Grade inflation and incompetence

[Ryan Mooney]

New stove delivered today from the big box (the old one was ceasing to be able to boil water and replacement burners cost almost as much as the stove?!?). Now normally I prefer to do my own installs, but loml convinced me that "hey its free and they'll haul away the old one" .. so ok...

Doesn't install strain relief on the cord
Doesn't break the strap connecting ground and neutral (even though there are like 3 LARGE PRINT stickers saying to do that for 4 wire)
Screws the anti-tip into the same hole as the old one (even though it has completely different alignment) and the stove ends up sticking ~6 inches away from the wall (and I don't think the anti-tip was even engaged properly)

So..

Redo the wiring
Drill correctly placed holes in the tile and re-fasten anti-tip plate

Call from delivery "please rate your service" ... "anything other than a 5 means you weren't completely satisfied and will have to spend 30m explaining and hey maybe someone will get fired". So despite the fact that they left the stove in an unsafe condition .. Five it is. Bah Humbug!

[Van Huskey]

"hey its free and they'll haul away the old one" .. so ok...


I suppose you got what you paid for. :D

[Rod Sheridan]

[QUOTE=Ryan Mooney;1839716]New stove delivered today from the big box

What did you expect?

Their last employment may have been at burger world....................Rod.

[Myk Rian]

So despite the fact that they left the stove in an unsafe condition .. Five it is. Bah Humbug!
Well, you sure told them off.

[David Larsen]

I went for one of those free delivery and set up deals also. After the installer left, I had to pull out the stove because the cord was twisted around the back and the stove was sticking out further than it needed to be. The socket lays loose and the installer just keep pushing when it wouldn't go all the way back. All he needed to do was to straighten the cord and lay the socket into the area behind the bottom drawer. His pushing dented the socket into the sheetrock behind the stove.

I think next time I will just do it myself.

[Dan Hintz]

Call from delivery "please rate your service" ... "anything other than a 5 means you weren't completely satisfied and will have to spend 30m explaining and hey maybe someone will get fired". So despite the fact that they left the stove in an unsafe condition .. Five it is. Bah Humbug!
This kind of thinking is outside my realm of comprehension. If they did a bad job, let 'em know... if someone gets fired because they did a bad job, shouldn't that be how it works?

[Ryan Mooney]

This kind of thinking is outside my realm of comprehension. If they did a bad job, let 'em know... if someone gets fired because they did a bad job, shouldn't that be how it works?

Its actually hard for me to blame the kid, I really don't believe that he knew better and ignorance is perhaps more descriptive than incompitence. I do blame the store that's sending people out without any training or knowledge or well... yeah. I guess focused to much on what he did and not enough on the general issue.

My underlying point is that not everything is a 5 (I suppose it was worth a 4 to have them deliver it, which is all I really expected anyway), I would consider a 5 to be outstanding over the top but... the wrong people would get punished anyway.

[William Payer]

I usually take the free delivery and old appliance haul a way offer, but pass on the installation. I've seen too many installers from all sorts of companies, even so called "professionals" do jobs that I am not comfortable with. Why have toundo their work to install it yourself when you can do it yourself the first time?

[Curt Harms]

Its actually hard for me to blame the kid, I really don't believe that he knew better and ignorance is perhaps more descriptive than incompitence. I do blame the store that's sending people out without any training or knowledge or well... yeah. I guess focused to much on what he did and not enough on the general issue.

My underlying point is that not everything is a 5 (I suppose it was worth a 4 to have them deliver it, which is all I really expected anyway), I would consider a 5 to be outstanding over the top but... the wrong people would get punished anyway.

Training? Isn't that those noisy things that run on tracks? :rolleyes: I suspect this is bad and is going to get worse as kids grow up with little or no exposure to things mechanical or construction related. At least in the part of the world few parents do any work on their own cars beyond maybe washing them or do any home maintenance beyond changing a light bulb. Schools shut down any "manual arts" type classes. Then a young person gets a job delivering & installing appliances and goes forth with no or very little training, experience or clue.

[Ed Hazel]

I usually take the free delivery/installation, but I never even let them in the house. I have the old one in the garage and have them put the new one there also.

[Brian Elfert]

I wouldn't let any bozos like that actually do the install, but I least let them bring the appliance inside the house to the final location. I'm not about to injure my back lifting a large appliance from the garage into the house. The delivery guys I've had out to my house have done a really good job on actually getting the appliances in/out without any damage.

[Jerry Thompson]

I think today's As are Cs when I grew up. Just talking to people in their 20s is a source of amazment to me. I told one kid I was from SD and he wanted to know if that was in the United States.
Oh well, just as long as they feel good about themselves.

[Ron Jones near Indy]

Call from delivery "please rate your service" ... "anything other than a 5 means you weren't completely satisfied and will have to spend 30m explaining and hey maybe someone will get fired". So despite the fact that they left the stove in an unsafe condition .. Five it is. Bah Humbug!

So do you think that accepting poor service and/or improper installation and coming here to complain is going to accomplish anything? You are perpetuating the problem by not dealing with it in the proper manner. You don't know if the installer was properly trained or just didn't care about your install. Either the installer, his employer or his supervisor needs to be held responsible for this. What happens to the next customer who doesn't know they are getting substandard installation work? IMHO you really blew this, and that's not going to help anyone.

[ray hampton]

I think today's As are Cs when I grew up. Just talking to people in their 20s is a source of amazment to me. I told one kid I was from SD and he wanted to know if that was in the United States.
Oh well, just as long as they feel good about themselves.

PLEASE , PLEASE do not blame the kids , IT IS THE TEACHER FAULT unless the school are in California which do not had faults

[Larry Frank]

I think that giving a fair appraisal of the service is the right thing to do. Letting them know in a straight forward factual manner may get them to do it properly in the future. I do not tip very often, but if they do a good job I will give them a tip. To be fair, if they do a lousy job, I will let them also know.

The scariest part of this is that if they do it wrong and damage the outlet wall or something else it could become a hazard.


With all of the competition for appliances, about the only difference between places where you buy things is convenience and service.