking for parts, tools and other hardware. I've come to this conclusion: Home Depot sucks. My most recent trip involved wandering the aisles endlessly without finding what I needed or even someone in one of those obnoxious orange apron's to help me. I got so frustrated I left.
Unfortunately I was forced to go back later that night for something else. Once I found what I was looking for, I made my way to the checkout, only to find that all the checkouts were closed and only the self-checkouts were open. There was a line of about ten people and I had to sit and wait while people slowly figured out how to scan their items, pay for things, whatever. And what was the one employee doing the whole time? Staring off into space like nothing was going on.
That's it, I'm done. No more Home Depot. From now on, I'm going to the local hardware stores in my neighborhood whenever possible.

Got customer service issues? E-Mail me!

Is everybody's service THAT good?

I'm having trouble selling my little blog here. I may soon try some new tactics to get the word out beyond my expanded circle of friends. In the meantime, remember to email me those customer service horror stories!


E-Mail Me!

A Spicy Story!

The always lovely Laura shares her story of some spicy food, a hot mouth, and a lazy waitress

My latest peeve is Bangkok City thai food on W. El Camino by the Bel Air (in Sacramento). I went there once and really liked it. Now I won't go back due to their "water shortage."

I ordered a VERY hot larb (thai salad), stupidly, I may add, because I was getting over a (mouth wound). Do not ask for spicy larb when your mouth is still healing.

Anyway, it came, I devoured a couple bites and then had the most searing pain possible. Ben tried it and was also afflicted. The host lady came by to see if the food was alright. We were red-faced and panting. Then, I drank my entire tea and glass of water, as did Ben. We were the only ones in the restaurant, clearly suffering for like 10 minutes, and she sat there at the counter and didn't get us any more water. We were the ONLY ONES IN THERE and I was LOUDLY CRUNCHING MY ICE. I had to walk up to the counter, after the cook came out to talk to her, to ask for more water. They both looked surprised, like, oh, you wanted something? rrr.

Thanks for sharing your pain Laura! And remember everyone, you can E-mail me me your customer service stories and be as famous as Laura!

What's the deal with soy?

I had another run in with Starbucks and their apparent inability to keep enough soy milk in stock (see previous post below). But at least this time, it was at the Starbucks in Safeway.

When I ordered my soy mocha, the wannabe barista told me they were out of soy. I got really irritated and said "You can't just go over to the health food section where there's like a whole shelf of soy milk, and grab one?" She responded "well they don't like us to do that." So I was less than thrilled, complained some, and finally she caved and said "alright I'll go get you some." And she returned with a basket full of soy milk, right off the shelf. See? Sometimes standing your ground works! Hopefully I didn't get that woman in trouble!

As always, I invite you to share your customer service stories! E-Mail me!

'Tis The Season!

Much to my surprise, I haven't had any bad customer service incidents in over a month. That's great for me, but bad for this blog!

So here's my call out to all of you: It's the holiday season, and I know you all are hitting the malls or jumping online to get that perfect gift. So if you've been ignored, pissed on or pissed off, I want to hear from you! E-mail me!

The closest thing I've had to a bad experience so far was the lack of holiday foresight by JCrew. It's only December 12th and most, if not all, of the women's sweaters from coast to coast are sold out. None in the stores, none through the catalog and none online. Maybe they should have ordered more...

Remember to spread the word to your friends and E-mail me!

SBC....Seriously Bad Cable

By far the worst customer service experiences I've had in the past three years have been with SBC Home Entertainment (now AT&T).

Since day one of my service with them, I've had to make monthly, weekly and sometimes daily calls for service because my cable is so bad. It's made worse by the fact that my apartment complex holds an exclusive deal with SBC/AT&T to be the sole provider of cable, telephone and DSL service. So no matter how upset I get, I can't cancel my service unless I'm willing to go without it, which I'm not.

The current and most frequent problem is that several of my channels are without audio. Right now it's Bravo, CNN and two other stations. So of course I called, and of course they're going to send out a technician between 8am and 5pm. So it's yet another day that I'll be sitting around waiting for someone to show up. I've pitched so many fits during the past three years that I've gotten tired of it. I got a few bills comped at times when it was absolutely horrible, times when half my channels had no audio or no picture. I've spoken to a handful of technicians who've all told me I'm one of only a few in the complex that has basic cable, and I'm the only one that calls when there's a problem. Apparently if you're willing to pay $100 a month for digital cable, you won't have any service problems. Seems like a scam to me.

So tomorrow, once again, I'll be dealing with an SBC technician who will be polite but absolutely useless. Only when I move out of this apartment, will I be able to really let loose on them.

Remember to e-mail me with your stories of bad customer service!