The Bastards Stood Us Up
They Are Too Big to Care
This is a story about buying a new microwave. I know some of my regular readers might be wondering, “Gee, Norm, does shopping for a new microwave lend itself to the kind of cogent, insightful, interesting slices of life that we’ve grown to know and love on The Storm. By Norm?” All I can say is, read it and find out.
In the first part of December 2023, my wife and I decided to buy a new microwave. We had the old one for 11 or 12 years and it was sort of on the fritz. I say “sort of” because it still was fine at heating food, but, apparently it had a bad switch or latch or something because whenever the door was opened, the microwave made that sound microwaves make when they are operating and the turntable would turn. Just by opening the door. It didn’t seem like it was actually “microwaving” though, because I could stick my hand in there and not feel anything. (Sometimes I do stupid things.) However, when the door was closed, the cooking time set, and Start was pressed, it would heat up the food normally.
We could have lived with it for a while longer, but after we sold our Corvette, we had a little bit of money lying around, so, being loyal Americans, we looked to spend some of it to, you know, goose the local economy. We do a lot of economy goosing it seems. After a bit of internet research, we went to a local big box store to see the microwaves in person.
Now, I do not want to say which big box store we went to, so I’ll just make up a totally at random, unrelated name for use in this post. Let’s call it “Worst Buy”.
So, we went to Worst Buy and found the microwave we liked and decided to purchase it. We were told the earliest they could schedule us for delivery and installation was almost three weeks out on December 24. Christmas Eve and on a Sunday. The scheduling seemed less than ideal, but we told ourselves it would be all right.
December 24 came and went with no microwave and not a word from Worst Buy. The bastards stood us up. We didn’t know what to think. If they had run out of time on their delivery and installation schedule, they could have contacted us. They should have contacted us, no matter what. A quick call or text just to let us know they would have to reschedule. We would have been disappointed, but we would have understood. Instead, we were annoyed because we sat around like idiots all day, and they never came and never told us anything.
I found out online that we had been rescheduled for Dec 27. I called the Worst Buy help line the day after Christmas to get some answers. I eventually was able to talk to a person, who really couldn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.
So, the Jerk Squad from Worst Buy came on the Dec 27 to deliver and install our new microwave. End of story, all’s well that ends well, right? Uh, no. As they finished up, one of the guys, to his credit, showed us our new microwave had a dent in the upper left corner of the door. He said he would enter it into the system and that we could take a few days to decide if we wanted a replacement, or not. He said in situations such as this, if we decided to keep it, Worst Buy would likely offer us a gift card for our trouble. Or we could just exchange the damaged item for no additional charges.
After they left, we decided to exchange our new microwave for another one. The dent wasn’t bad, but the door creaked like the door to a 16th century haunted castle, indicating there was possibly more damage than a simple dent. We called the number on the paperwork and requested an exchange. The service rep it would be no problem, except that they couldn’t do it for six weeks, due to that model being on back order. We could keep and use the damaged microwave until they could bring us another. So, we said okay. The rep gave us a date - Wednesday, February 7.
Worst Buy sent us a few text messages right before the big day, saying we were scheduled for Feb 7 and they would let us know when they were within 30 minutes of arriving, and all that. Guess what happened? The bastards stood us up! Again! No call, no text, just a big nothing.
I called the help line again, and bitched to the guy who was unfortunate enough to get my call. Let’s call him Ravi (not his real name). Ravi was very understanding and apologetic, and his English was excellent. He explained that our order was “in transit” and he would not be able to do anything with it until the next day. He said he would call me around 11 am and let me know what was going on.
To our surprise, Ravi called me back a little after 11! We had finally found someone to help us! Ravi said the “in transit” problem had not cleared up overnight, and that he would contact the store directly and call me back later in the day.
We never heard from Ravi again.
Perhaps someone at Worst Buy found out he was actually trying to help a customer and sent him off to the gulag for some remedial anti-customer service training.
