I will preface my nightmare story with my general satisfaction with HF
and their service. If you buy their "better" level of tools, they are
worth what you pay for them and they are good enough for hobbyists like
us. If you buy their top line stuff like IR air compressors, you beat
the competition by free freight and no sales tax.
And now for my horror story.....
In mid November I placed a large order with HF for a lot of stocking
stuffer kind of stuff and a few significant items like a horizontal /
vertical cutoff band saw. By mid December I was expecting the packages
to start arriving. I received an e mail from a friend in Eureka, Kansas
where we lease a ranch. She said a package had arrived at their house
for me from HF. I should add here, that last spring I ordered a shallow
well pump for the ranch and had it shipped to them so I didn't have to
take it out there with us when we went in June. I was dismayed why this
package should be shipped there since I had given no instructions to
ship there. In fact, I had placed two or three orders with HF between
last spring and the present, and they had all come to Michigan.
The next day I got another e mail,,,,,2 more packages had arrived. I got
on the phone and called the HF "Customer Satisfaction Unit" (that's a
laugh !) I sat on hold for 42 minutes before I got to talk to somebody.
When I got to talk to a human (that's doubtful) she first suggested that
I must have told them to ship them there. NOT ! I replied. I explained
that I had placed a number of orders that had all been delivered
properly. After further checking she informed me that the order was
divided into 7 packages and that they were all in transit to Kansas. She
said she would send me a return postage label.
I responded to that suggestion by pointing out that it had two flaws.
First, sending me a label would do no good because the package was in
Kansas and second, a return label would return it to their warehouse
where it was likely to get mishandled again and further more it would
cost them twice as much to ship it back to them and then they had to
ship it to me at the correct location. "Why not, I said, send a prepaid
label to the address in Kansas and let my friend send it directly to me.
The response....."Impossible !!!! Must come back here." OK, I said if
that's the way it has to be, then send 7 labels to Kansas.
Response,,,,"No I can only send you one label because you have only
received on package. You will have to call and get a return
authorization for each package as it arrives."
At that point I lost my cool ! I told her she was compounding dumb with
dumber. I told her that I had been on hold for 42 minutes waiting to
talk to her and if she thought I was going to do that 7 more times she
was sadly mistaken. I then demanded to speak to the supervisor. I had to
explain the whole story. She would not relent on where the reshipment
had to go.....it had to be HF. She did however agree to send all 7
return authorizations at one time. At this point, I was too near a
stroke to pursue it further so I said, send the 7 labels to Kansas!
I e mailed my friend and told her what was supposed to happen. She
thought it was a dumb as I did, but she said she would do it. Christmas
passes and afterwards I get an e mail from her saying she has received a
package with 4 return authorizations in it instead of 7. So she called
HF "Customer Satisfaction Unit". They said, "well that's because there
were really only 4 different shipment even though there were actually 7
packages.....some of the shipments contained multiple packages". They
told here that what she would have to do was open the packages and check
the invoices against the contents and then repackage them according to
the invoices, cutting it down to 4 boxes to return. At that point my
friend lost her cool......You've heard of Kansas tornadoes? They can't
hold a candle to Barb when she get steamed about something. She demanded
to talk to the head of the Customer Satisfaction Unit.....
For those of you who may not be familiar with Kansans' thinking, it is a
lot like their state....lots of straight lines.....if you want to go
from one place to another, straight lines or combinations of straight
lines will get you there. Similarly, problems are solved very linearly.
She wasn't about to buy their solution. She proceeded to give the
Supervisor of the Customer Satisfaction Unit an oral hemmoroidectomy.
She finally got the Supervisor to agree to send seven labels to Kansas
that would result in direct reshipment to me.
She sent me another e mail and told me what she had achieved. But she
said she was so steamed that she had drafted a letter to the president
of HF telling what a joke his Customer Satisfaction Unit was....she said
the people there were either to dumb to make good decisions or too
intimidated by internal bureaucratic procedures to do things that made
good sense and resulted in satisfied customers, which is what this unit
was SUPPOSED to be about. She asked me to review it before she sent it.
I correct a few point about the timeline of events and returned it to
her.
Later in the day, just as we were sitting down to dinner, there was a
knock at the door. It was the UPS man. He said I am here to pickup a
heavy package. I looked dismayed. He followed up with, "Weren't you
returning something to Harbor Freight? a band saw or something?" I
started laughing.....I told him the item he was supposed to pick up was
in Kansas. He said, "Why is it there?" My response ? GOOD QUESTION
!!! I gave him a short version of the debacle and said that with some
luck, he should be delivering it to me in a week or so. Will he? Only
time will tell......I have a distinct feeling that this is not the end
of the story.
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