Stores with Good reputations that actually suck

The BBQ Pit
1

Inspired by another thread.

#1 Home Depot. People swear by this place. “OH, they are so helpful!”. “Oh, they are so knowledgable”. {puke}

I have had terrible luck at Home Depot. It seems extremely understaffed. The few employees ‘working’ hide behind a desk with their backs toward where customers are and talk amongst themselves. If you are insistent and force their attention they will say “Oh, you need to see Sue in blaa blaa over there somewhere”. You find Sue and she has a gazillion customers vying for her attention so you just give up and leave the store.

There are 3 different Home Depots near me and all three are like this.

#2 Best Buy. I don’t think their employees are actually paid anything. They shouldn’t because I have yet to see one working (except for the security dude at the door and the cashiers). THe worst experience there is when I wanted a TV, found the model that I wanted and tried to find someone to get me it down. After about 5 minutes, I found one and he said, “I’ll get it for you, be right back”. 10 minutes later I’m still standing there.

So, I find a ladder, get up and get it down. No small feat. It is now sitting on the floor and to big/heavy to haul. So I look around and find a cart. I load it up and start taking it to the front. NOW an employee shows up. HE TAKES THE TV OFF THE CART AND TRIES TO TAKE THE CART FROM ME.

I, of course, refuse. He actually grabs my hands and starts forcing my fingers off the cart! This, of course, results in me gently requesting him to stop touching me (something like “Look you fucker, if you don’t stop doing that I’ll kick your ass”). He looks surprised at me and mentions he will call security.

I look at the TV box sitting in the middle of the aisle and say screw it and leave. Before I leave, I stop to try to talk to a manager about the employee. The manager listens and then says “Carts are for store employees only”. I know that you moron but how am I suppose to buy the TV when no one will help!?! Unfuckingbelievable.

I’ve never been back. However, I’ve been in best buy many times before and, except on one instance, it has sucked.
So, any other stores with ‘good’ reps that actually suck or vice versa (I’ve had good luck at KMART :eek: )

2

I’ve actually had pretty good luck at Wal-Mart in my city… other than the old guy in automotives.

They’re usually friendly and go out of their way to help. Even the old guy in auto was friendly… he was just a dumb fuck.

3

I agree with you about Best Buy. They suck balls. But I loves me the Home Depot!

4

Best Buy.

sigh

That’s what you get when your concept is “exactly like a commission-based store, but without the commisssion”.

I’ve been inside a Best Buy twice in my life, and all I ever got was a ten-minute wait, followed by “Oh, we don’t have that”.

I like Home Depot, though - perhaps your local stores are the exception.

5

Well, the Home Depot used to have better staff. When there was only one per region, it was easier to get a store full of gruff old contracter dudes who really knew their stuff. Now that they’re everywhere, there isn’t enough “talent” to fill the stores. There are 8 Home Depots and an Expo within a 10 mile drive of my house!

6

I’ve got a Lowes about five minutes from me, and a Home Depot about ten. Lowe’s seems to have a disproportionately large amount of mulletheaded Winter Garden residents shopping there compared to the Home Depot, so right away that tells me it’s the superior home improvement store … a vast majority of WG residents are ethnic Confederates that work in the building trades.

Find the home improvement center with the most rolling shrines to Dale Earnhardt parked in front, and you’ve probably found the best store.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I always heard that Best Buy had a rather bad reputation.

Is Nordstrom’s everthing folks make it out to be?

7

My Home Depot rant:

I was trying to find dupes or equivalents of a small wire clamp. I wanted to anchor one end of a wire around an eyebolt.

I show it to the sales guy: He says, “Next aisle over about half-way up.” He doesn’t appear to be doing anything, but he doesn’t seem interested in coming along.

I look. Nothing. For five mintes or more I look, til I go back. He’s on his cell phone, talking softly and literally turning in a circle, apparently to keep me out of his line of sight as he talks. He has a minion, and I ask him, but minion shrugs helplessly. So we both wait.

Salesguy finishes, listens and gets a pained look when I tell him I can’t find it. Tells minion, “Next aisle over about half way up.” Minion looks apologetically at me, and says, “Follow me”. We find nothing. I would have left by now, except I’ve already tried Menard’s and Ace harware and come up empty.

We go back to sales guy, who actually sighs at our foolishness. Finally he comes, and looks for about 2 minutes. He pulls out something, hands it to me, says, “Here ya go”.

