Office Depot, bad experience, online shopping hell
I have been shopping at Office Depot for many years due to the fact that I have bought a lot of computer equipment over the years, they seemed to have what I wanted and appeared to be the lesser of evils. I have been shopping for a notebook computer recently and going to the Office Depot site and checking out their selection. I received a gift for $ 75 and decided to take it in the form of a Office Depot gift card to apply toward the purchase of the new computer. I have been leaning more toward Office Max recently because they have gotten away from the rebate nonsense. I will definitely give Office Max more attention. Here is the experience I had with Office Depot. I will say the customer service reps that I ended up calling were friendly, but powerless to help. It is the fault of the idiot management. Consumers beware.
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The Office Depot website was slow when I searched for computers.
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Regarding the online gift card order. I tried to take the option to pick up the card locally and pay online. It would not let me. I then decided to have it shipped and completed the order.
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The next day I checked the status online. It showed a 2 week shipping delivery date.
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I tried to chat online and get an answer. I was knocked off 3 times. The response time was horrible (I have high speed internet access).
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I finally called customer service. The first lady said it takes 2 weeks because it is a special order. I mentioned that I see gift cards on every store shelf. No go.
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I asked to speak to someone else. Same answer. Both ladies were nice and I was nice to them.
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Conclusion. Management is obviously on drugs. I am ready to spend some more money at Office Depot and Office Depot obviously has a death wish. This is so typical of corporate America. They obviously are not on top of their website and 2 weeks to get a gift card. I don’t think so!
Out of fairness to the local Office Depot stores, since they are at
the mercy of upper management, like consumers, I went to a Office Depot
store near me in Charlotte NC. The assistant manager was courteous and
helpful. He was just as baffled as I was concerning the way Office Depot
online and customer service handled my gift card acquisition. He explained
that if you come to a Office Depot store to buy a gift card,
you can buy one for any amount, wheareas the online people said the
$ 75 gift card was a special order and takes 2 weeks for delivery. He
was unable to get around the dilemna. I don’t blame him, I blame corporate
headquarters. I then asked if I could buy a notebook computer and apply
the purchased online gift card before receiving it and that was not possible.
I also asked if they could hold the computer until the gift card was received.
That also was not possible. Again, I don’t blame the local people.
Problems always start at the top. It is clear Office Depot has a
bureaucracy that is not geared to customer satisfaction and this problem
goes straight to the top, to the CEO that is getting paid big
bucks, but probably is not aware of what is going on.
ncrealestateblog
January 11, 2008
I tried ordering stuff over the phone and got India. They couldn’t understand me and I couldn’t understand them, so a lot of the things I ordered were wrong.
Tried again several months later. India again. Now I haven’t an exotic Southern or proud New York accent, just pretty much midwestern.
The guy, first off, didn’t like talking to a woman. Too bad you say? Yeah for me. He deliberately got things wrong after I repeated them over and over, and I was told that the ink cartridges I wanted (canon) were not available where I live (WTF). That’s not all. I ordered this over a month ago and it still hasn’t arrived. I’m looking for another company to do business with, because they are toast as far as this company is concerned.
Kate
January 12, 2008
Don’t buy gift cards from Office Depot! I bought several $50 gift cards to give away as gifts, but didn’t giv them all away. I went to use them the other day & found out that even though they “don’t expire” they decativated them. Customer service says they will send a report to corportate & the will let me know in 6 to 8 weeks what if anything they intend to do. This is just bad business. The ones that have been used in the past still work but the ones that I have never used are now unusable since I havn’t used it yet. I bought them 3 years ago. The customer service reps are nice & sarcastic when they explaint ot me that they don’t expire, but if unused for three yearscorporate decided to invalidate them.
Home Depot Gift Card SCAM
January 19, 2008