And the Saga Continues...

Anxiety and liberation. Those are the themes for today's blog. Think of these as the metaphorical cousins to "War and Peace".

Yesterday was a day of anxiety for me. You recall that I wrote about my tumultuous dealings with Home Depot and the installation of a door at my house that is for sale (by the way, are any of you interested in buying a house?). St. Patrick's Day was D-Day in this dispute. When I did not receive a return call after leaving two voicemail messages, I called HD's corporate "customer service" telephone number and pretty much read the riot act. Without dwelling too much on details, let's just say that I was not my ordinarily charming self (I was not vulgar, but I was also not pleasant). After a half dozen more calls and spending all my lunch and break time in wrangling negotiations, it was finally settled that my wife was taking a vacation day from work and traveling the hour and a half to Northern Kentucky to sit and wait while the contractor installed the door. (I would have gone myself except that I don't have any vacation time; taking off work for me is money out of our household resources). The installation was scheduled between 9:00 and 10:00 this morning.

It might interest the reader to know that I have twenty years of experience in customer service including experience as a supervisor for a brokerage company. As a matter of fact, my current employment has me working in a telephone call center as an information technology customer service specialist. This is relevant for two reasons. First, I have a keen understanding of what companies should do in order to deliver quality customer service. HD has been the poster child for what not to do. Second, I was busy on the telephone this morning delivering quality customer service to my customer when my cell phone rang with HD's number populating the caller id window around 9:30.

This did not bode well.

Since I was busy with my own caller, I disregarded the call for the moment hoping that they would leave a voice mail. In less than a minute, my phone was ringing again, and again it was Home Depot.

This really did not bode well.

On this second call I saw that there was a voice mail, so I devoted my attention to my customer's needs and wrapped that business up before calling my inbox. This is where the moment of liberation began.

The manager at Home Depot started by saying there was a problem. The manufacturer had built and delivered the wrong sized door. They would need to make other arrangements for installing our door. Sigh.

Some people given my circumstances might have been inclined to lose their temper at such news, but I confess that I take too much satisfaction from being in a position to say "I told you so" to view this as anything but amusing. I called Home Depot back with a sense of calm confidence.

The woman who answered was already familiar with my case, and explained that the manufacturer had built a 36" door instead of a 34" door, and it could not be made to fit. Since there were none in stock anywhere physically proximate to our doorway, other arrangements would need to be made.

I pointed out that my wife had driven an hour and a half this morning to Ludlow and was waiting on the porch for the installer even as we were speaking. I asked the manager how long should I tell her that she could expect to wait today.

"We won't have a door today" she replied. I knew beforehand that was going to be the answer, but I wanted to hear her say it. She went on to explain that they would have to have a door built, and they would be back in contact once they had the correct door in hand. I considered for the moment of suggesting that they call Lowe's to see if they had one in stock, but I decided that they may not view this as particularly helpful. Instead I started to point out all the inconvenience my wife had taken to be at the house and on time for the installation, but the manager hastened to add that there would be compensation for us in the form of a rebate.

And that was all I really wanted to hear from the beginning; a little flexibility on their part.