Boy oh boy can I relate to this post! I got so frustrated trying to get help with a simple problem I was having with my Mac. I went through two tech people before I asked to speak to someone who speaks English. One of them was rude and informed me "Sir, I do speak English" and refused to transfer me. Second tech guy immediately transferred me. I'm not a rude person and was polite the entire time and being treated that way really raised my BP. Bingo, the moment I got the English speak person (in TN) it took only a couple of seconds to solve the problem. I reported the incident and how rude the first tech guy treated me. He took my report and told me that whenever a tech is asked to speak to someone who speaks English, they are suppose to immediately transfer you to a stateside representative. I've learned that most of these "tech" people in other countries are usually reading from a script and if you have a problem that's not listed they'll have a devil of time trying to understand what you are talking about.

I always call back if I don't get a satisfactory answer/result to my request. 9 times out of 10 I get the results I was hoping for the second time around. And always get names. I've started telling them that I too am recording this phone call. I have an app on my phone that records both sides of a conversation. I have it for work related phone calls so if I'm not where I can write down information I can recall it at a later time. I've also found that (most of the time) women take their jobs way too seriously or act like they have a chip on their shoulders. Men are much easier to deal with. As always, keeping the high road and keep calm pays off...except for the time I told one Eastern Indian (who had no business dealing with the American public) that if I knew where he lived, I'd fly a plane thru his tent! This was shortly after 9-11. I think I broke my phone that day :(

We had Verizon when we live in Annapolis. Had an instance where service went out (it was just us as both next door neighbors where up and running). Called Verizon, waited FOREVER and was told it would be FIVE DAYS before someone could come out. So I drove up to the local Verizon service shop (not a store but the place where all the technicians go to every morning and get the truck, supplies, assignments, etc..... dingy warehouse building in the back of a dingy industrial park). Talked to the foreman there and he filled out a service request for 8AM next morning. Funny sidebar: He's typing out the request and he noted "Customer irate". I said "I'm not irate" and he replied "I know but if I don't put that down they ignore it". Anyway, sure enough, a guy showed up at 8AM the next morning. And I brought two dozen doughnuts to the shop the NEXT morning! It was much appreciated. I had some other problems over the ensuing years and I just went up to the shop. Didn't even call Verizon's service number. Worked VERY well! So you might try that.

I'm going to reiterate that Home Depot is not winning any customer loyalty from me!! It's the only hardware option I have nearby locally. Usually buy from them due to path of least resistance. So far my bad experiences have been: limited in store merchandise options that I like, shopping online to check availability before going to the store and then finding out that the online availability was not correct, ordering things from them and they never show up. This is not a reflection of the local employees, they are nice and good, but the corporation is not up to snuff IMHO. We are putting Home Depot on our "avoid if possible" list. Switching to the Menards next town down the road, and they also do contact less pick up and everyone in the store wears masks, and they also do home delivery. Just seems more "put together" overall and so far we've found things we like there, like a kitchen faucet, bathroom light fixtures . . . We still go to Home Depot for quick things we need mid-project, and I do find plants there I like sometimes, but we drive down to Menards at least once a month. If the pandemic wasn't still ongoing we'd go to Lowe's 45 min. away but we're limiting shopping trips both for economic and social distancing reasons. We have such a backlog of stuff at home to deal with we don't really need to go shopping anyway, this is not something we are doing just because of the pandemic, it suits where we are at now with our lives, wanting to focus on interacting with what we have now, not bringing more into the house . . . Edited to add that I had to wait 20 min. at HD to get a refund for the merchandise that never showed up. It was hardware cloth fencing. The whole time yahoos without masks going in and out and a ventilation system blowing on me with recirculated who knows what. My eyes were itching the whole rest of the day. Next visit I guess I will also have to wear protective eye coverings. Afterwards, the customer service person said they had the fencing in the store, and offered to give me a discount. I questioned her because I said the whole reason I had ordered the fencing is they didn't have it in the store. She again said, "We have it in the store." I went to that aisle because I also needed plant stakes and they were in the same aisle so what the heck. Had to walk through the whole store. And lo and behold, NO, they did not have the fencing and neither did they have the stakes. So quite a wasted trip, wasted time and in these days, wasted risk due to poor customer service. Quite the opposite of my last trip to Menards. I was going for contact-less pick-up but I didn't print my receipt because I thought I would be able to pull it up on my phone. Could not get cell service once at the store, but the folks at customer service printed it out for me. Meanwhile, everyone in store wearing masks, good ventilation, and they were offering you masks if you didn't bring one. Polite, efficient service and delivering in-person what they promised on their Web site.