Thursday, December 13, 2007

Walmart Troubles

My daughter, Felicia, lives in Hawaii. She knows how much I love my black labrador retriever. For my birthday she wanted to give me a statue similar to this one with our last name engraved on the plaque instead of "Welcome". She ordered it from Walmart.com and had it sent to my local Walmart through the site to store shipping program they offer.

I received an email yesterday letting me know my order was ready to be picked up. In the email I see that I am getting a Labrador statue...14" tall but that's all I know at this point.

I go to the store to pick up my birthday gift and the salesclerk brings out this small box and proceeds to open it up and pulls out an engraved nameplate and looks at me and smiles. "Okay, that's nice...where's the rest of it?" I ask her

She says "This is the only box." So I said "Well, is there more in that box? Because on my paper right here it says there is supposed to be a 14" Labrador statue and I don't believe that will fit in that small box." She says "No this is all there is. You'll have to call Walmart's customer service to find out what happened to the rest of it."

WHAT?! EXCUSE ME?! Aren't YOU Wal-mart customer service??~~~I leave there with an 800 number to call. So on my way home I call this 800 number and it literally takes me 20 minutes to get through to a real live person!! By this time my temper is starting to simmer just below angry. I explain the situation to the customer service representative on the phone and after waiting a few minutes for her to access the order she tells me "Hmmm, it's showing online that this item is no longer available. I'm sorry, we are out of those."

I ask "Okay, what do you plan on doing about this." She says "Was there anything else you wanted to order?" I explain once again..."I didn't order this to begin with, it was a gift FOR me so I have no idea what's on your website." She says "Well if you have access to a computer perhaps you could find something else we could replace this with and we'll ship it to your home for free." I told her I would look at the website when I got home and see what I thought - I got her name and information and hung up the phone.

Once I got home and looked at their website I decided it was too much trouble to try and find something online when I could just go in the store and pick up something I wanted (I can always find something in the store! LOL)

So today after Dakota and I meet with our homeschool group at the park, we go into Walmart for me to get a refund. I go to Walmart's Customer Service (not to be confused with Walmart.com's customer service, mind you!) and am quickly told that since I only brought in the emailed paper that was good enough yesterday to pick up my package....and not the little receipt they handed me yesterday....they are unable to help me. I said "WHAT?! You can't use this order number and look this information up on your computer....like you did yesterday!?"

"No, ma'am. But you can go back to the Site to store area where you picked it up and see if they can help you?" I march back there and the same lady who "helped" me yesterday is back there and she remembers me but guess what? She can't help me either...BECAUSE...once I leave the store I have to have a receipt to get a refund. If I had just requested a refund yesterday while I was standing there instead of leaving the store and making that telephone call I could have eliminated all this aggravation. I told her this is the most ridiculous thing I've heard of...why on earth they would even ship the stupid thing without the rest of it is beyond me and now I have to make another trip back home and back to the store with the receipt....she started talking and apologizing and I just grabbed my box and walked off before I went off on her. I know it's not her fault but I was beyond angry and I was just about to be as un-Christlike as ever so right in the middle of her profusely apologizing I walked away.....

I really hate it when stores do stuff like this!

4 comments:

jan said...

Whatever happened to, "The customer is always right"?!
The older I get the more I see stores treating their customers like they're not even necessary.
Duh!
jan

Monica said...

I'm with you that WalMart can be a crazy place. I think that it's gotten too big to be managed well. That's my opinion.

I read a book called Nickle and Dimed and it forever changed my perspective on WalMart employees and others in the service industry. You should read it sometime.

Unknown said...

So Monica, how did Nickle and Dimed change your perceptions?

Big Doofus (Roger) said...

You were caught up in an organization that is just way too big, I guess. It's too bad that you had to go through all of that. It's because of situations like this at departments stores that I carry a gun...I'm kidding.

Ask Miss Sniz and she'll tell you that I always avoid taking anything back or dealing with "Customer Service." I just get too frustrated and end up whipping out my gun and...NO I WAS KIDDING ABOUT THE GUN. SORRY.

I hope you and your family had a Merry Christmas.

BD
(Roger)