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.

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.

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.

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.