Holy crap, I had awful customer service from OfficeMax recently. I went to their store because I needed furniture for my new office and lawyers get a discount through the Arizona State Bar. I was there on a Friday late morning, and there was almost nobody in the store. As I perused the desks and chairs, no clerks came up to ask me if they could help. I wondered if they didn’t think I could afford their furniture or if I just wasn’t worth waiting on because I was wearing baggy jeans and a zippy.

I selected a desk and a desk chair and went to the front of the store and asked if I could place the order. I informed her that I was short on time because I had a lunch obligation that day, and I was willing to come back if that would be better. She said she could help me right then. She entered my order into the computer and directed me to her counterpart when I said I wanted to arrange to have the desk assembled for me. He looked at the schedule and said the earliest availability wasn’t for 2 weeks. I let him know that I would like to be put on the waiting list (if they had one) in case an earlier slot opened up.

I was pleasantly surprised when I got a call a few days later letting me know that my delivery was coming. My delivery was scheduled for Thursday afternoon between 1:30 and 3:30. I arrived at the office just before 1 o’clock so I could be there to meet the delivery people; however when I walked in the door, our receptionist informed me that the delivery people had come and gone. I was impressed by how swiftly they worked, until I looked in my office and saw my desk, unassembled, still in the box, on the floor.

 

I called the delivery company to report the problem and they said I had to call the store where I place my order. The clerk who answered the phone informed me that they use different companies to deliver and to assemble products. It’s not uncommon for products to be delivered days before the assembly team is scheduled to come out and put them together. (That would have been helpful information to give me when I placed the order.) He said that the time I booked was the earliest they could get out to assemble my desk.

Are you fucking kidding me? I can’t believe this guy didn’t fully explain their delivery and assembly procedures to me, and that he didn’t offer to do anything to remedy the situation. I was under the impression that I would have a fully assembled desk that day based on the idea that I’d be working in my office and available to see clients. At that point it seemed like my options were to wait 8 days for my previously scheduled assembly appointment or put together my desk myself and get a refund on the assembly service. It’s a heavy desk with a lot of pieces, but I was stubborn and pissed off, so I opened the box and started putting it together. One of my office mates helped when I needed an extra pair of hands.

On that Thursday afternoon I managed to get through steps 1-8 (out of 20). Thank goodness the instructions were relatively easy to follow. I returned to the office early Friday morning and finished putting together my desk around 12:30. When we put the top on the desk, which until then had always been top-down on the floor or in the box, we noticed it had a dent and a crack. I went back to OfficeMax to get my refund for the assembly fee and hopefully an additional partial refund for delivering a damaged desk, but I was told they couldn’t do the refund unless I had the receipt. How is it possible for a business to operate this way? Shouldn’t this information already be in their computers? Shouldn’t the clerk have told me this when I called the previous day?

I went back again on Saturday with my receipt and within minutes the clerk refunded the assembly price and gave me a $50 refund for the damaged desk (~20% of the price I paid). He seemed pretty sullen. I think he knew he screwed up.