by Curmie
It would seem that prevarication has supplanted baseball as the national pastime. Name a politician you’d trust to tell you the truth if a lie would be more convenient. I can’t, and if there’s one out there, it sure as hell isn’t one of the frontrunners in the next Presidential election.
My most recent post concerned getting lied to by the post office, and their subsequent bewilderment that I didn’t appreciate their mendacity. It’s not just those with ties to the government, though. Companies feel the need to get in on the act, too. So, here’s Part II of my rant.
We’ve been in our current house a little over 22 years. The garage door opener wasn’t new when we moved in. A few days ago, the chain snapped. So I went to the local Lowe’s, checked out the possibilities, came home and discussed the options with my wife, and ordered a new opener online. So far, so good.
FedEx delivered it when they said they would, last Thursday. (By the way, the box is essentially the same size and weight as that unassembled bookcase I mentioned last time, and FedEx delivered it, no problem.) But whereas 20 years ago I would probably have done the installation myself, for a variety of reasons I decided to just have Lowe’s arrange for a professional installation. That’s where the fun begins.
Lowe’s farms out this kind of job through Handy or their subsidiary Angi. We’d had pretty good luck with Handy in the past; our experience with Angi was, shall we say, less pleasurable. So we were apprehensive when it was Angi, not the parent company, that contacted me.
But I filled out the requested information, including that with a little notice I could be available at any time. I was given three choices of when the work could be done, and chose late afternoon on Sunday. The text messages urging me to be “excited” that the installation was soon to happen began on Friday. Sorry, I come by my <i>nom de plume</i> honestly, and few curmudgeons get excited over garage door installations. Relieved, perhaps. Grateful, even. Excited? Nope.
So then came the message at 6:30 Sunday morning that “due to a last-minute issue with [my] pro,” they were going to re-schedule until Tuesday. This led to more texts to get excited, and then another re-scheduling until Thursday. Lather, rinse, repeat. Well, not quite. The 3:00 a.m. text that woke me up on Thursday declared that the installation was “cancelled unexpectedly.”
“<i>Cancelled</i>,” as in “we’re washing our hands of this whole business”? Really? “Unexpectedly”? So I called the local Lowe’s that morning. Naturally, I got a robo-voice, but was able to get transferred to a different robo-voice, and then to someone in the installations department (I’m guessing she’s not located in my small town in East Texas, but I suppose she could be).
According to what she was seeing on her screen, the installation was still scheduled for 11 a.m. that day. It was, in fact, <i>never</i> scheduled for 11 a.m.; the cancelled appointment was for 3 p.m. I immediately had a flashback to the Firesign Theatre’s most famous line, “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus.” Somebody—Angi? Lowe’s?—was screwing up. Big time.
Anyway, the Lowe’s rep “reached out” to Handy, and ultimately put someone from there on the phone with me. This woman’s accent was often incomprehensible, but I did get that the cancellation was because this was the third delay of the same project, and that’s what they always do. She acted totally befuddled that I didn’t accept company policy as a divinely inspired reason for jerking a customer around. And she did confirm my initial suspicions that there never was anyone assigned to do the job, so all that crap about “last-minute issues with [my] pro” was simply a lie. Like the woman at the post office described in my last post, she at least purported not to understand why I objected to being lied to.
This is when the woman from Lowe’s went into high dudgeon: “We pay you to provide this service to our customers. Are you telling me you’re unable to do that?” Well, yes. But the Lowe’s rep pulled back a little when it became clear that my refund was already underway. That still left me with a garage door opener still sitting in its box, where it is somewhat less useful than when professionally installed. The Lowe’s woman asked me if I wanted to speak to an Angi manager. Yes. Yes, I did.
A manager called me back a couple of hours later. She mouthed all the right platitudes about how sorry they were for the inconvenience, but (predictably) showed no remorse for having lied to a customer. “My pro” never existed. There are only two possible choices: either Angi knew there weren’t enough contractors in this area to meet the demand or they didn’t.
If the former, then not only were their excuses to me a lie, but they had also, in effect, lied to Lowe’s, and made that company guilty of false advertising. If the latter, then Hanlon’s Razor kicks in, and they’re just morons. I’d told them I could be available as needed. The logical thing to do is to put a call out to their workers in this area and say that they had a customer who could be available at any time but would like the job completed as quickly as possible, then let the people actually doing the job pick a date and time. Nope. They decided on an arbitrary time and expected both me and prospective installers to accommodate.
That is, there was no one available Sunday at 4:00, Tuesday at 4:00, or Thursday at 3:00… but there very well might have been on Friday or Saturday or Monday or Wednesday, or at a different time on Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday. I claim no expertise on running a business, but I do have list of a few things <i>not</i> to do. This kind of scheduling incompetence is Exhibit A. No… wait… it’s Exhibit B. Lying to customers is exhibit A.
The good news is that I was able to follow a different course, and the guy showed up at my door less than 24 hours after initial contact. The better news is that Angi got nary a nickel from this transaction.
***
Ethics Alarms 
I’m sorry you went through this, curmie. We have had our own problems getting repairpersons to show up at all, much less within the 4-hour window typically promised by the business.
