Lowes Is Not What It Used To Be

Despite my experience being at Lowes store 2478 located at 1109 Highway 96, Kathleen, Georgia 31047. In my opinion, the environment of “I can’t help you” is nationwide. I believe this article could be about any Lowes in the nation. If you doubt this start looking at Google reviews for virtually ANY Lowes.

Lowes Installation and delivery process is not what it used to be… by far! If you are here reading this you must be aware that (In my Opinion) that Lowes Installation and delivery program suck. Here is why I now maintain this opinion of Lowes being a miserable place to do business with, and why you too are probably stressed out now also.

Everything is Contracted Out

Everything Lowes has done has been to detach themselves from any liability or issues that may arise with your installation, and, or delivery. Lowes has pretty much eliminated almost all store positions that have to deal with an install or a delivery. For example…. let’s say you order three doors to be installed and the delivery of the items to be installed do not show up. In my case I called the store to find out why and the phone rang for a solid ten minutes before someone transferred the call to hold and then NEVER picked up the phone. After calling back numerous times a very nice employee named “Zoe” picked up the phone. Despite Zoe attempting to get delivery on the phone, nobody would answer the phone. I then asked Zoe to let me speak with a manager and that manager (Anthony, whose real name is Brian) REFUSED to speak with me because he “did not know anything about installs or deliveries.” I then realized that the only thing Lowes will take responsibility for is taking your money.

1-800-445-6937

After dealing with the phones for well over 25 minutes (to speak with someone) I called the national Lowes phone number. When I called the number, and after a 22 minute wait, the nice lady could not “locate” my order and I was transferred to yet another number. This nice lady (Katie) was very pleasant and apologies were dripping from her mouth like water. (Apologies cost nothing to Lowes as long as it does not involve money.) She too could not figure out what was going on with my order and told me she would call me back. A fairly short while later she called me back and explained why everything was screwed up and Yadda Yadda Yadda.

The end result is that I am now supposed to receive my delivery tomorrow and then the install will take place later in the day. We shall see? I have little faith this will happen even though I had to be on the phone for two hours trying to get answers.

The end result for me is that Lowes is sorry and NOBODY at the store level could help me with anything other than taking payment. Once the have your payment you get nothing but phone numbers to call and hours to waste.

Take Your Installation Local

Looking back on it I have to marvel the “Catch-22” Lowes has created for installations and deliveries. For example… lets say you own a home with 5,000 square feet of wood flooring and the Non-Lowes employee delivering your appliance scratches and gouges your flooring. The store will not help you, as I learned from Anthony? Brian?, a store co-manager. Delivery is not done by a Lowes employee but instead some contracted company. Let’s take the issue a bit further and say your wood floor was badly gouged and the wood you have installed is no longer available. Who do you speak to? Who will make this situation right? Do not expect Lowes to do more than profusely apologize and transfer you to delivery who may, or may not answer the call. Lowes will NOT accept responsibility because the delivery company did the damage. I strongly suggest you skip Lowes and shop with a local company because Lowes only really cares about taking your money… after that you can call a phone number… and good luck!

Lowes is not what it used to be but today their earning came out and they beat expectations for their shareholders. So what I have realized, in my opinion, is that Lowes is yet one more corporation that takes care of their stock holders at the expense of the people that actually spend money in their stores.

Lowes Sucks!

Because of the degradation of taking care of the customers Lowes currently sucks. If you doubt this I challenge you to find an associate by pushing a call button in appliances. It is my understanding that Lowes receives money from appliance companies to provide commissions to employees when they sold an appliance. Lowes took away that commission years ago and promised to pay employees a set wage of 50% of what their commissions were the year before they took away employee commissions. Then, after a few years, Lowes then took away even that 50% and simply pocketed all the money from the appliance makers. The employees will just have to get over it and were told that the taking away of commissions was for their “benefit.“

It is my opinion that Lowes sucks because they care much more about their stock holders than either employees or their customers. Lowes used to stive to answer call buttons in under 60-seconds. Nowadays the call buttons tend to just timeout with no response because employees have been so demoralized they know the company they work for simply does not care about them anymore.

Shop Elsewhere

I vote with my money and they have lost my vote.