Empire Today

I started writing this October 11th, and finally got around to finishing it today.
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This blog post is Part Two of a series of blog posts I’m working on this week on the horrible customer service I’ve encountered lately. Read Part One by clicking here.
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You know what I have very little patience with? Bad customer service.

In my opinion, there are just no excuses for it. As consumers, we are choosing to make purchases from you. You are not doing us any favors.

After getting carpet installed in our new home through Empire Today with no problems, we decided getting blinds through them would be a good idea. So a few days later, we called Empire Today again and scheduled one of their employees to come with samples to our house (they have no actual stores).

This women was clueless to say the least. She had no answers to our questions, couldn’t figure out how to price the samples we chose to give us estimates, was making errors left and right in pricing and  – it was as if my dad and I were doing her work for her.

All of the above, I could have attributed to the fact that she was maybe a new employee (even though she said otherwise).

What ticked me off most was that she made a personal call while I was waiting for her to give me a price!

UGGGHHHHH!

That’s not even the end of it.

A week or so later, we called Empire Today back and they sent the same lady back (the second time this lady came was after the whole ‘Blinds to Go’ fiasco). A little while before she was scheduled to come to our house, she calls and tells us that she is actually with another customer and forgot she was scheduled with them. She told us if that appointment ended early, she would come afterwards – otherwise the next day – either way she would call us.

Not only did she not call us, but when WE called and left her a message, she didn’t even respond. When she finally came the next day, she was just completely rude to us! She even kept emphasizing that she was “squeezing us in” between other appointments as if she was doing us a favor. At that point in time we knew that even if we chose to get our blinds through Empire Today, it wouldn’t be through this lady.

At one point when my dad asked her about the huge disparity in price amongst Empire Today and other companies we got a quote from, she rudely said “then I guess its settled, you will get your blinds from the other company” and got up and packing her stuff while we were still discussing the products. At that time, we knew we were definitely getting our blinds from elsewhere.

Oh and did you know, their advertised ‘next day” products for blinds actually means at least ten days? I’m not sure why they are falsely advertising and I’m not sure what the reactions have been to that… it just made me laugh when the lady told me.

I don’t know why getting blinds for our new house turned into such a huge problem, but thankfully we placed an order via a local company (Budget Blinds) last Thursday (the 21st). They should be arriving in two to three weeks, and I’m hoping everything happens smoothly.

P.S. Don’t forget to leave me a comment below on your thoughts! As always, I’d love to hear from you.