Before we headed out to the church on
Monday to sweep and mop all the floors in the worship center, vacuum all the
carpet in the retreat center, and clean bathrooms and kitchens in both, we
accepted two responsibilities:
1. Delivering the toys Seaside collected to
G.U.M. The lady who met us at the door
was very excited to receive the donations.
Apparently donations were down from last year. She was especially excited to receive the
monetary gift. Oh, and she knew Kel. She was an A&M graduate who remembered him
from some of the work he did there.
2. Going to Home Depot and ordering a
replacement stove and refrigerator for the retreat center kitchen. Not a difficult task, by any means. All we had to do was pick one out and arrange
for delivery. Right? Right …
Chris is the consummate researcher when it
comes to spending money. So we had to
make sure the prices were in line with what she was finding online. Check.
Selecting the actual range was easy. We
found the exact same one we were replacing.
Check.
The fridge was a bit more complicated. The one we were looking for wasn’t available,
so we had to choose between three other similar models. Texts were flying back and forth between
Chris and Lauren, our events coordinator, and Cathy, our financial
secretary. We finally settled on one
they were all happy about.
Next came finding a salesperson. Not too difficult, actually. We showed her which ones we wanted, and she
took us to the sales computer. She
entered in some basic information to answer our first question. Yes, they could be on the delivery truck for
Friday – the day before Bethlehem Street Market. Great.
And then … I discovered that I had left the
church’s Home Depot credit card at home.
There was no way to call up the church’s account without the card or a
responsible person’s social security number.
And mine wasn’t responsible enough.
Well, it just wasn’t the right one.
My personal account was fine. She
just couldn’t access the church’s. She
assured us that the Friday delivery would still be available as long as we came
back that day. OK. Back to the house.
After some lunch we grabbed the card and
made a return trip. Chris was getting
kind of antsy by this time. She really
wanted to get to the church and get started on all that cleaning I
mentioned. The plan was to make the
purchase and head straight to the church.
Plan? Umm …
All the info was re-entered into the
computer. Several times. I wasn’t sure what the problem was, and she
wasn’t into sharing. She did finally get
it to go through and locked in the Friday delivery date. But then …
She forgot that it was a tax exempt
purchase. That meant she had to dive
back into the murky waters she had just been trying to navigate. And guess what? The computer locked up. She assured us that it would clear in just a
minute, but “just a minute” stretched into two and three and fifteen. Chris walked away once to check out traffic
cones as a possible solution for our unmarked driveways at church. When she returned, I walked over to see them
as well. Finally, after 25 minutes, I
suggested that we take the paperwork she had and see if customer service would
have any more luck than she was having.
And so we were off …
Now at customer service we explained our
dilemma, and as luck would have it, the person who could fix our issue had just
left for a bathroom break. “She’ll be
right back.” And so we wait … again. Customer Service Answer Tech returned, but
although she knew what function was required, she couldn’t do that particular
function. Ah, but she knew who could. On to the Pro Desk …
Finally we hit upon someone who knew how to
operate all the functions. She typed in
all the necessary data to take off the tax.
But then I realized that the computer had not taken off the in-store
sale discounts as advertised. Back in
she went and found the appropriate button to push to make the deduction. Finally?
Well …
That’s when we noticed that although the
figure seemed correct (I actually pulled out my phone calculator and added
everything up), none of the numbers on the bill of sale matched the prices of
the items as advertised on the floor.
Now, we have to answer to a keen-minded financial secretary, so we asked
for an explanation. Get comfortable …
She did her best, but she couldn’t figure
it out either. She finally had to call
over her supervisor to give it a try. I
think he was even more confused than she was, although he managed to maintain
his, “I know everything” persona. He
obviously didn’t. But while he blustered
his way through trying to assure us the bottom line was correct, the young lady
finally figured out a way to make the computer show exactly what it was
doing. Many kudos to her.
So it seems that the Home Depot corporate
office sends the sales notices out to the stores. Their ad campaign reflects a made-up
manufacturer’s suggested price placed next to the sales price. In the case of our example purchase. That
showed a 24% decrease. However … in
actuality – in the real world – there is another “regular” price involved,
somewhere between the manufacturer’s and the sale. That price is the one off of which the
computer deducts 10% to reach the sale price.
Once I figured it out, we were actually ten cents to the good in the
transaction. Please don’t ask me to
explain it again …
So finally we were ready to pay. She assured us the delivery date was still
good for Friday. She entered all the
data she needed to. I inserted the
credit card. She ran the
transaction. All was good. But wait.
Suddenly I realized that I had inserted my own personal Home Depot
account card. Nooooo …
To her immense credit, she was very
calm. She simply voided the transaction
and started again. This time Chris took
our personal card away from me so there would be no mistake. And I entered the church card. And it was declined. We ran it a second time to make sure. Declined.
Apparently they instituted a policy where you have to renew the card
every year. I had one of the old cards. Of course I did. So now what?
We finally decided to put the whole thing
back on our personal card and sort it out later. By Chris’ accounting we had already lost at
least an hour of good church cleaning time fighting the Home Depot Wars. I guess we’ll find out on Friday if we really
won …
John 8:12 says, “When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in
darkness, but will have the light of life.’”
Father, thank you for those Home Depot
folks who did their best to work with us.
Please give them an array of easier customers on their next shift. Amen.
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