I am a long time associate of Lowe’s. I’ve been a department supervisor for quite a while and I’m sick and tired of this company giving scheming customers discounts and product for nothing. It goes on all the time. We get calls from customers all the time about products or services that have been paid for a long time ago and they’ve decided that they either want a discount or to return their item for cash.
And let’s be clear, a lot of these items and services were paid for YEARS ago. We got a call from a customer just yesterday about a product that the customer had damaged and the company that made it wouldn’t honor the warranty because of it. Let me repeat that, THE CUSTOMER ADMITTED TO DAMAGING THE ITEM BUT STILL INSISTED THAT THE VENDOR HONOR THE WARRANTY. But the vendor isn’t an id--t so they told the customer NO.
You can guess what happened next. They called our store, where they purchased the item and then demanded that we give them money for this! I was the department supervisor who took the call. Of course I was floored when the customer just blatantly admitted to causing the problem in the first place. I immediately told them NO. I clearly stated this was an issue between them and the company that made the item. And this item wasn’t something cheap, it was a piece of OPE equipment costing several hundred dollars!!
You can probably also guess what happened next. The customer became enraged and demanded that they speak to the store manager, to which I also replied, “NO”. They then hung up, called back, asking to speak to the store manager but got an ASM instead. Of course they immediately agreed to give this imbecile exactly what they wanted. I even informed the ASM of what the issue was BEFORE they agreed to hand over several hundred dollars for nothing. They simply said “This customer is a long time problem for us. They’ll simply call us over and over again until they get what they want. It will only hurt our LTR scores so we might as well give them what they want.” WHAT!!!???
Of course they’ll keep calling! If we continually give this person their money back, OF COURSE THEY’LL KEEP CALLING!! What kind of idi0cy is this? Why are we willing to give tens of thousands of dollars every year to customers who don’t deserve it!? And believe me this isn’t an isolated issue. This insanity accumulates to THOUSANDS of dollars every year.
The real root of this problem is the district level management and above. They’ll NEVER back up store decisions to stand up to a customer because the people above the stores only give a f*ck about the god d@mn LTR scores! And we all know that the LTR scores are a complete waste of time and money. So, the management in the buildings keep giving dishonest and harassing customers what they want because they know they’ll just get screwed over if the issue leaves the store. Nice.
Hey, idi0ts at the top of this company! You want to increase your margin and profitability!? Dump the LTR scores and grow a pair of functioning ba--s. Back up your managers at the store level instead of st@bbing them in the back! It’s a better way of protecting your margin than by filling the stores up with clearance cr@p with minuscule discounts. Up to you though…