Finally! A New Fridge
The big event of this week was the arrival of my new fridge. Considering it was around Memorial Day when I ordered it, and after Labor Day when it finally arrived, I was happy to have it here at last. Woot!
Abby of course has settled in just fine into her top of the fridge spot.
I must say, it’s big for one person, but so is the whole house. I figure it’s better to plan for the house than just me. Still, even for me, it is nice to have the space.
The stuff you see in there now was literally packed wall to wall into the old fridge, stacked on top of each other with no almost no space. I wish I had taken a before picture. I was constantly taking other things out to get at the thing I wanted. Such a pain!
On the whole, I’m really happy with the fridge. It is a really tight squeeze in the space, but it literally just fits. (A little irritated about that but it works, so fine.) I’ll have the plumber back out next week to connect up the water line, and also hopefully fix up my back hose spickot. In the mean time, there is still no filtered water or ice, but I’m in no hurry for that. I don’t use much ice, and there is still the Brita filter in there.
As for the order and delivery process, I have nothing positive to say on that. I ordered this one item from Lowes, as they had initially shown it would arrive in early July with the other appliances, while Home Depot showed no delivery until September. That was such a mistake.
They didn’t call or email to let me know about the delay on the July delivery until about 4PM the day before, when I called to ask about the delivery time. They clearly knew this information ahead of time, but didn’t have the courtesy or process in place as a company to notify their customer. So because of that, I scriped on fresh food for a week and had already emptied my fridge in preparation for delivery before I knew delivery would be delayed by months. UGH!
Well, as Labor Day came around I decided to be more proactive and checked their website for delivery updates myself. It now said 9/10 8am-noon, and while it would have been nice to get an email with that update, at least I could start planning for that. Lowes finally called to let me know about the delivery around 4PM on Wednesday, the day before they were to show up. Good thing I am working from home now, and don’t need to schedule time off work!
All of this is less than ideal, but the worst part was the delivery itself. The person that called Wednesday said I would get a call in the morning with the delivery window. Cool. I had a 9:30-10:30 lecture for class, but could probably adjust if needed. However I didn’t hear from anyone until almost 11am when the delivery guy called to say they would be there at 11:30. Nice notice on a delivery window. All morning I had been waiting and wondering if I would be interrupted by the delivery as I started my lecutre, and each time I started a call with a student. Not cool.
While the two guys that did the delivery were nice enough, the one was clearly more experienced than the other. However, even that more experienced one didn’t seem to be on top of things. He said some things that just aren’t correct. For example, that I should call the power company at the end of the year to get a rebate for the amount shown on the EnergyStar savings tag… (There may be a rebate for installing energy efficient appliances, but that $ amount on the tag is an estimated cost savings from just not using that extra power.)
Still, I’m fine with people learning on the job, so long as the work is done correctly. However they didn’t install the tip guard for the fridge, which I later found in the freezer drawer. Question the need and validity of that all you want, but I expected it would be put in, or that at the very least they would ask. They also left the door shelves for me to install, which might have been fine if that were all, but they didn’t remove the tape and packing materials from the stuff that was in place in the fridge either. It was not exactly the ready for use installation that I expected.
The worst part though is that nothing was done to protect my nice new hardwood floors and stairs from scratches. Every other delivery did this, so I didn’t think it was something I would need to check on or remind them of. At one point I heard someone comment that they didn’t want to scratch the floor, so I assumed they had put something down to protect it. However as I was cleaning up afterwards, I was surprised to find a huge scratch on the stairs and then another big gouge down on the entry way floor.
I am so very unpleased. I let them know in the email survey, but I am going to leave it at that, since I’m not sure what I would want them to do about it. Refund the delivery fee? Hardly worth it. Fix the floor? Like I would trust them to do it? Sigh… At this point I’m just ready to forget that Lowes exists. I may not love Home Depot, but Lowes will not see any more of my business.
All in all, for a work short week, it felt really busy and hectic. I am very much looking forward to the weekend and my upcoming vacation from work. I am surprised by how exhausted I am here at the end of the week. Christy is brining Punch over for dinner shortly, and I should try do a little kyudo practice first. I guess I should give one last little update on that too…
They let me borrow a bow (yumi) so that I could work on getting used to holding it and setting the arrows to prepare to shoot.
I was pretty excited about this, but the one thing I didn’t account for is that the bow is almost the height of my ceiling, so I have to work with it kneeling on the floor. It works though…
I have been haivng serious coordination woes with this very large bow. It’s not that it is heavy, but the size makes it awkward. I am always worried I’m going to whap someone with it from behind, though the larger top part stays in front of you. I’ve been struggling a lot with getting the grip correct through all of the different positions and motions, particularly when preparing to nock the arrow. I had some great help from my seniors (sempai) on Wednesday though and I think I had some great ‘Aha!’ moments with their help. Super grateful!