Recently I refinished a small dresser.
It’s actually called a lingerie cabinet but we use it for all sorts of odds and ends and it fits perfectly against a small bit of wall between our two bedroom closets. It used to be a dingy pine that had seen better days and now it’s a slate grey with a hard-as-nails shiny top, for resilience.
We have a new Lowe’s store in London and when I was gathering supplies for this project I decided to try them out. A wooden handle on the bottom drawer was broken and instead of trying (and likely failing!) to make a new one, I decided to use knobs there instead. Along with the paint-and-primer-in-one I picked up some extra brushes. unfinished pine knobs and some other odds and ends I needed for the job.
When it came time to finish the bottom drawer I needed Derek’s help to remove the one remaining handle (a screw was stripped) and then I thought I was home free. But the new knobs would not tighten. I assumed it was me and called on Derek once again but it turns out that the screws that come with the knobs are designed to go in only about a quarter of an inch. That was nowhere near tight enough for my project and, in fact, for the other dressers we have in our home – I checked. But it sure wasn’t worth driving all of the way back to Lowe’s and getting different knobs considering they cost a grand total of $3.98.
So while Derek found other screws, did some drilling and saved the day, I got online with my receipt and shared my displeasure through the company website comment section. I received an email within a couple of hours asking me if it was okay that the local store manager give me a call the next day. “Sure.” And call he did, right on time! He had tried out the knobs himself and agreed that they were pretty uncooperative but he also made it clear that even if I had the thinnest dresser drawer in the known world, as long as I was unhappy, he was unhappy, so he asked if I’d accept a Lowe’s gift card as an apology. It arrived in the mail this week. That, my friends, is how you win a customer.