As most of you know, we bought a new house and moved over the holidays. Yes, that’s me, the dumbass.  But apparently? I’m not the only moron who moves over the holidays because hello? We couldn’t find a moving truck in a 50 mile radius. Not one. Luckily I wasn’t moving that much stuff.  Years of kids who double as household pets made it necessary for me to say oh hell no I don’t want to move the furniture to the new house….

But I digress

So after moving out of the old house, we turned out sights to preparing the old house for sale.  This necessitated many trips to Lowes.  Many frustrating, eye gouging, howl at the moon trips to Lowes.  My frustration actually started before we moved.  See, Lowes offers installation in just about every one of their departments. You would think that with a store devoted to so much installing that salespeople would…you know…actually know HOW to go about the installation process.  No. Clearly that isn’t handled in employee training. And that’s assuming you can FIND a salesperson to help you, because many departments have no one.  Which then means you have someone from say…carpet…trying to figure out how to sell you an appliance. Or someone from doors trying to figure out plumbing. And that’s only after waiting an hour for them to get to you.

It took a solid week and three consecutive trips to Lowes just to get them to ORDER a wall oven that we’d already had measured and paperwork set up for.  I’m not kidding. And before you ask, yes, we have a Home Depot. I used to shop at Home Depot. But then came the day when I went to buy several ceiling fans. I took them to the checkout and told them I wanted them installed only to be told they don’t install lighting.  OKaaaay. So off to Lowes I went and I sort of got stuck there.

So I went to Lowes after many frustrating “installation” experiences to see about getting carpet and vinyl replaced in the old house.  Sweet Mother of God… After waiting an hour–and again, this was after we’d already had the house measured, all paperwork done–all we needed was to pick out the carpet and vinyl and PAY for it. My husband went to the service desk and asked for a manager only to be told there WASN’T one in the store. On the premises. Anywhere. Niiice.  So he calls the 1800 Lowes number.  They page a manager, who was in the store by the way, and he comes over to me (my husband is still on the phone with 800 Lowes) and I tell him I am TRYING to give you money. Really, I AM, but you don’t want it.  We finally get our stuff selected, we’re given our quote.  They said they might have to add a little to the vinyl for pattern match, so I say okay, figure it out, call me tomorrow so I can come PAY for it. I needed this done in this millenia.

Did they call the next day?  Or the next? That would be no. I finally went back into the store and again, can find NO ONE to help us in the department. They finally get us someone from doors.  He finds a note on the computer to call me about the ammended quote. Nice. No one called. So then we find out the price went up by 30 percent. I’m not happy but at this point, fine, whatever. We pay and go on our merry way.

The next day? Someone calls my husband to inform him that they “forgot” to charge us for something and they were upping our quote by another several hundred dollars.  At this point, my husband lost his mind. It wasn’t pretty. Sufficed to say, we didn’t pay anything extra.

Now we still have whole house blinds to buy. Plus a door.  Plus toilets. And a lot of other stuff, so I tell my husband we’re going to Home Depot because no way in hell will I go back to Lowes (except for lights unfortunately) and wow. We go into Home Depot? Their salespeople actually know how to process installations!  I went to blinds. 5 minutes later, I am done. Then I go to doors and then I go to plumbing. I was at the service desk paying for my stuff in less than half an hour and I told the manager if ONLY they’d have lighting installation, I’d NEVER have to go to Lowes again.

We grudgingly go then to Lowes because I need two light fixtures. I pick them out, we go to the installation desk only to be told?  They don’t do light installation. My husband points to the big ass sign that advertises installation and she hastily amended it to, “Well, we DO, just not “right now” Huh?  So I give her back the fixtures and tell my husband that I am RELIEVED. Because now I can go to Home Depot to buy the lights. We’ll have a contractor come install the damn things and I NEVER HAVE TO GO TO LOWES AGAIN. :))))

See? Happy Ending.

We won’t even talk about the fact that the vinyl guy calls me yesterday (as he’s installing the vinyl) to inform me that they don’t pull up existing vinyl and that it’s a Lowes policy.  Okay, well I understand that, and it’s certainly not the poor installer’s fault, but uhm do you think that ONE of the FIVE people we dealt with at Lowes mentioned this fact?  Even when I told them we were REPLACING vinyl?

So dear, Lowes. You have lost me forever, and I did used to spend a lot of money in your store.  But it would seem that Home Depot is much happier to take it from me.

xxoo

Maya