I thought I would give an update on the Lowe’s situation that I posted about last Friday. I called the installer about 4 p.m. and he said that he had sent his information off to the store. I called Lowe’s then and they told me that they had received it but there was some sort of processing that had to be done on their side before I could come pay for it. They told me that they would call me when it was ready and that my order had all kinds of ASAPs all over it. Mmm-hmm, sure they will.

So that Lowe’s is on my way home from work, so I stopped in an hour or so later. I went back to the flooring department and waited for the associate to finish helping someone else. While I was waiting, the guy from “installed sales” called me on my cell phone and told me it was all ready. When the flooring associate was finished, I told him my situation and he started looking for the order but couldn’t find it. I told him that the guy had gone out there today and measured and he said something like “Oh then it couldn’t possibly be ready now – it usually takes 2-3 days.” I told him that the guy from Lowe’s just called me like 5 minutes ago! He still couldn’t find it and so he went back to get a manager (I’m used to it!). They came back out a bit later and found my order. Apparently it was put in on the “old” system and not the “new” system. Or something. In any case I went to pay for it but couldn’t use my 20% off coupon because they don’t take them on installed sales / special orders / labor. I tried to get them to do it but the system wouldn’t let them and the manager wouldn’t (or possibly couldn’t) override it. Bummer as that cost me like $400.

So finally I accept the price and go to pay for it. The POS gives an 800 number to call for an authorization and after awhile of trying that, I get the notice that my card has been declined and I’d have to call Citibank. I called them and apparently Lowe’s had charged me $1900 this morning and they were wanting to know if that was an actual purchase. It was not, and after a few calls and investigations it turned out that they had charged me (again) for the deck materials (even though I had paid for it back on Wednesday). So that was annoying but I had Citibank lift the hold so I could buy the carpet.

By this time it was getting late. I had made an appointment for some folks to come look at our house to rent at 6:30 (yay!), and it was becoming apparent that I was not going to make it. So I made a call to have Carolyn be ready to show it. I hurried home and ended up hitting the tail end of their visit.

While this was all going on, I had received a call from the other Lowe’s, saying that my deck materials were on their way. I called back and ended up getting hold of a manager down there and after walking her through the various transactions, she saw where I was double charged, and said she’d reverse it. I have yet to verify if that has actually been taken care of or not.

Saturday I went to inspect the decking and (of course) they had just dropped it in the driveway AND there were things missing. So off I went to Lowe’s (again). Turns out that some of the stuff that I thought was missing they put in the front room of the house (even though I looked there; not sure how I missed it). And some of it they didn’t have and would be delivering later. I went back out to the house in the afternoon and counted and I think most of the stuff was there.

In non-Lowe’s annoyances, we had arranged for a few people to come over Saturday afternoon to paint but when I got there, it turned out that the drywaller had not finished sanding the drywall. So we couldn’t paint, and it was rather embarrassing to have to send those folks back home.

Back to Lowe’s, as I have mentioned previously, they have this promotion going on where for every $1000 you buy, you get a $100 gift card. I’ve been entering in my receipts, but I haven’t really been tracking it to make sure I hit the even thousand mark. Since obviously $3909.99 in total purchases is a lot worse than $4000. Well, $100 worse anyways. So I was entering in all my receipts from over the weekend and it came to …….. $7002.49! How cool is that? And I even went back in late on Saturday night to buy one last 5 gallon thing of paint since I didn’t think we would have enough. So that paint was free and then some. So we should be getting $700 in Lowe’s gift cards in the next 6-8 weeks. I think we can find some things to spend that on…