Wow. I am happy to post this. The manager of the Hyannis, MA, Home Depot on Cape Cod just gave me and my customer superb service. He did just what I had hoped he would and what I would recommend as the thing to do, but I am grateful he did it, and I am happy to post the story.

I recently did an extensive remodeling for some repeat customers. I have written about them before. They lived in their house during almost the entire job.  They are the definition of a gentleman and a gentlewoman.

The job included gutting the kitchen. Because my good friend Peter is one of the top kitchen installers in the country for Home Depot and he was able to personally guide us, we went with Kraft Made cabinets from Home Depot. Honestly, normally I don’t shop at Home Depot too often, but Peter said these cabinets are as good as any other similarly built cabinets, if not better, and for often a good bit less money than the others.

All in all, we were satisfied with the cabinets, and my customers love their new kitchen.

While they were at Home Depot they also bought their appliances, choosing the LG brand. The expensive refrigerator did not work right from day one. Three times an authorized repair person came out, after calls to LG.

The conclusion from the last visit was that the compressor had failed. The refrigerator does not work AT ALL. This has been for a week and a half.

Multiple calls to LG; they don’t even have a technical number any more; had various “customer service” people telling us that the repair company had not called in the latest breakdown, and they could do nothing without that call, and they would just send out the repair people again. Rightfully, my customers wanted a new refrigerator. I agreed. “Customer service” was useless. Last night in a last ditch effort I email chatted with a live help person, who also did not help. Then once more I called customer service and asked for a supervisor, who was busy, I was told. They were supposedly going to call back my customer.

This morning I called the Home Depot manager who Peter told me to ask for. The short story is that after listening to my report he said, “It sounds like we have to give them a new refrigerator”. Period. Tom the manager agreed to call my customer to arrange to remove the bad one, and he said he would refund them what they paid for it. Period.

THIS is customer service. Company people, on an automated phone system designed to frustrate us, who then spout policy and how they can only do so much, and we have to follow policy- that is not customer service. Tom gave us customer service.

Sorry LG, but you are foolishly shooting off your own feet. Thank you, Tom.