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Your product is only as good as your service

No matter what you buy, from the least expensive item to machinery that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, you want that product to be in new condition (unless you’re purchasing used) and to work properly. If these parameters aren’t met, you want them to be rectified. The supplier who doesn’t provide good service is often written off altogether.

What if you’ve bought this product from a middle man? Say, a distributor, or, in the case of a consumer product, a big-box store? Well, I can address the latter, and I doubt that I am alone.

After several icemaker failures on our refrigerator and looking at a very expensive repair, my husband and I decided to purchase a new one. The criteria was that it be made in the U.S. and not be a side-by-side model.

We went to Lowe’s, where we had purchased the other appliances in our home, and settled on a GE Profile model with a bottom freezer. The day it was delivered, the deliveryman pointed out a small dent on one of the doors. This was after the old refrigerator was out of the house and preparations had been made to move the new one in. He asked if we wanted to return the refrigerator for a new one, or if we wanted to get a replacement door only. Thinking it would be less hassle, we went for option two: replacing the door.

The deliveryman noted the door damage on our receipt and told us that when he returned to the delivery company, which was a subcontractor to Lowe’s, that he would start the ball rolling to get the replacement door ordered and someone would call us when it came in. This was August 12.

Several weeks later, after we had heard nothing from the delivery company or Lowe’s, we drove to the store to investigate the status of the replacement door. There was no record of the delivery company ever contacting Lowe’s about the issue.

Lance from Lowe’s said he would take care of it. He made multiple calls to our residence that weekend in mid-September to verify the model number and which door needed replacing. He said that it would take a week to 10 days to get the new door, and someone from Lowe’s would call us when it came in. We have heard nothing, nada, zilch.

More than two months later, we are tired of the lack of communication and poor service and are trying to muster up the energy to return to Lowe’s to try and track down the door and find out the repair status. Forget trying to do this over the phone.

The dent is only visible in a certain light, and only we, and anyone reading this, know it’s there. So—you know—is it worth the aggravation? Should we just settle and never, ever buy an appliance from Lowe’s again?

I have a sneaking suspicion that all big-box stores are the same, and that they have put the mom-and pop-appliance stores that have better service out of business. (Are Ackerman’s and Al Grace still in business, Rockford folks?)

I also suspect that the manufacturer, trying to keep costs down, might have fewer spare doors.

We will work out this “minor inconvenience in the big scheme of things,” and if it isn’t “made right,” we will hesitate to make another major purchase from Lowe’s and think twice about buying another GE product if it’s too difficult to obtain replacement parts. (Truth be told, we should have learned from our GE/Lowe’s double-oven experience.)

This story also illustrates on a small scale the importance of good service, both for fabricators and their equipment manufacturers. Sometimes, a critical machine goes down, and fabricators have to scramble to meet their obligations to their customers. Poor service tends to have a trickle-down effect that affects more than the end buyer.

Your service can make or break your company.