Chain of Confusion

August 5, 2008

   Then, I’ll take a walk and come to the front door of my house. On the front step, I take solace and begin believing again that things will turn out OK.
   It’s not home and hearth that cheer me up and renew my optimism. It’s the $145 window shade in the full-length window next to the door. How it got there gives me hope – an odd hope, but a pick-me-up nonetheless – and, yes, it certainly gets right back to working with stone.
   The window shade came as a strange side-effect of a leak in my condominium’s main hot-water line. The fix involved several weeks of turning the entire water supply on-and-off to just flush a toilet and eventual re-piping through the ceiling. Part of the drywall and painting repairs involved the removal of an old vertical blind, and my spouse and I decided to replace it.
   We drove over to a neighborhood Big Hardware Place (identified only as BHP, with reasons to follow) and settled for a Levelor® mini-blind with small attachments to completely block out light leakage. This took about two minutes.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get anyone to take the order, as a couple sat at the window-coverings service desk for what seemed to be a half-hour or more. We chalked it up to people who couldn’t make up their minds on something; after poking through a rather quiet BHP, we finally found someone to start the process by opening a job account on the corporate computer.
   Then, we couldn’t order the blind right away; we needed an official measure first. Six days after the BHP told us someone would show up in two days or less, an employee of the window-coverings contractor used by the BHP arrived at our door at the exact time, to the minute, that he’d arranged with us.
   The guy took only about 10 minutes with us, but – in all my years of homeownership and dealing with business vendors – it was the most-efficient 10 minutes I’d ever seen. He measured twice, pointed out two different ways to mount the blind, showed where we could have pull ropes, filled out a full-page order form, and went on his way.
   After a few days, we showed up at the BHP to finally order the blind. First, the serviceperson had to hunt through a box of faxes to find our information. Then, after confirming the type and color of the blind, the serviceperson sat down at the computer to complete the order. He typed. And typed. And typed. And ….
   At this point, insert 45 minutes of sitting at a service desk, with nothing to entertain us but the incessant call for specialists in certain areas and an occasional question like, “Do you want the blind delivered directly to your home?” More typing ensued.
   Remember when airline employees spent several minutes typing and typing to get you a boarding pass? Ever wonder where that cumbersome software went? Now, I don’t, and I realized that the couple we saw earlier wasn’t being wishy-washy on selection; they were going through the same time-killing process.
   Finally, after interventions by two other servicepeople, two cashiers, the store manager, and a confusing set of ring-ups at the register, we had our order. Several weeks later, the blind came; a couple of days after that, again on-the-dot at the appointed time, the window-coverings contractor showed up and neatly installed the blind in 20 minutes flat. We shook hands, he left, and my spouse and I stood back to look at the $145 blind that, despite the journey at the BHP, managed to finally be in place without any problems.
   Well, except for one. It was the wrong blind.
   The color and size matched our expectations, but the light-blocking part wasn’t there. We checked the eight pages or so of paperwork from the BHP and, sure enough, the light-block disappeared somewhere in all that typing of the order. In our rush to escape the ennui of the cavernous hall of hardware, we didn’t double-check the order form.
   I related this (along with some other problems we had due to confusion at the BHP) in a long e-mail to the BHP’s Website. After that, I received several apologies (blamed mainly on the BHP’s computerized order process) and offers to replace the whole thing; the effort to make the deal right is the main reason I’ll keep the store’s name anonymous. We passed on the replacement, as well as going to the BHP for further home improvement.
   In these times, it’s natural to worry about big competitors, and plenty of us in the stone trade have BHPs trolling for customers. What they offer in price and volume, though, sometimes missed the mark when it comes to customer service. It’s a built-in advantage for thousands of independent stone shops nationwide, and it’s worth remembering with every customer contact.
   There’s also a nugget here for companies in contract-work arrangement; it’s imperative to review order procedures, and how the customer’s being treated by the order-taking agent. You can perform impeccably to specifications and never miss an appointment, but having a BHP or others goof up the process means you’ll pay the bill in time, materials and reputation. You don’t want to be called the idiot for following instruction and showing up with the wrong pieces or the wrong stone.
   There’s enough in the trade that we can’t influence. I look at a shade next to my door, and know that plenty of rewards await, however, by doing any job, large or small, right.