Tag: DIY

Lowe’s – Lowest Satisfaction: Good Bye from now

lowes

When I took various marketing classes in my life during my undergrad and MBA, the theory always said “Bad experience/VOC is usually spread 8 times more than good experience/VOC” – stressing the importance of keeping customers happy. Here is my version of 8 times VOC blast for home improvement store experience – Lowe’s.

When it comes to home improvement/home appliance, I have always went to Lowe’s if possible – usually have more selections, more staffs in stores than Home Depot – every time I learn from store when I need to explore/fix something, and for appliances I do remember they had next day delivery, and I also thought Lowe’s has better deal vs. “incumbent” Home Depot.

Last week, our beloved 2nd refrigerator finally died quietly in our garage- making me rushing to store to purchase replacing refrigerator in ASAP since 2nd one was always used more like “longer term storage” of food.

Here are the series of journey I had to go through..

* Next Day delivery: Impossible – because I was late – I was at the store at 6:30 PM -not happy to get rejected but acceptable any how..this became next-next day delivery

* At the day after, I got a call that the product they had in store was defective- offered me to take floor sample with discount. The only thing I asked back is “Can it be still be delivered tomorrow?”, “It is working unit – correct?” and the answer was all yes.

* It got delivered but it took a while to start after plugging in electricity – something was weird, but the manual said it requires 24 hours of operation to fully function. So I put all the food we previously triaged in the newly arrived refrigerator.

* Next day, after 24 hour has passed – I found out all the food were melting with horrible smell in refrigerator. IT NEVER COOLED ANYTHING FROM BEGINNING.  Then I called to the store. They said to me to call to service. Called to Service they said call to Care. And finally called to Care. All in all, series of waste of time – explaining what happened 3 times & everyone was saying calling to store for replacement is the best option. All food I put were tossed away to garbage – my precious foods!!

* Next day, they called me up and said I need to wait 3 more days for new unit. – asked whether they can dispatch any from their neighbor stores – refused again – fine.

* At the day of delivery, no confirmation at all – so I called them up – and they said the driver talked with me on delivery time (Who?) and driver is 2 min away from me – waited for 20 min – called them back – said my refrigerator is at their store so delivery have to be delayed. What?! and heard series of reasons why it was missed in delivery truck. (it arrived at the store in that morning just before the truck was loading the delivery items – well I don’t care!) Nicely, I got my work schedule screwed up. – I was feeling just glad that I have a generous boss.

* So I left my unhappy “series of bumps” in their website and asked them to reach out to me via email if they want to. Yesterday, the customer service emailed me that store will reach out to me in next 24 hours. Today, Saturday night, I got a cold call from the store, saying how it is working – it is working fine. No word of apologies on product failure and delivery failure. Felt like he is calling me because I left the feedback on their store on website -but was totally waste of time for me to be on a phone with store manager who was never apologetic to me.

Conclusion & Direction from now: Whenever I am buying something, I am going to Home Depot directly or Costco. BTW, I found the pricing for the same one was exactly same in Home Depot.

Also a good reminder for me – on importance of alwaying thinking “in the shoe of customer” – solving the problem form customer’s perspective – I never cared how their internal process is. Also, sometimes, all it matter is just apologizing – I had no intention of asking anything back on my losses and issues I had to go though. All I just want to hear is any sincere apologies..

This was the follow up email I kindly wrote back to customer service again. Good Bye!

—————————————————————————-

Thank you for you notice.
 
I did get a call from store today night – which was the most disturbing call – keep saying and asking me it is delivered and working – and no word of apologies for the things happened and no single mention of delay in delivery and the loss of food I had, plus the trouble I had to go through.
 
Also, by the way, when I left this comment, I believe I left the preferred way of communication as email, while the store called me up and just blasted what they wanted to say vs. what I wanted to hear. – Total waste of time for me.
 
I never wanted my experience to be lip-serviced with soul-less & non apologizing explanation, and my time wasted with no single word of apologies with cold calling. My bad I should have ignored the call rather than picking up the phone.
 
