13 Steps to a Purchase from Lowe’s

We bought a fixer-upper recently, and have to do a lot of work to make it habitable. So naturally I’m down at the lumber yard a lot. I go to Lowe’s most of the time because they are reasonably priced (mostly) and don’t look down on me for wandering the aisles in my skirt and clogs. This is my most recent experience.

1. Movers can get a special discount from Lowe’s – 10% off. It’s good for up to a $5,000 purchase, but it has to be done all in one shot. I knew this from the last time I moved when their coupon fell out of the change of address card package at the post office. I really, really wanted that discount. I was pretty busy will closing activities and such, and considering it will be about a month before we can start moving in, I wasn’t all over the idea of getting the address changed just yet, so I tried to apply for the discount on line. AFTER going through the rigamarole of applying, I learn it will be about a week before I am sent the coupon. I went ahead and bought some buckets of paint in the meanwhile anyway.

2. After a week there was still no sign of the coupon and I’ve been chomping at the bit to get some stuff and putting it off over and over, so I got my butt down to the post office and got the change of address package. The coupons inside had already expired. I didn’t know this until I’d already left and had to make a return trip to the post office.

3. The nice guy behind the counter gave me a new one. The coupon inside was good. Yay!

4. Since I needed to get everything I could at a whack and didn’t want to spend literally all day at the store collecting it all, I went online and ordered what I could that way. I ran up a thousand dollar order.

5. The next day I went to pick it all up. I think under normal circumstances this would be a remarkably easy thing, and hope in the future my orders work out well. (How’s that for foreshadowing?)

6. I went straight to their customer service desk to ask how I was supposed to do this. Apparently, that’s the first step anyway. Their computer system had recently undergone some glitches, which resulted in my order appearing on one screen, but not another, so that at first they didn’t know I’d ordered, and already given my credit card on line. It took about half an hour for the clerk to clear me for my pickup and sent me to the lumber section check out.

7. My order had already been assembled for me. Too cool! Unluckily, it wasn’t assembled correctly. The highest priced item wasn’t there, nor a couple of little things. I asked that the paint be tinted, so they took it down to the paint center for me. Despite the continuing computer glitches, they got everything they could and let me load it all.

8. Turned out I totally messed up on the paint order. They had me down for 7 PINTS of one and 1 PINT of another when I thought I’d ordered 8 gallons of all one thing. That explains the price that I thought was fantastic. They mistakenly only pulled two pints. Two pints for $60? I don’t think so. Anyway, they couldn’t take it off the order because in order to do so it had to be on the other screen. They called Tech Service.

9. Meanwhile I picked my colors and had the correct paint mixed up. We were still waiting for a faucet, which turned out to be on special order. It’s really hard to tell what’s what on the email confirmation which I had printed out. We rang up the paint, but they couldn’t give the the 10% discount because they couldn’t get in to the original order. The clerk tried to force it and created a random number which shocked me – $300. The discount didn’t show because she had to override it to ring it up. I didn’t see the prices on the paint cans or frankly, I’d have gone somewhere else, discount or not. I was out of time, so I just grabbed the stuff and went.

10. Oh, I forgot to mention, at first they mixed up a five gallon bucket in the wrong color. Mr. Al was insistent on the color. I declined the $10 discount and had it remixed. Sigh.

11. So I got home and looked over the receipt and couldn’t find the discount and got all stupid and decided to go back the next day to see if they ever got the first bunch of paint – which I did not take – taken off the original order and to see if I could get the discount. They reversed out the paint sale and rang it up again and I ended up paying and extra $16 for the privilege.

12. They said the paint portion of the charge was being held in reserve by the credit card company but that I wouldn’t have to pay for it, but it wasn’t taken out of the order, which was finally appearing on the correct screen, but which they still couldn’t reverse charges out of.

13. After I got home they said the whole order was being held in reserve and took my card information again because they said NONE of the original order had actually been paid for. If I end up double charged for this I’m going to do some serious screaming down at their customer service desk when I go back to pick up the faucet.

And after all this, the online coupon arrived.

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