My Harbor Freight buffer buying story - teaching proper customer service!

[midnight flyer]

No, I like alot of people would walk back to where I got the saw and put it back on the shelf!!

You were never charged the extra money they just canceled the order, You were not being forced to buy the buffer and the higher price.

As would I. If the price drove me to the store to purchase and they don't honor the price, I don't buy. My ego isn't that easily bruised. Sure.... I will be pissed off, but that's it. Also, I will either call ahead to a vendor that has done that to me to make sure they will honor that price, or simply not buy from them again.

You need to have employees (several, not just a couple of trusted guys) to understand how painful this type of thing can be. A simple moment if inattention, an honest mistake, or any other kind of error on their part and some think it is winning a lottery. They are there to capitalize as quickly as possible on what is sometimes just a simple mistake.

Or you could be a human being yourself, and make a mistake now and then. There isn't much like having your fellow man there, ready to pound your mistake into your backside for their own benefit.

I don't know all the particulars of the incident. I do buy a fair amount of consumables from HF, and they almost always have their language on their ads:

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=67256

Look at the bottom.

Contrary to the long held urban legend, there is no law that requires a business to hold to an advertised price unless it was advertised with specific intent to deceive. Since anyone in this specific case is able to turn around and walk away and not purchase this non essential item, I would love to see you in court chest pounding in self righteous indignation of how you see a deeper scheme to bilk the public out of money.

I have been involved in a few court cases. I can easily see the judge saying, "so we are here for $30? $30? Are you kidding?"

I have gone to Home Depot to buy something that looked too good to be true. It was. Once they found out, they put a sign in the store that said "we regret the error, but....".

Same with Lowe's. Same with my local monster super market. If it is a mistake, it is considered such. There is no law that says a can of beans marked at .59 cents normally would have to be sold at .29 cents to make someone happy.

Vendors simply pay off the biggest whiners to make them go away. It isn't a moral, ethical or monetary victory for the little guy against an evil giant, it's just good business practice to spend employee time and money somewhere else.

Regardless of HF, regardless of who is right and wrong, just set them aside for a moment.

I hope some of you don't find yourselves dealing with someone of a similar philosophy in your own lives. I noticed only a couple here that raised the possibility that there could have been a mistake. But a lot of hard words about deception and even thought of a national conspiracy.

Good luck and let us know how you are treated if you put an ad in the local paper for a car, snowmobile, lawn tractor and you fill out the ad wrong. Good luck if you have an employee in your business that fills out a contract incorrectly and leaves you in the red for a service and someone threatens to burn you down over it to make sure you honor a ridiculous price.

Better, it would be even more fun to have someone threaten you with legal action, threaten to dirty your name overall as much as possible, and even better to have someone tie up hours of employee time trying to resolve a petty issue that doesn't amount to anything more (in this case $30 to a multimillion dollar company) than someone with a bruised ego having their hurt feelings calmed down.

All that time for $30.... Wow....

As it was sanctimoniously reported:

My Harbor Freight buffer buying story - teaching proper customer service!

Does anyone actually think for a moment that someone, anyone, learned a lesson from a great teacher about customer service over this $30 tiff? A multimillion dollar company with 325 stores learned "proper customer service" from this? Does anyone think HF changed their business model?

Yeah, right.

Robert

 

[GrizzlyBear]

I didn't say they were liable by law, I simply said they were liable for it. Meaning, back to what I said originally...they employ people who are supposed to keep accurate pricing up to date at all times. If these people do not do their jobs and items are displayed for a lower price than what they actually are, it is considered false advertising. And most companies will make good on that because they don't want customers telling other people that the business is trying to hook people for a lower price when it's the wrong price.

 

[GrizzlyBear]

Regardless of what has been said negatively against me and how I chose to handle this, I stand by the decision I made to persue the issue with the company. It doesn't matter if it was $30, $3, or $300...the fact remains that I tried to purchase an item for a set price, made it through the purchasing process, then after-the-fact I was informed that if I would like my purchase, I would have to spend $30 more.

I don't know about some of you and the depth of your pockets, but $30 is a meaningful amount to me.

But my point in all of this, and what it boils down to, is that no matter the money involved...what they tried to do was wrong. Plain and simple. I could come up with a hundred different scenarios to illustrate what they did and every one of them would be wrong.

Those of you who are too self-righteous to have said anything and simply not bought the product. You're not proving anything except proving to that company that they can push you around. You're not fighting back to show them what they did was wrong.

 

[JCavSD]

Those of you who are too self-righteous to have said anything and simply not bought the product. You're not proving anything except proving to that company that they can push you around. You're not fighting back to show them what they did was wrong.

Although I understand where you're coming from to some degree, based on the email correspondence that you posted it seems to me like they made a mistake and you pushed them around.

 

[GrizzlyBear]

They made a mistake and I pushed them around because instead of trying to fix the mistake they fed me an excuse (which was BS by the way) and then attempted to blow me off.

