i bet lowes wasnt expecting this man to be such a thorn in their side. once in awhile you screw the wrong person that pushes you back and this is what happens. although there is enough blame to share, i think the contractor is the one at fault. even though lowes hire the contractor, in the end he's not really working for lowes. sort of like a hair salon/hair stylist relationship? anyway, i hope you win man, i know you're reading this. consumerist supports you

Who buys a fence from a hardware store?

I visited this guys site and listened to the audio recordings of the call. I agree that the fence was poorly installed and should have been repair, replaced, or removed long ago. However the consumer went about this entire thing wrong from the beginning.

First and foremost he should understand that Lowe's is does not own the credit card. It is owned by the bank and as previously posted Lowe's already received their money. The correct procedure would have been to contact the card company and dispute the charge. He is being contacted by the colletion agency because he refused to pay his debt.

Second he is being unreasonable to demand a letter from a VP assuring him that the issue has been resolved and he will not be bothered again. No company in their right mind would provide this. It would be an open door to future litigation againt the signor and the company if he should get contacted in 10 years. The best he can hope for is a letter from the credit card company stating the account has been paid in full and closed at the debtor's request. The will be useful when the issue comes up in the future as it will!

Lastly, don't threaten to sue them. All this does is take away from your credibility. A corporation as large as this one probably has a full time staff of 30 plus Lawyers, Para's, etc. They are not afraid of litigation and have a lot bigger was chest to pull from. The fact is most people who easily threaten to sue you can not afford to retain an Attorney and have little knowledge of the law. Again, it reduces your credibility with the company.

I feel that Lowe's is attempting to make this right. They are offering to remove the fence, repair the lawn, refund the purchase price, and apologize. Settle the matter and move on with your life.

How much you want to bet it was a contractor employing unqualified illegal immigrants?

Now how do I do this to Best Buy and Continental.....

Many types of jobs/installations for lowe's is done by third party workers that 'know how to do the job' and are 'certified' by lowes. ex. local plumber gets contracted to install your toilet, if you opt lowe's to do it.

Lowe's is allowed to do a denial of service if you complain about their work/installation too many times. - random, but neat fact.

Lowe's fucked up the installation of our carpet, and we had to get it replaced, and also they installed our countertops without the strip edging to cover the cut sides. we complained and had this replaced with factory made pieces instead of crappy hand-cut pieces.

We now have a denial of service notice for our house. They are unwilling to have their employees or their 3rd party contractees do work for us because they think we scam them and try to get replacement items, when they actually just do really shitty work. Lowe's is also in cahootz with Wal-Mart, no?

Allen's first mistake was to stop paying his credit card bill. That must be paid, regardless of what was purchased.
IMIKE is right--you pay, then you dispute the charge--it always works that way.
Then, if a dispute is not satisfactory, you sue, claiming they didn't install a fence, but put a bunch of junk around the yard--a parody of a fence. (Must be some real half-wits, working for that contractor.)

And I've never heard of "liquified" damages.

Wonder how many teeth this guy has.

As an aside, Home Depot is no better. As I type this, there is an installer (subcontractor of the subcontractor), who, after four weeks and three missed appointments, is now installing a new door on my laundry room. All Home Depot did was collect my money. I chased their installer around, who ultimately sent me a man who speaks zero English.

Why did he not see the quality of the fence before the job was submitted to billing? Did he not inspect the job before signing?

Yes, it's a crappy looking fence. Yes, Lowes are being jerks for not helping this guy.

But have SOME personal responsibility here...

Dude, whenever you get a bill, pay it - your credit is too valuable to be the victim of a drama queen episode.

I think it is too late for Lowes to get its reputation back on this matter. If you get a contractor through Lowes or Home Depot, then they are responsible if the contractor messes up. Lowes should have stepped up and sent out a new contractor to fix the problem (because the old one didn't seem to want to fix it) and filed a claim against the old contractor to recover any lost money. I say "should" because I doubt they would in many cases.

As for his fence. That is ugly, ugly, ugly. He paid $3500 for a low chain link fence. Is he crazy? Even if it was done perfectly, it looks crappy (IMHO).

It all depends on who the store chooses for a contractor. I used to do water heaters with a contractor who worked for a big box store like this. Being in the industry, I knew there were some shady contractors and some really good ones.

Perhaps filing a dispute with his CC company would've been a better first step (not paying it will only hurt him, Lowes has already gotten paid for the work).

