Posts Tagged ‘Corporations’

• Friday, June 5th, 2009

  American Waste: The Story Of A Home Depot / Thomasville Outdoor Patio Set That Came Damaged

  

  We just took delivery of an outdoor patio set which we love except for one little part came defective.  The seat frame (“Part C”) came split as shown in the photo.  As I’m a DIYer, I would typically try to repair something like this, however, since it is A) an expensive item B) a product that will be used outdoors and in weather  C) the wood is split and shattered… the repair I make wouldn’t last.  So I went with getting the product replaced.   I thought it would be any easy replacement item and called up HomeDepot.com and told them I needed either a whole new seat, or if possible, just the replacement part – “Part C”.  The customer service agent told me he could get me a replacement part and said he sent the request for the new part onto the vendor.

  The issue is that the replacement part could take up to 3 weeks to get AND no one can guarantee that the part will even arrive in 3 weeks as it depended on this unknown vendor (apparently it’s a tightly held secret as to who the vendor is… even Thomasville said the same thing and they are the ones with their name on the product!).   The customer service agent has no way of getting a hold of the vendor directly besides through “email”.  The boxes say the set is made in Vietnam so does that mean the vendor is located there too?  Do they only have one-way email?  Who knows?   I said fine and he placed the order and that was that.   I thought about it last night and realized that a few weeks will bring us into the prime of summer and since no firm date was given, it was not sitting right with me.  Heck, it could take months to get the replacement for all I know.   So I called up Home Depot again today and asked them if there was any status or if they could find out the status.  They checked and said the “email is still in the process of being uploaded into the system”.   How can that be?    Are they running on 300 baud modems and sending terrabytes worth of data each day to warrant an email still in the process of being uploaded to the system?   When I send an email, it is sent instantaneously.   That got me a bit fired up……

  
  

  Tags: Corporations, Damage, Defective, Home Depot, Thomasville Outdoor Patio Set, Waste
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