Customer Service

 I have to say that expecting companies in the current environment to be concerned with what an individual customer needs or wants is optimistic in the extreme. Especially when construction and contractor business can really pick and choose their customers right now. But on Monday our cabinet supplier sent me a text message announcing that we should expect delivery in between 15 to 16 weeks.

WHAT?!?! I was gobsmacked to say the very least. We had been told to expect 8 to 10 weeks but probably 8, to suddenly be told that it would now be twice that long, I can only say that I was upset. This would put our completion date sometime in early October! No, that can't be right can it? But with a cabinet delivery date of August 16 you need to add a week for the install to take place, (It will actually only take a couple of days to install but it is the lead time that kills you here.), then another 3 to 5 weeks for countertops plus a week to allow for plumbing, (again the lead time is the killer) yada yada yada...

I sat staring at the calendar in disgust, wanting to be able to scream at some one and completely unable to. Sigh.

Today I took matters into my own hands and instead of calling the third party we bought the cabinets from I called the cabinet supplier directly. (You would think I would have learned by this point in my life but, no.)

After being tossed from one nameless drone to another I landed in the Logistics Department. OK. The lad I spoke with was very calm and understanding but explained again about Covid disruptions to supply chains and so forth and we chatted about how this was going to destroy my schedule and so on. He was sympathetic, he understood, and he saw a way around the problem. With a few minutes of rearranging of schedules at his end he was able to change our delivery date from August 16 to July 9! Now THAT is what I call customer service!

That's 5 full weeks just so you know.

It still means that we won't be complete until deep into August or early September but 5 weeks is 5 weeks and I will gleefully accept it!