There has to be some local newstation that does some sort of Consumer Report/"On your side" stuff showcasing poor jobs and resolutions.

Also learning to spell would be nice. All the photos loaded fine on my T1 connection.

Move into the new millennium, dude.

$3500 for that crap?

I urge everyone never to shop at Lowe's every again. The only way they will get the hint that they need a lesson on proper customer service techniques is if people stop shopping there. I am not a huge fan of Home Depot either, but they beat the hell out of Lowe's.

He should have just payed another fence company to fix the shoddy work and then sue Lowes in small claims.

I know we all like to go for the big dogs; the Wal-Mart's, the banks, the Verizon's and even the Lowe's. We can usually rally much more support around a "large corporation screwing the little guy" story than we can a "little guy screwing another little guy" story. And it is easier for a large corporation to dish out $3500 to just be rid of the nuisance than is for a guy living pay-check to pay-check.

But I don't believe there is any court in this country that will rule in your favor against Lowe's, regarding materials. Just pay Lowe's for the materials and tell them you refuse to pay for the labor until it is fixed. Also, get a few installer's to come out and give you an estimate, and see if they will write down a short statement on what they see is wrong. Then pay one of them to fix it. If anyone keeps bugging you for payment; showing them the statements from the installers, the receipt from having it fixed, and the pictures will silence them everytime.

I really hope he wins in the end.

I just dashed off a letter to Lowes. All of it is true. I am a longtime shareholder (always hated Home Depot)

----------

Dear Mr. Niblock,

I am a longtime shareholder and a longtime shopper at Lowes. There is always a Home Depot closer but I drive the extra miles because I like the store.

I just read about an extremely disgruntled customer and the story of his fence on the consumerist.com web site. This guy is mad, and while it looks to me like he very possibly overreacting, if this is not taken care of, then this is going to be nothing but bad publicity for Lowes.

My advice, as a shareholder, is to fix the guy's fence and put this

little incident behind you before he gets the Today show involved or something like that.

Sending cease and desist letters about his puny little web site is not going to make this go away.

I urge you to get the local store involved, make a big show about

fixing the fence in the local press and give this guy a reason to stop pestering you. Is a $3500 fence worth more than The Lowes Reputation?



The fact that I am writing to you shows that this little guy is

already having an impact.

Well, at least no one paid him $3500 to build that website.

[Oh, and he could be hosting it out of his home, or it's swamped by the Consumerist Effect (or is it he's been Consumeristed?), which would explain the speed. Although, if it's actually being served from 1997, there could be some effects of time dilation....]

But I don't know if Small Claims court would work for him if the value is over their max. It could be worth a shot, though. It might even get their attention.

Also, I tend to lose respect for people's arguments when they get too hypothetical and fall into the "Won't SOMEbody think of the CHILDREN" style: "Imagine if a small child had pushed on the gate like my dogs did and got out of the back yard and into traffic, or worse?"
Why not, "Imagine if a group of terrorists got into the back yard through the crappy fence with a nuke, or worse?" Serves the same purpose -- avoiding the facts (which seem to be on his side) and playing off emotions instead. You've already sold me on the facts, don't go over the top.

I think the slow picture loading is probably due to the 1800+ views this has received in the last few minutes.

It's really too bad this story came up. I had a lot of respect for Lowe's (as far as big box stores go).

I think these companies like to resell services (offered by the lowest bidder of course), then blame it on them when the problems come.

Maybe the fence installer was the same guy who did their encryption-free wi-fi cash registers!

Lowes- I am sure you are reading- do the right thing and fix this guys fence! The bad press you are going to get from this won't come close to being fixed by the $3500 you may have to eat.

Kick 'em in the pants, brother!

They're just trying to strong-arm a little guy into accepting sub-par work. Seems like what they're doing is more trouble than it's worth, nevermind the fact that it's despicable.

And yeah, that fence looks like shit.

Is it just me or is getting some sort of home repair/upgrade from lowes/home depot etc getting worse and worse? States really need to crack down on theses stores and the contractors they use to stop this crap, if you can't do this yourself you are SOL.

call your local news station, a good PR hit will also cause them to change their tune

As far as the legal takedown notice - probably a case of the left arm not knowing what the right arm is doing - the legal department is just (stupidly) trying to justify their existence by going any lowes-related websites they discover.