Minimum Wage for Minimum Work

I’m still trying to figure out if the appalling levels of customer service I receive on a consistent basis is because of the following…  A.) I expect too much.  B.) In the south there is a different pace of life than what I am used to C.) People are downright lazy and don’t want to take the blame for anything.  Can you guess which side I tend to fall on?  C.  You are absolutely correct.  Right now we are in the process of minor home renovations to prep our home for the market!  Today we were tackling projects and decided it would be quicker to order everything we needed from Home Depot on line so that we could continue taking all of the hardware out of the bathroom and prepare it for painting while someone else went on to pick up everything we needed for multiple projects.  We’d show up, they’d wheel out our purchase, and we’d come back home and finish.  At least that’s what they advertise…

Everything I’ve read states that they will have everything ready in no more than two hours.  There were other things that needed to be done around the house.  This was supposed to be more convenient…  We get 3% back in Rovia bucks on online purchases….  It just made sense!  Until 2.5 hours later when our order still wasn’t ready.  I called the online shopping service and they placed me on hold while they called the store.  I was told that the order was being pulled and that someone would notify us as soon as it was ready…

After a total of 3 hours and 15 minutes had gone by I decided I would call our local Home Depot directly.  Only to be told that the order had not even been started and that he could either begin pulling the order or he could transfer me to customer service where they could cancel the order but that it could take up to 30 minutes.  30 minutes to walk out and grab a pot and some soil, five rubbermaid totes, a putty knife, a painting sheet and a 40 lb bag of salt.  I literally could have done that in 10 minutes.  After frustratingly explaining to him that I had wasted a good portion of my afternoon with something I could have done by myself in 30 minutes I would be there to get the order…  Because apparently if I canceled the order and then went back and re-purchased everything it could take “several days” to get the money credited back to our account.

My exasperated question is this…  When did it become okay to not offer any reason or apology for not doing what a company states they are going to do?  Why did I have to listen to the lady at the customer service desk tell me that it wasn’t her fault, she just sends someone to get the order after she gets a call from the receiving department?  The call from your corporate headquarters over an hour earlier didn’t prompt that?  We spend a butt ton of money in the Home Depot every single month.  I’ve got the line item in my budget to prove it.  I’m sorry that we aren’t professional contractors but we just dropped $100 in your store and are honestly probably going to do the same exact damn thing next weekend.  How about a little courtesy?  How about a little CUSTOMER SERVICE?  That is your job, after all.  Isn’t it?