Anyhow, although I am not a contractor nor “heavy fixer” to be a frequent home improvement shopper, but going forward this refrigerator should be my last purchase on anything from Lowe’s, and I will never forget this experience and always drive directly to Home Depot without any hesitation since it is already close from my place.
 
Thanks,

2014.3

 

Samsung Galaxy Note: DIY Replacing USB Charging Port

WP_20130508_001 WP_20130508_003

So couple of days ago, my wife’s Galaxy Note was broken – whatever charging cable we tried, the phone hardly get charged – the only case it got charged was when I pulled the charging cable to extream southeast.. It was painful and inconsistent and not a sustainable way.. -_-;

So after some research, I found out, 1) this is not the problem of us only, and we had tons of folks who went thru this process, and 2) some folks do sell USB charging port modules on eBay.. The challenge was finding out the right part for Tmobile version of Note 1 – which is an extreme rare.. (it only sold for a short period with limited quantity)

Luckily enough I was able to order one from eBay, and followed all the directions from the youtube video below

– Open 9 screws at the back

– Open the surrounding cover (so painful!)

– Open 3 screws at the bottom and detach one module

– Open 2 screws at the mainboard

– Detach 6 connection cable points & 1 white line connection point & pull out mainboard

– Detach the white line connection from Charging port module

– Pull out the charging port & reconnect the line connection & all other cables and put back the screws and covers.

The biggest challenge was peeling out the surroundings case because I didn’t have that fancy plastic tool shown in video but I only have my nails as something similar (ouch!!)

With 1st try, it seemed working at first, but power supply seemed to be not feeding into battery.. so…after some thoughts .. I reopened it with hands & nails again (Ouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch!!!!), and found out the cable connecting charging port module to mainboard was not clipped properly.. 😦

Finally, rework after work, finally the galaxy note is back to its life.. 🙂

Gamble of $20 +pain in nails saved me $500.. but thinking this might have been done at one of the Samsung’s service center in Seoul with cheap service fee made me feel sad that I live across the ocean… I do miss that convenience…

Thank you eBay (and who sold this) & Youtube (and the person who shared the video)!

2013.5

DIY 2: Laptop Fan Replacement

얼마전부터 나의 미국생활과 함께 시작되었던 유구한 연을 가진 우리 Thiankpad T42가 캥캥거리기 시작했다..

좀 켜놨다 싶으면 탱크 굴러가는 소리도 내고 가끔은 Fan Error로 Booting도 안되고…그럴 때마다 순간 맞바람을 불어주고 먼지좀 대신 먹어주는 인공호흡을 하며 연명하다가 결국 Fan을 갈았다..아 절라 비쌉니다..대략 ebay에서 60불…거의 이건 뭐 대략 싸구려 이동식 에어콘값이구만…T_T

옆 컴퓨터 창에 Hardware Material Mannual을 띄어 놓고 조이고 풀고 해서, Battery>Keyboard>외장판 다 떼고… 마지막으로 팬을 떼어네 이 Laptop쓴지 4년 반만에 최초로 CPU와 대면식도 해주셨다…^^;

에휴… 사실 작년 초에 Warranty 3년 expire되기전에 나름 때마침 망가져주신 Lan Adaptor 갈고, CD도 갈고, Keyboard도 갈았건만.. 이젠 Warranty도 없어서 결국 DIY해주셨다.. (Keyboard는 아들님이 새 Keyboard 장착 후 한달도 안되 뽑아주셔서 왼쪽 Ctrl 키가 없는 장애 Keyboard로 버티고 있다..)

2009.11

Cabin Air Filter!

드디어 주문하였던 자동차 air filter가 배달 왔다. 정말이지 이 나라의 DIY 문화는 적응이 쉽지 않다..^^; 문화땜시 하는지..돈땜시 하는지..-_-;
소나타의 에어 필터는 Glove Box 뒤에 있는고로 Glove Box 뜯어내느라 한 10-20분은 낑낑대다 처리했다. 뭐 항상 그렇지만 하고 나면 쉽고 돈도 절약하고 뭔가 배운 것 같기도 해 기분은 좋다…^^

이제 남은 다음 숙제는 차 긁힌거 녹제거와 페이트칠..-_-; 흑흑 정말 힘들다..T_T
2009.10