It is easly 8 times the size of my part, which I had shown him. It was some kind of electrical conduit component, with a clamp in it for some reason. It looks nothing like my part, and whatever it does, it clearly can’t do the same job as my clamp.

I say, “This isn’t even close.”

He shrugs, says, “That’s all we have.”, and walks away.

Won’'t be going there again soon.

8

Best Buy is great if you know what you’re looking for - they have decent selection and prices. If you don’t know exactly, heaven help you if it’s a computer part. Then again, I probably shouldn’t be too hard on them - I bought my last computer there because the employee insisted that it had an AGP video card and not an onboard one. The manufacturer insisted too, but sure enough, it was onboard, which stumped the tech support guy that I was on the phone with.

They’re also not very fast at opening new checkout lines, and seem to be understaffed in general. I usually do my home electronics shopping there though, because unless I need a particular item taken down off a high shelf or something, I usually can just grab what I want and hit the checkouts.

9

Our Best Buy blows. A million employees walking around, one or two checkout lanes (out of ten) open, at the most, during busy stretches. Or you can walk all the way over to the service desk and checkout there, maybe. You’ll see five co-workers in the music section gathered around cutting up and checking out their manager’s ass. Might as well break out the hacky sack, dudes.

The only employees that are eager to show you anything are in the TV dept. Anyone else you have to tackle them to get their attention.

Shrinking selection in the music and video section, must make way for even more copies of the latest releases (just like Wherehouse Music, at least BB’s prices are better). Good luck trying to get any DVD or box set off of the too small shelves without damaging the package. You’ll find DVDs with two and three layers of shrink wrap on them where they have been ripped open by snagging on the wire frames when some tried to get them out earlier.

I don’t even think of going near their home computer section. The cell phone island might as well be dead space for all the traffic it gets.

And when will my ears stop bleeding from the in store “radio station” combined with the endless James Bond trailers and Sting concerts blarring from the TVs?

10

Sears - I will never buy anything from them again. Jerks they are.

11

I love Best Buy! That’s where I get all my DVD’s.

Most overrated store: Bath & Body Works - not only do most of their products smell “cheap” - they pounce on you the minute you walk in the store.

12

Victoria’s Secret. Oh, the horrors that are there.

Any time I actually go into the store, I’m going there for one reason: underwear. I literally run to the back, to the tables with the undies on it. But somehow, the sales clerk always gets in my way, to show me the newest bra or contraption that they have. I’m never interested, because they don’t make a bra big enough for my girls. But yet the salesperson insists that they do, and that, they couldn’t possibly be that big. Grrr…don’t insult the girls…they will crush your little stick self.

Once I get my underwear, and step up to the checkout, they always tell me about some promotion where I can get X% or $X off of my purchase by trying on something or buying something. Then they see the underwear (the 5 pairs for $20) and just go “Oh. Well. You aren’t interested in that, are you?” If its something that I can try on, don’t have to purchase and get money off of my purchase, I will do it! Their underwear are the most expensive undies ever. So I ask to try on said garment, it doesn’t fit (because nothing but their underwear fit). I tell the sales clerk that it doesn’t fit and now I’ll take my undies and discount and will be going. No…hold on…they can’t give me the discount on just the underwear. Well, show that to me in writing, otherwise, get your supervisor out here now because I want my discount. I want to leave. By the time that I actually leave, with underwear, I’ve been in the store for at least 1/2 an hour. It should have taken 5 minutes to get underwear and pay for them and leave.

Grr…I would rather pay shipping charges and order off of their website than actually go into the store and deal with the sales clerks.

13

A-FUCKING-MEN![ul][li]Why should I load crappy lumber twice (into a cart, then onto my truck) when I can load good lumber once and pay a lot less for doing so?[/li][li]Their “#2 select” wood is stamped #1 and is worse than any other stores #2 grade. I’m pretty sure it’s repackaged rejects, especially since “#2 select” is not a lumber association grading.[/li][li]The lumber is picked over, mainly because it was crappy wood to start with.[/li][li]The last wood I priced was priced at two and one-half times the best price in town. They say they will match any price, but why should I do their market research for them when I can get what I want elsewhere?[/li][li]The nearest store used to be open 24 hours and had freeway access without any traffic lights. They shut that store down and opened another directly behind the old store. This new store closes at midnight and has two or three stop lights between it and the freeway. It also closes at midnight. I’ve been there once for some plaster. The two registers were backed up ten customers deep, so I dropped my stuff on the floor and walked.[/li][li]Beyond the building materials, a lot of the hardware is overpriced as all hell. I’ve also heard of wiring displays with blatant code violations, but I’ve never noticed one.[/li][li]And they don’t have any loaders in the yard, mainly because there is no yard and you have to load your lumber twice.[/ul]Anyone else seen McCoy’s new ads? One shows a truck leaving the yard, driving down a highway and arriving at a site, interposed with letterboxes saying “At the other guys… you would be leaving… the parking lot… about now.”[/li]
I do have to give the box stores credit for pressuring the contractor yards to deal with cash customers.

