08-17-2019, 08:38 PM
(08-17-2019, 05:33 PM)NilesMike Wrote:You may never use any of my investment advice but I can explain some of the nuances of your door measuring episode. I deal with this issue constantly....(08-17-2019, 06:51 AM)fenders53 Wrote: -(A)In my small store that only does about $30M annual sales, it's very typical to have 3-4 live cashiers plus ASSISTED checkout. Don't ever say SELF Checkout Mike.
(B) I am curious how Lowes handles their training. I am going to drop by and ask their millworkers sometime just out of curiousity.
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(A) I don't know the volume of my nearby stores (60056) but they seldom have that much up front staff. Their best dept. IMO is the tool rental.
(B) I may have told this Lowes story, I tell it to everyone. I wanted to buy a pre-hung stock steel door that was on sale and have Lowes install it. Get the price, a fee is charged for a guy to come out and verify the fit and deducted at the end. This guy comes out and tells my wife that the opening is not standard so we need a custom door. $700 more and 3 weeks lead time. I get home and measure, again. Spot on.
I call Lowes and they tell me they stick with their guy as he would be the installer as well. The manager would not listen or budge off the "he's our guy" position. I would have been out $700 extra and he would have furred the opening down to "make it fit".
I will never shop Lowes and will never invest in Lowes.
1. The measure fee is reasonable. The installer needs to be compensated if you aren't seriously shopping for a window or door. You get it back if you buy a door and install. It's not only a measurement but a site visit to see if something crazy is going on. It happens with 100 year old houses. I'm sure you are OK with this part.
2. There are legit reasons to desire a smaller door. The installer wants to be done quickly and be able to compensate for out of square and level for a professional install. If the floor has multiple layers of flooring stacked high it's easier to get a smooth transition with a door that if firred up as required. This is a 1 out of 5 thing. It's understandable when the problem truly exists. He is covering the risk at the customers expense making them buy a custom door 4 of 5 don't actually need.
3. Here's the big problem. You can't measure a door properly without popping the casing trim. Without doing that there is no way to know the true dimensions of the rough opening. They measure what they can see and assume there is no room to play with. Why? Because if they pop trim there is about zero chance they can re-install without marring it some. It's just a measure and now we have customers that want their trim repaired when they bought nothing but a cheap measure. There are people unreasonable like that.
Here's how it works in my real world. I get measures that require a custom door by 1/8 inch. Yeah that is ridiculous. If the customer desires a door that is very custom anyway we just roll with the stupidity because the price difference is minimal. If not I call the installer out. I tell them the customer will waive minor trim damage for an accurate measure, or they will pop trim themselves and give me a real measurement. That should embarrass them and it usually does.
I only sell about 6 measures a week in my little store. My installer is re-measuring two doors on Monday because I called BS. The customer would not have known the difference, but that doesn't matter to me. I will do this every week if I have to. The day I am required to rip people off to get along will be my last day at HD.