One day, a few years, Mr. Golden took a day off of work for this four-hour window and waited all day. The repairman finally called and said he’d be there within the hour. Mr. Golden opened the front door and watched the entire hour as no vehicle, marked or otherwise, stopped at our home. No one walked to the front door or even looked like they intended to do so. After an hour, he called the company and was told the repairman reported that “no one was home”. Mr. Golden expressed firmly his objection to that answer. The repairman showed up shortly thereafter.
I realize that some repair jobs take longer than expected and, after a long day, I sympathize with anyone who just wants to go home, but really!
Yep. My wife and I just might be the last people on the planet with a landline. Well, as luck would have it, the line began making all kinds of screeching noises, rendering the phone system less than usable for its intended purpose. My wife, much more patient that your humble correspondent, made arrangements for Comcast to come inspect the line. Yeah, I’m naming names. Comcast? You are a horrid company and I hate you! The repair/inspection was scheduled between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. on September 6. My parents-in-law, both retired and adoring of Lord Remy, arrived at 8:30 a.m. that morning and waited. And waited. And waited. I received alerts from the Comcast that my driver was on the way, arriving at any time. This was 9:05. Cool, I thought. The repairs will be finished early and my inlaws could spend time revering Remy. I even called them to tell them Comcast was on the way.
Only, I wished I hadn’t: at 10:30 I received a text that the repairs were complete and that all was well in the world. I called my inlaws to thank them and, to their confusion, they told me no one had appeared or knocked on the door or made his/her/their/zer presence known, and the line still screeched. I called Comcast – yeah, you, Comcast: You still suck! – and the agent told me the repairs were completed at 10:30 a.m., according to the notes. Well, I dispossessed the agent of that belief by suggesting a call might be in order to test the line. A good idea which quickly demonstrated that the line didn’t work. The agent apologized profusely and scheduled another visit. Same thing, different angry call recipient agent, though, but still an apology and a rescheduling. Third time’s a charm, ¿no? Yep. The third repair tech arrived (10 minutes early), quickly diagnosed the problem, fixed and spent a good long time chatting with my inlaws. They thought the tech was really nice and spoke really good Spanish. The tech was great, but Comcast, you still suck!
jvb
What a coinky-dink! Comcast features prominently in my wasted time file, as well.
We still have what used to be an actual landline — my sister keeps it because it has been used as a business phone for half a century. As well, it was handy when we’d have a power outage (which seems to happen more often around here than I would have thought) because landlines had their own power coming through the line so the phone still worked when the electricity was off.
Unfortunately, progress has eliminated the ‘land’ part of landline. We still have the number but now it is a virtual landline. It comes in through the cable modem, so it also goes offline when the power does.
It drives us crazy because this phone number apparently is famous in the spam community. We tend to get several dozen spam calls a day — I just counted 33 today. I have actually developed some techniques for dealing with them and if I am in the right mood, I can sometimes keep them on the line for 5 or 10 minutes, leading them around in circles. However, when she retires I believe this number will retire with her.
Curmie, I had a similar experience back during the pandemic. I ordered one of those mattress-in-a-box and frame set. The company listed local experts to help with setup but, when I ordered (by phone, they were very nice) they allowed as how that due to the pandemic, they didn’t have their people. But they did recommend another company.
No-show after no-show. Finally, after numerous calls/complaints, someone did show up. I basically had to show him how to assemble the frame, sitting there reading the directions to him and handing him parts. Were I a younger man, I could have easily done it myself, but this rig was heavy.
The young sprat was a nice enough kid, but had no experience doing this sort of thing. And that’s when I learned how these “services” operate.
Think Uber or Lyft or DoorDash. The actual workers are all independents, and they get alerts when jobs are available in their area. They can either ignore them or accept them, just like Uber drivers do.
The difference is that we schedule this work for a certain time period, often days out, and the “service” accepts the gig without locking down the labor. And if no labor is available at the time of the gig? Well, you get a notification of a “scheduling problem.” And after a certain number of attempts, you automatically get booted our of the queue and have to start over.
It’s really not the fault of the workers. It’s the fault of the companies who sell their services without knowing if the labor will be available.
Thanks for the reminder, Curmie.
I had noticed a recurring charge for membership from Angi a few days ago when I was looking through credit card bills. I logged into the website and tried to cancel, but even after several times around the mulberry bush I couldn’t find the link to actually cancel. I got sidetracked and would have completely forgotten about it had it not been for your post. I logged in again just now and for whatever reason was able to find the correct link to cancel.
The world is a slightly better place now.
I’ve had nothing but good experiences with Lowes installing a handful of appliances pre-pandemic. Only issue, they had to reschedule the refrigerator and cut 10% off, essentially making the installation free.
Several months ago, my water heater started to leak, so called them up. Was told someone would call me back within 24 hours. Several days later, went into the store. Nobody at the desks, so I stood in the heater tank aisle staring at the options and reading the pamphlets for several minutes until I saw a blurb at the end of one that I could request an appointment online.
Went home and filled out the zip code and phone number fields, made a detailed description to plot where the capacity and usage numbers intersected from a big chart off a different pamphlet, then waited “24 hours”. Two full business days passed.
Hmm… maybe I filled out the form but closed the window instead of clicking submit? Well, do it again. And waited. Two more days.
Realization struck! This online appointment request is the exact same thing the employee filed out when I phoned them last week!
This time, asked a friend for a local plumber. One phone call and one day later my basement floor could finally start drying.