Going to Home Depot for building supplies is like planning a dinner then driving to Seven-Eleven to shop. You won’t get everything you want and you will be disappointed with the quality. At best you might get lucky and find enough to make things work.

14

Well, I had a pair of shoes I bought from Nordstrom that had worn out well before they should have. But I was also living overseas for a couple years since I bought them, so never had a chance to return 'em. Long story short: I returned them (with the receipt), and they would have given me their original value ($170) in cash if I’d wanted. I opted instead to get another pair of shoes, which were 10 bucks less; so, I got a new pair of shoes, plus $10 cash. Not bad! (the dude in the shoe department was a dick, however, who tried to just give me 50% store credit. I asked for the manager, who said “Absolutely, we always give full value if you have the receipt, no matter how long ago it was”. So don’t let any of the underlings push you around)

I asked a friend who’s a manager at a different Nordstrom, and she has ALL sorts of stories of people abusing their return policy. Best one: a woman took a stack of 4 Tommy Hilfiger jeans off a display rack, and brought them to her register explaining that she wanted to return them for cash. As in, she grabbed them of the shelf and asked the store to pay her for them! A manager was called, who eventually said to give the woman the money.

15

When on eaerth did Best Buy have a good reputation? These are the bozos who couldn’t sell a hot product when everyone else in the world was making a mint off it.

16

I generally like Home Depot, although I do have one beef with them: it takes forever to check-out. I suspect this is just the nature of the beast, and all, but it does get annoying when you just need a few hardware supplies. I think they might actually do well to have an “express lane”, possibly one that’s a self-checkout.

I can’t say they suck, having never been there – but I seriously doubt Krispy Kreme’s product is worth the hype it gets. I mean, come on! Lines around the block? It’s intriguing that they’ve actually stepped up to the marketing of hype, not the product itself.

17

I’ve thought about writing a letter to Home Depot listing all the things (some expensive) that I’ve bought elsewhere because I couldn’t get help at HD.
I have a friend who works at HD and, at her store at least, it’s a horrible place to work. The employees don’t get a discount.

Circuit City here used to be a good store. Now I won’t even go there. They used to be very good about replacing or repairing defective items. Now they just fuck with you.

18

I will never again set foot into a Lowe’s. I am female, and everytime I have walked into that store to buy something, I have been treated like a dumb bimbo. I was buying a drill, and the guy working in that section actually told me I looked like a girl who just moved out of her daddy’s house. He didn’t think I should get something that would require me to use power tools, or maybe I had a male friend who could help me. It took all of my restraint not to punch him in the face.

19

Shopco. Definately Shopco. Theyve got this stupid deal where you have to take a ticket for any of the larger items (wouldn’t want you to get a strain trying to carry anything yourself now would we?). You go to the register, pay, then supposedly they rush the item right out to you. I’ve gone there 3 times and have had to wait over 30 minutes and once 45 before they finally had the pimpley faced stock boy come out with my purchase.

20

Ooooh. Sears. I worked in one if their call centers for about a month back in high school. Take my advice and never EVER try to get them to fix something of yours. Our entire call center existed for one purpose: to prevent people from talking to the people who could help them. Ostensibly, we were supposed to schedule repair appointments, but the first available one was inevitably at least three to five weeks out, which went over really well with the old people with broken A/C in July. If it was life-threatening, we could transfer them to our supervisors.

Plus we were supposed to try and sell them fucking laundry detergent! You can imagine how well that went over:
“Yes, we’ll be able to get your fridge repaired sometime in the middle of the month after next. No, I don’t know what you should do until then. I’m sorry you feel that way. Incidentally, would you like our repair guy to bring out a box of laundry soap with him? Hello? Hello?”