Have you ever gone into a store and found a new person who didnt know the first thing about what they are doing? I think we've all been there, right? I know, I have..

Last night figureing we were in need of a new stove for our kitchen we went shopping..

Ever since Lowes came to Redding CA, I was happy. Even in my previous blogs I have mentioned its my new favorite store... However this weekend was the exception..

We go into the store around 4 pm and look at some stoves.. We found one that was marked down considerably, and the employee assured us there wasnt anything wrong with the stove, it had just been back in the warehouse without its box and gotten pretty dirty.. Fine.. so we decide its a much more expensive stove with features we never dreamed of haveing, but here we could get this one at a good discount ( it was 2 dollars more than the one we origanally were looking to buy ).. All went good and the man BEN wrote up the paperwork... We get to the cash register and give the girl, who was obviously new and didnt know what she was doing, our Visa.. She runs it through several times, only to tell us its declined... You ever had that happen to you? Everyone standing there stareing at you like you are trying to rip off the store?... Ok, figureing we couldnt do anything about untill the next morning we went home let down and embaressed, around 6 pm Sunday night... First thing in the morning at 9 am Monday we contacted our credit union, who checked into why we were being declined even though we had PLENTY of credit on our card... It turns out the cashier had ran it through several times even after the FIRST one was approved, all this with out so much as a signature or checking ID... So back to the store we go and they insist its still not working.. After several phone calls and several trips back and forth between our credit union and the store, finally the credit union decides to just give us a cash advance themselves and forget useing the Visa at Lowes.. As our credit union explained to us, their system updates immediately and Lowes doesnt.. ( What ever that means ) .. By 11: 30 am or so, we go back to Lowes with cash in hand and figure since we have been ran around SO much not to mention the time it took and gas we wasted, we were due some sort of recourse... We spoke to Matt who took care of it and ended up giveing us an additional 10 percent off our purchase.. He understood that we had been there Sunday Night and now Monday morning for a total of 6 hours now, trying to straighten this out... The problem we had with Lowes was everytime we would be told one thing by one person, someone else would come by to " help" and ended up telling us something different, many times during this day we were told what ended up to be totally fabricated stories of why things werent done, by employees who had no clue who we were or what we were doing... Some of the employees who asked if we had been helped would even go as far as to say that Matt was at lunch, when it turned out he wasnt.. Once we were told by Krista that since the stove was already discounted they couldnt do anything further... Which again ended up to be a lie, because Matt made sure we were taken care of... It was sort of funny that Matt talked to her and even then she tried hard to get us to cancel the whole thing, instead of just doing as she was told... The feeling I got was that she just wanted us to leave and be out of her hair.... Of course there was so much more to this story, and this is just the highlights, but I really dont want to type it all out... Mainly the biggest thing is, the store employees had no idea what they were doing, and many times stories were made up just to " keep us quiet" ... The whole thing being started by a new employee who didnt know how to use the credit card machine, and makeing matters worse with the run around we got the next morning...

I felt sorry for Judy, who I felt got caught in the middle of the whole thing, and tried as hard as she could to keep the peace...

I must commend Matt that he was cool through the whole thing even during the times my hubby and I were getting upset... And Dustin told us after all was said and done, that with as many hours as we were there that day, he too would have been " pissed off "... It was Dustin the store manager who made sure we didnt leave the store angry and cared about us as current and future customers... As a note we ended up leaveing the store at around 12:30 that afternoon..

Aside from all that happened, I still like the store, and I really truly feel that Lowes NEEDS to drastically improve their employees training, before sticking them out on the sales floor...

As of now they have already contacted me and the delivery people are due tomorrow 11:00 - 11:30 am .. Pretty fast actually... so we will see how things go tomorrow.. Perhaps I will have my new stove installed then..

 We are  truly blessed!