If you make a mistake, fine, own up to it. Don't try to feed the person involved an excuse and don't try to blow them off. Both of those things will only piss people off.

 

[KB1SYV]

Nobody has yet to realize that HF is a multi-million dollar company who have screwed thousands of people in the past and continue to do so. I am not talking about a mom and pop, nor am I talking about Walmart, Target, Kmart. I'm just talking about Harbor Freight. I think it's a little self righteous and cavalier for people to think that trying to get an item for it's advertised price, mistake or not, is wrong and contemptuous. Please be honest and tell me nobody out there ever got bumped from a plane and took perks as payback. It's basically the same thing. I don't think anybody should be persecuted for doing it. Grizzly just posted about the problem he had and how it was resolved and instead of supporting and backing him up, we had people telling him how wrong he was, how could he, if it were me, I would never. I'm new here. I chose these forums because I think all you guy's are awsome, helpful, and supporting. This isn't any of that. Support your brother, don't chastise him.

Respectfully,

Jeff

 

[GrizzlyBear]

Right. Or sitting down to a nice, expensive meal and something is wrong with it, you say something about it, and getting a new plate plus the entire meal free.

Would you then stand up and say "NO, I demand that I pay for this meal. Actually, I demand I be charged TWO times...both for the screw up AND it's replacement. Because, I'll be damned if I'll be thought of wrongly..."

Seriously. In some form or fashion we all, most likely, have experienced a situation that can be construed as the same.

They made a mistake. I called them out on it. They rectified it (after some persuasion, which I should not have had to do).

End of story.

 

[JCavSD]

I think the nature of the response may stem from many of us having been on the receiving end of customers coming at us with both guns blazing regarding a mistake...real or perceived...our fault or not. My experience with HF is that they sell mid to low quality tools at a reasonable price, not some evil empire that sets out to screw people over. Maybe I've just been lucky in life.

 

[bigern26]

If I sat down for dinner and my meal was messed up I would let the wait staff know and then either eat what I got or get it fixed, And yes I would pay for it.

Why should they even feel the need to give it free. its a fixed mistake. The meal should still be paid for.

Sorry that how I was raised.


You are kind of implying that if someone were to buy a knife from you, you send the knife halfway around the country and they find a scratch or a mistake, they then tell you about it and what are you going to do?
I doubt you are going to send them their money back and let them keep the knife, are you?



And yes I am sorry I disagree with the way you handled you HF problem.
Reading your original post it looks like they did tell you that the sale price was for retail stores only. that how alot of their prices are. so why sit and threaten them until you get a free buffer, the other items you ordered and a gift card?
I sure hope you are going to cut the gift card up!

 

[Rick Marchand]

Grizzly...

The more I read and think, the more I settle back down into my initial opinion that you were in the wrong.

...the fact remains that I tried to purchase an item for a set price, made it through the purchasing process, then after-the-fact I was informed that if I would like my purchase, I would have to spend $30 more.

Yes, you made it through an electronic shopping cart checkout These are not thinking machines. When it was finally verified by a human, the mistake was caught. I don't think you would have made it through the checkout at the store and had the clerk chase you out and demand more money. Infact, they never made any demands. They simply told you they couldn't honour the pricing and if you still wanted the item it would have to be adjusted to the correct price. Your credit card was never charged... you said it yourself. You could have walked away. Online purchases don't truly happen until someone on the otherside verifies it. Even on Ebay.... if I don't approve the buy-it-now purchase, it doesn't go through. HF did exactly what was expected of them. How much time and effort did you lose placing that order? I can see if you drove across town because of a flyer ad. It would be in HF best interest to compensate you then.

I don't know about some of you and the depth of your pockets, but $30 is a meaningful amount to me.

Again.... you were given a choice. Nobody was threatening to take your money away from you.

But my point in all of this, and what it boils down to, is that no matter the money involved...what they tried to do was wrong. Plain and simple. I could come up with a hundred different scenarios to illustrate what they did and every one of them would be wrong.

The only thing that is plain and simple is that they contacted you with a misquote, and offered to either cancel the order or create a new one with the correct pricing. That is TRULY the only thing that transpired in the first email. ANYTHING ELSE read into this event is pure speculation.

Those of you who are too self-righteous to have said anything and simply not bought the product. You're not proving anything except proving to that company that they can push you around. You're not fighting back to show them what they did was wrong.

How were you being pushed? You were given a choice. Of course there is no fighting.... you have still yet to prove they did anything wrong. If you gave us undisputable evidence of their guilt, I would be inclined to believe you. Thus far, you have only given us undisputable evidence of timely customer service. It may have not been to your profit, but it was given.

What you did after that, is the only thing I can deem as wrong. You continued to push threats based on a fictitious liability that a company has to honour all their mistakes. Which is not true.

