If you’ve been following the blog, you’ll know we had a breakdown and ordered a new stove… and then just continued to have additional breakdowns because getting a stove delivery is apparently a positively hellish experience.
We got it ordered and the delivery date was scheduled for Friday of the same week (last Friday). Awesome, right?
Awesome until the stove arrived anyway, because it was the wrong frickin stove. Right box, wrong stove. WTF? It wasn’t ever the right color OR model! It seemed like one of the those “you had ONE job to do” situations. So the stove went back, and our old one came back in after they had already hauled it out onto the truck.
And then the oven pilot wouldn’t light. And the delivery company never got back to us about when we would get the RIGHT stove. I called Home Depot after I got home from work and they said they would try and get in touch with the delivery company and also try and get a tech out to fix our existing oven.
Then there was no word until Saturday evening which basically said they still didn’t know anything (and no word about a possible tech). While I respect the fact that they followed up with us, this was not the news I wanted to hear. This conversation then rapidly went downhill (oh yes, it keeps going) when the guy I was talking with offered the following options.
- Google what was wrong with our current stove (how about it’s old and something got jarred/broken when it was moved in and out of the house?)
- Come into the store and pick up an in-stock stove that is nothing like the one we ordered (other than it was white and gas but was otherwise missing every feature we wanted) and also a significantly cheaper model AND haul it home ourselves with no word on how our old stove would be hauled away.
Basically I got off the phone and was furious. While I like Home Depot, I very much do not like that they contract out their delivery which leaves them pretty incapable to sort out problems for their customer.
Monday evening we still didn’t have an update on delivery so I called the store again! I got some manager this time (probably should have insisted on that the first time around because I think the first guy was just out of his depth) who proceeded to tell me that the earliest delivery date would be this Friday, a week after our originally scheduled delivery.
Ok, fine. Matt was already going to be home that day anyway, but that was because we were leaving that afternoon to go visit family. So I said we would need to have the stove before 3 that day and was told there was no way they could guarantee that.
%^$%^&%(*&(
That’s most of the frickin day! How can you have system that wouldn’t even let you add comments? I was steadily freaking out at this point because with travel and meetings the next day that would work for us would be next Wednesday and we still had no working oven.
At this point I will say the manager I was speaking too kicked it up a notch. She called the delivery company the next day to explain the situation, then called me to assure me they would get us the stove by 3 and if we weren’t given a delivery window in the right time frame (because apparently the route is computer generated *headdesk*) to call her on her cell phone and she’d sort it out with the delivery company.
Ugh.
I was getting ready to post this when Matt’s phone rang. It was GE calling to tell us there was a problem with the delivery, i.e. it would not be happening. Something in their system was wrong somehow so no stove for us tomorrow. We had even gotten a call earlier in the day (finally!) confirming our delivery window. WTF????
Now we are not scheduled to get the stove until next Wednesday–a week and half after we were supposed to get it! Plus, we’ve had no functioning oven for nearly a week now because of this whole debacle. I’ve spent the last few hour periodically giggling to myself in that oh-dear-god-what-else-can-possibly-go-wrong sort of way because this is starting to feel a bit surreal.
Buying a car was way less of a headache. Matt mentioned that we’re still paying off the car but at least the stove is fully paid for. Yeah, but we fully paid for a stove that we don’t even have yet!