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My Recent Experience at Lowes
By JLP | March 24, 2008
Last weekend my family and I visited our local Lowes to look at plants for our flower bed. It was an extremely windy day (as a general rule, we don’t have really windy days in SE Texas) and the outside garden area was an absolute mess. Plants were blown over, making some of the aisles hard to walk down. Anyway, given the wind, I could definitely understand the poor conditions of the garden area. However, I went into the covered area between the garden area and the store. It too was a complete disaster. There were cushions off the patio furniture and seed packets strewn all over the floor. Seriously, it looked like it hadn’t been cleaned or straighted in months (and it had nothing to do with the wind).
To make matters worse, there were employees standing around doing nothing.
So, when I got home, I sent Lowes an email and told them about what I saw. Well, a couple of days later I got a call from the store manager of the Lowes store I reported! This is a summary of what he said:
“Not to make excuses but we had a computer issue that weekend and I had to make choices as to what did and did not get done. The way the store looked was not up to our high standards and I’m sorry you had to see it that way.”
The manager was nice enough but I thought it was funny that he said, “Not to make excuses but…” and then he went on to make an excuse. I didn’t argue with him but I find it hard to believe that a computer emergency should have anything to do with the condition of the store unless he was using his employees to fix the computer system. I told him that I used to work in the grocery business and that I understood what he was going through. My grocery business experience was probably the reason I have a bias against messy stores. I notice stuff that most people don’t notice.
Anyway, I commend the store manager for calling me. That takes courage and I respect that.
Topics: Miscellaneous |
March 24th, 2008 at 9:55 am
That is quite shocking that he actually responded personally. You don’t typically see that, at least not with a lot of the big chains. At least he cared enough to respond, even if it was with a somewhat lame excuse.
As a side note, I love Lowes and will shop there any day of the week over Home Depot. Nothing but fantastic service from all of their stores I’ve been to. I haven’t encountered a store in disarray yet though.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:07 am
That didn’t take courage for the Manager to call you. Lowe’s corporate policy REQUIRES that the store manager call you. They track this stuff very carefully. The IT dept has extensive software to do this.
March 24th, 2008 at 10:10 am
AlB,
The manager actually told me that he wasn’t required to call me but he did anyway.
March 24th, 2008 at 11:36 am
It is nice to know your emails to corporate are actually being read not only by some help desk worker, but by a store manager who can actually remedy the situation. Sometimes I think to complain about something, but wonder if I spend the time to write it will a human even read it.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
JLP,
I enjoy your blog and posts but the Lowes thing is silly. You took time to complain the store was “messy”? Really? I could understand complaining about an out-of-stock item , wrong pricing, or rude staff, but a “messy” store? Good grief, surely you have better things to do. You might have called the local manager and told him. I think that would have been appreciated, but an email to corporate just creates a negative incident in his file. Nice. I hope the conditions meet your exacting standards on your next visit. By the way, did you buy anything? (grin)
Best,
Kevin
March 24th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Kevin,
First off, thanks for the compliment. I’m glad you like the blog.
I don’t think expecting the store to be clean is out of the question. I think the problem is that people don’t take the time to let corporate know what’s going on.
No, I didn’t buy anything on that trip (although I have purchased lots of stuff from Lowes in the past) as their plants were pretty picked over and what was left looked pretty bad. Instead we went to Home Depot and bought plants.
March 24th, 2008 at 3:03 pm
Unless the Lowes IT staff is responsible for the cleanliness of the store, I find that to be a pretty lame excuse. People on the floor can be doing other things while the computers are down and the problem is being addressed.
I think a complaint about the store being messy is a valid one. I normally shop at Lowes instead of the Home Despot for just that reason. Sure, there are some places I shop where I don’t expect cleanliness (such as a true garden center), but Lowes isn’t one of them.
March 24th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I work at a Lowes store.
First of all, any complaints directed to corporate are indeed a highly tracked affair. Copies of the reported incident are sent to the store manager, the district manager, and they are infact required to contact the customer to try to resolve the issue on that end. (so long as they didnt request not to be) In addition, the store manager is tasked to address the issue with the associates involved, which they call “training”.
Usually they offer some kind of token like a gift card or some such item to try and buy back your Customer Loyalty.
Second, there is *no* reason for any part of the store to be in such a disarray. None. You would not believe the amount of checklists and worklists and to-do lists there are involved for every associate, dept. manager, zone manager, etc - per department, on a daily basis with the focus generally being on keeping the shelves full and the aisles cleaned.
Third, the issue of associates standing around doing nothing is, unfortunately, not an uncommon problem. Like any retail job alot of people are not very… shall I say… prideful of the work they do. It happens. I deal with it every day. -.-; Also — unless this ‘computer problem’ was something like a monitor falling off a desk and hitting a customer/associate, or some crazy kid running through another part of the story ramming into a computer, or some other crazy event I cant imagine, the excuse this joker coughed up for you is total hogwash. The only thing those associates could have needed the computers for, anyway, would be to check on-hand quantities of merchandise, or setup special orders for customers…has nothing to do with basic store cleanup.
Last but not least, anything sent to corporate about a store OR employee is taken very seriously — bad or good. I wish more people would take a few minutes out of their day to send in the comments about their good experiences with Lowes. I hope you got a giftcard JLP.
March 24th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
I was shocked at your experience. I am an x store manager for Lowes. I can tell you that in all the years I was with Lowes cleanliness was a priority with Lowes. They design their stores with the customer in mind. They follow that up with the decipline of cleaning and facing on a regular basis. I might suggest that you revisit your Lowes store and resubmit a new comment ( good or bad ).
March 24th, 2008 at 7:56 pm
mAverikku,
I don’t want a giftcard. That’s not why I reported the store. It is good to see that I wasn’t out of line.
BBS,
I’ll try to stop by one day this week and see how the store looks just for the heck of it.
March 26th, 2008 at 8:27 am
As a former Lowe’s employee and member of the management, I have seen a decline in the stores during the past several years. Lowe’s used to pride itself on a clean and orderly store. The associates don’t care because the management team could care less about the employees. Most employees are less than stellar and the retention rate is always below par for any large corporation. I never go to Lowe’s anymore, I find the customer service worse and the prices higher than Home Depot and my local hardware and building supply stores.
March 26th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Two questions. 1. Did you buy anything? 2. Did you get the coupon you were thinking about in the back of your mind? Come on, you know it was fluttering back there. You are right though about the employees. They should not be standing there. They should be moving and working every second they are there. Not for the fact they might be tired from picking up for hours in the winds you describe and they are beat. Not for the fact that hundreds of people have come through on that day and probably hundreds more will come through after you leave. They should not be able to rest after hand piling a pallet of garden stones, loading 20 bags of steer pie into a truck, or being at the return counter where someone was yelling at them because the garden hose they bought 3 years ago has a hole in it and they insist on another one free. Now,you believe, they should be running to clean up a mess somewhere that is bothering a customer that is buying nothing. If you had had a question about plants or gardening and got no answer or they refused to help you or they were rude or…or,…or,…
But there was a mess somewhere that does not effect you in any way. Well…