The next day, Friday, Feb 9, I went back to the store. My goal was to see if there was anyone in that fucking place who gave a shit about clearing this up.
I went to the customer service desk, and after a brief, profanity-free explanation, I was escorted to another area of the store. There I met Stanley. I calmly and reasonably expressed my frustration at this ridiculous situation. All we wanted was a new microwave. Why was this so difficult?
I sat there patiently while Stanley engaged with his computer and made a couple of calls. He finally says to me that he was going to get to bottom of this. He gave me his card and said it was going to take a few more minutes but he was going to get us rescheduled as soon as possible. He suggested I could take off and he would call me in a short while.
Well, he did not call me. However, in the late afternoon, my wife received a system-generated text (her number was on the original order) informing her that our microwave would be delivered and installed the next day, Saturday, Feb 10, between 10:30 and 2:30.
So, okay. It seemed that our microwave nightmare was coming to the end. But . . .
The bastards stood us up again!!!
That’s right, they stood us up again. At 12:40 pm on Saturday, we got a text saying they would be arriving at 12:45. But, the Jerk Squad never showed. What the actual fuck?
I called both numbers on Stanley’s card. Both went to voicemail. We could not understand why this was so difficult. We wanted to say the hell with it, but they were into us for $500+, they sold us a damaged microwave, and our old microwave was probably already in the landfill.
After stewing for a couple of hours, I went back to the store. Again. And, wouldn’t you just know it - Stanley was not there. So, this time I told Oscar my mostly profanity-free story as calmly as I could. And, of course, he was sympathetic and apologetic, yada, yada, yada. He said he was going to figure it out.
Oscar looked at his computer and made some calls. He says to me that apparently the installer scheduled for Wednesday, Feb 7, did not come to work that day. And, the installer scheduled for Saturday, Feb 10, left work early. Oscar had no answer as to why someone affiliated with Worst Buy could not have contacted us.
Oscar says to me that he can reschedule us for Tuesday, Feb 13. He gave me his card and said if there were any issues, I should call him, and when I responded skeptically, he assured me he would be working on Tuesday, and I could call him if there were any problems.
I should have just told him to give me a refund and come and get the piece of shit they sold us. But, I had worked in customer service and hated being blamed and bitched at for something I didn’t do. People get sick, and things happen that are beyond one’s control, so I decided to give them another chance. Everyone at Worst Buy knew that the situation had been handled poorly, and they would make all possible efforts to rectify this ridiculous problem. Right?
Wrong. The bastards stood us up, again.
What do you do when you don’t know what to do? All we wanted was a new microwave. Why did it have to be this way?
After the delivery window on Feb 13 expired, we went to the store again. My wife was too agitated to go in, so she sat in the car. Both Oscar and Stanley were there. They acted surprised and confused when I told them that no one had shown up. They did their usual computer and phone thing and one of them said that, per the installer, they came to our house, but nobody was home. I said, in a loud, clear, but not yelling, voice, “That’s a goddamn lie. We were there the whole time. After all we’ve been through with this, why would we not be there?”
I said some other things I can’t exactly remember and, perhaps looking to calm the situation down a bit, Stanley said they were just trying to figure out what happened. I said, “You know what? It doesn’t even matter what happened, just give me a refund. I’ve had enough of this bullshit.”
It took them a few minutes to process the refund, then Oscar says they can come by tomorrow, Feb 14 to pick up the damaged microwave, if that worked for us. I said, “Yeah, that’ll be okay. I’ll try real hard to be home.” Then I left.
The next day, the Jerk Squad came to get the junk microwave without incident. It was almost funny that Worst Buy was totally and completely inefficient and useless when delivering something to us, but they were all super-efficient when picking up something from us. Almost funny, but not quite.
Postscript
On the way home from Worst Buy that Tuesday, the 13th, we stopped by another giant megastore to look at microwaves. After we got home, we talked about it and decided to go back and buy one. We were told they could deliver and install on Friday, Feb 16.
And, that’s what they did. It took less than 10 minutes.
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