You were placated... not by right.... but by folks who just didn't want to deal with you, anymore.

.... and you see this as a righteous victory?

hrmm....



Rick

 

[petah]

If you are one to hassle the poor kids making minimum wage at the local McDonald's... I have no respect for those people... True it's a big name company but Yelling at a 16 year old kid at his first job ...

 

[Rick Marchand]

Nobody has yet to realize that HF is a multi-million dollar company who have screwed thousands of people in the past and continue to do so.

Yes, they are big... we get it. A large company also has a vastly larger customer base, and more probabilty of error, based on the numbers alone. Please show evidence of proven guilt.

Please be honest and tell me nobody out there ever got bumped from a plane and took perks as payback. It's basically the same thing. I don't think anybody should be persecuted for doing it. Grizzly just posted about the problem he had and how it was resolved and instead of supporting and backing him up, we had people telling him how wrong he was, how could he, if it were me, I would never.

If the perks are offered up..... yes, I would take them. Would I hint toward compensation?.. possibly. Would I feel entitled to compensation? No. I would feel entitled to a refund.

It is basically the same thing?... Hardly. In your scenario the perks are offered... in Grizz's situation the perks were given in answer to a perceived threat...... HUGE DIFFERENCE.

I'm new here. I chose these forums because I think all you guy's are awsome, helpful, and supporting. This isn't any of that. Support your brother, don't chastise him.

Welcome to the boards Jeff. It was wrong of you to think that the boards will support every act you post up for consideration. Some of us see this as a family. I do. My argument with Grizz, is the same argument I would have with him sitting in the shop having a few beers. He would feel no hostility from me because it is just an opposing point of view. In the end, I reach into the fridge and hand him another beer. As he said, we are all adults and can enter into debate without ruining friendships.

You will always have the trolls who are only here to cause trouble... but they are easily picked out and ignored.

We will shoot straight and tell it like we see it.... You can choose to be offended:grumpy: or chalk it up to difference of opinion.:thumbup:


Rick

 

[JCavSD]

Rick, am I going to have to restrain you again?

 

[Rick Marchand]

JC.... You're such a tease.

 

[JCavSD]

Going to tie both of you up until this is settled, just like last time!

 

[KB1SYV]

Rick,

I don't take offense at all. I'm up for giving and receiving constructive criticism, God knows in my 23 years in the military, I've given it and taken it. I just think that certain individuals in this thread are bordering on persecution rather than a constructive opposing view. I do not have any evidence per say, but I do know of several individuals who have had identical issues. Needless to say, if there are several in a small geographical area, I'd be willing to bet there are a number of several's in a small geographic area. I do see this forum as a family. I've never had any brothers and I picked up a few here, namely, Indian George, Justin King, KDCKnives, and Tait Stevens. These boy's have been exceedingly generous to me and I am indebted for life. So Rick...

Where's my beer???

With Ultimate Respect,

Jeff

 

[bigern26]

Rick,



Where's my beer???



Jeff

Yeah and where is mine??

 

[tryppyr]

I've found HF to be honorable in the way they do business. They sell products at lower prices than most tools/supplies dealers, and if the quality isn't always the highest, that's pretty much what you expect when you pay a lower price.

Frankly, I think my experience is better than some because I am dealing with people face to face. The store is easy walking distance from my office, and I go there regularly. They know me now, and go the extra mile to make sure they treat me right. There have been at least two occasions in which they offered me a coupon discount that I didn't have the coupon for. I really get the impression they want me to come back because they that frequent return customer visits are part of what makes their company a success.

Does that sound like an evil corporate giant? Maybe I'm just desensitized because I work for another corporate giant.

Still, I intend to keep doing business with them. The portable bandsaw I bought from them yesterday works well, as does everything else I've bought from them. Was it all made in China? Frankly, I don't care. Should I keep my dollars local? Right... like I'm going to find a local craftsman making affordable metal cutting bandsaws. Frankly, the whole "buy local" thing is little more than protectionism with a prettier name. It also smacks of xenophobia. Let's face facts. We handed mass production to the world in order to get cheaper products, and it worked as planned. There's no going back to the past. If you want manufacturing back in the states, you must also want to pay higher prices. Why is it I don't hear people clammoring for higher prices?

Okay, I'm rambling now... so I'll shut up.... after I repeat that I find HF to be an honorable business with a solid business plan (as opposed to some bogus scam plan the fear mongers worry about).

- Greg

 

[Patrice Lemée]

Ok I think I will take a side on this.

First, Greetings!

(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.)

....Ok maybe not.

Where's my beer?

 

[KB1SYV]

Ok I think I will take a side on this.

First, Greetings!

(By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for her/himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law, and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher.)

....Ok maybe not.

Where's my beer?

But yesterday you guaranteed me the greeting! I the greetee was guaranteed a greeting as long as it fell before the deadline!