Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse of Weaverville

I had both a terrible and a great customer service experience here yesterday. I needed assistance with the weed whacker I had bought from them. I brought the WW to the lawn department and waited until the lawn department employee, «L», was done with a customer and when it was my turn, he told me, «I’ll be right back» and then disappeared for another 15 minutes. I waited and waited. I finally went off to find another employeee, who told me «Go back and wait where you were, he’ll come back,» (even though that 2^nd employee didn’t appear to be doing anything.)
Finally the lawn department employee came back. I asked him to show me which thread the WW needed and how to thread it. He literally told me: ‘Do you have a computer? Look it up.” When I asked if he could just show me, since I had bought the WW all the way back to the store I had originally bought it at, he responded: «It’s against policy for us to touch small engines.» Then, when I asked if he could just walk me through it and I would do the actual work, he watched with crossed arms while I struggled with undoing the head (someone had screwed it on very tightly) for about 3 minutes as the line of people waiting got longer. Then he finally said «You need a channel lock to undo that». I asked what a channel lock was as tears started filling my eyes. At this point, he really should have stepped up to the plate and helped me. Or at least been verbally kinder. Or acted less bored. Obviously I was frustrated, I had my small child with me in the shopping cart, I was struggling (overall, the whole weekend I had been trying to accomplish house maintenance and as a single mom was feeling overwhelmed and alone — which happens to us sometimes). The next customer in line came up and started giving me suggestions on the WW head. Even he could see this employee was the pits. Even he could see I needed help. The employee fianlly looked at me and said I should get someone to help me and turned to the line. Duh, that’s why I brought my WW to Lowes.
Then the much better experience happened. I went to Customer Serivce and a nice senior employee, Dean, stepped up. He could see I was emotional and helped me right away. He unscrewed the head of the WW, suggested I use a simpler system, walked me over to the parts, read the instructions, helped me put the new system on the WW and showed me how to thread it. The first guy saw Dean was helping me and came over and made of show of jumping in to help me. A little too late… I guess he felt guilty seeing that I had been crying or that his colleague was being a much better employee. However, L still felt the need to tell Dean that touching small engines wasn’t in their policy. Dude. LEAVE. you are the opposite of helpful. Anyway, I am going to write a letter to Dean’s manager to make sure he knows what a gem he has there.

This is a very nice store. Every time I’ve gone there looking for something… they’ve had it! I just purchased three house plants there today. They’ve got a great selection of different plants, trees, and other shrubbery.

Nice store for a big box. I would go up an exit and get your garden supplies and plants at the wonderful Reams Creek Nursery instead. Shop the little guys. But I prefer Lowes (NC business) over the Depot. They actually can help you here…