Lowes.com: "order online, pick up in store" has problems

[Minnie Bannister]

Ordered stuff (shown as "in stock") online at 10 a.m. today for in-store pickup. At 4 p.m. the store still had no record of the transaction (despite the claim on the Web site that items should be ready for pickup after two hours).

It happens that the store now has plenty of these items (but has often been out of stock, which was one reason for ordering online: to "nail them down"), but it could easily have happened that they had only one or two left and they had been sold to walk-in customers before the store was notified of my order.

MB

[I-zheet M'drurz]

You are not alone. For every company that has mastered doing business over the Internet, there is one who is botching it up miserably. I seem to run into one of these a month, if not more often: Visit website, send e-mail inquiry, wait week, search for toll free # for company, call, inquire, and once you hang up from your call, somebody is getting their ass reamed out for not having somebody *READ* the e-mail from the website. Scary.

[DaveG]

So what you are saying is that despite a website that at times at least, appears to be somewhat inefficient, you were able to drive to the store and pick up your merchandise?

[Minnie Bannister]

No, I wasn't able to pick it up: I already paid for it on line, but the store has no record of the transaction so I can't get the goods without paying for them again and canceling the online order and getting a refund. Messy.

MB

On 05/24/04 06:34 pm DaveG put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace:

[Minnie Bannister]

BTW, this is a several-hundred-dollar transaction.

MB

On 05/24/04 09:08 pm Minnie Bannister put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace:

[DaveG]

What a PITA. Hope everything works out. Dave

[Dan Hartung]

OK, you called the store. It's a PITA but did you call the website help? They ought to be told that their transactions aren't being distributed. What about store management? Did you go beyond the counter guy?

Ten to one either ALL Lowes stores were having the same problem that day, or that store's system wasn't communicating properly.

[Minnie Bannister]

I have now looked again at the page(s) I printed from the screen at Lowes.com, and on page 2 (the back of the sheet; we have a duplex printer) I see a "Submit Order" button, which was probably off the bottom of the computer screen at the time.

The instruction to click "Submit Order" to complete the process is in small type buried above the column headings.

So I guess that the order never went through at all.

MB

On 05/24/04 05:44 pm Minnie Bannister put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace:

[I-zheet M'drurz]

Well, OK! ($1 Cohn Brothers)

[Oscar_Lives]

You probably need a larger computer monitor. You might try upgrading to a

19". If that doesn't work, a projection system that projects the image from your computer on the wall should surely show all the buttons on the website.

Good luck.

[Minnie Bannister]

On 05/25/04 10:36 pm Oscar_Lives put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace:

Already have a 19"

MB

[Dan Hartung]

LOL. Paging Jakob Nielsen ...

I mean, that was a little dumb of you (usually you get a confirmation screen with an online order, and you apparently didn't even look for one), but Lowes.com seems to have some usability deficiencies.

[CBhVAC:)]

Then go 21. Or look for your reciept...

[Minnie Bannister]

Yes, I was waiting for the order confirmation, assuming that would come once the stuff was ready or pickup.

Who's Jakob Nielsen?

MB

On 05/25/04 11:02 pm Dan Hartung put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace:

[Jim85CJ]

[Minnie Bannister]

And why didn't they reply to my email? If they had replied "Sorry, we don't have any record of your order," I would have known that my card had not already been charged, and I would have gone ahead and done an in-store purchase anyway.

MB

On 05/26/04 07:18 am Minnie Bannister put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace:

[Minnie Bannister]

. . . so I went to the store and purchased the items there just a day later.

Yesterday I was at Lowe's for something else and noticed a sign reading "Clearance of selected patio furniture; 33% off." In the garden dept. I saw that the items I had bought were among those on clearance, so I asked at the desk whether they do price adjustments when the price drops within 30 days, and they said they do, as long as I have a receipt.

I went back with the receipt and got a $200 refund.

MB

On 05/25/04 02:20 pm Minnie Bannister put fingers to keyboard and launched the following message into cyberspace: