Why I'll Never Complain Again...Hypothetically

Wal-Mart is an interesting place. I go there knowing I'm going to be annoyed at something, whether it's the associates, or lack there-of, the long lines, the somewhat empty shelves, the weird-o customers, the inability to find something, etc. But, I also go there knowing I will probably end up with what I need and get a good price.

Yesterday I had one of the most annoying experiences I have ever had at a retail store. Here's my story from the beginning:

I have been having this obnoxious sore throat for over a week now. It comes at night and lasts until breakfast. It keeps me up at night. It's awful. After a week of begging Mathew, I finally talked him into letting us by a humidifier. I figured some moisture might help? Well, we go to Wal-Mart Saturday night to get one, and of course the cheapest one was sold out, so we upgraded to the next cheapest. It sucked. Big time. Thankfully, Wal-Mart has the best return policy so we just took it back for a replacement last night.

Prior to going, I looked online to see what my options were going to be so I could be more educated this time and hopefully end up with a better one. Surprisingly, the cheaper one had good reviews and it said it was back in stock in the store! I was stoked. So off we go. After returning our crappy one, we went to grab the other one. The shelf is empty. We trek back to the customer service desk to see if they could check their inventory since we had seen they were in stock online. Stores have back stock...right? Well apparently, the girl was not interested in trying to help us. She had us go back to get the number of the item, which we did. There were like 5 numbers on the little sign, so we copied a couple. When we brought back the numbers, she mumbled some excuse about needing a manager so we left to find someone else.

Enter second associate. This girl seemed promising. Super nice, had a scanner, seemed energetic. Perfect. She followed us to the humidifiers and scanned the bar code. Inventory says there are 60. Yes! We were going to get our humidifier! Nope. She figured it must have been an inventory error or something and did nothing more. I was shocked. Seriously? Her little machine said there were some there, we saw online that if we ordered it, it would be available for pickup TODAY, and she still didn't go to the back or try to find someone else to help. Her advice was to go home and order one and wait for a week till it would be ready for pickup.

We did go home and we did order one right away. Less than an hour later we get a text saying our order is ready for pickup. I guess the inventory was right! Who would have guessed? So we go back and pick it up, but not before I had written a very lengthy complaint on walmart.com.

I thought maybe I would get an email with some auto-generated apology and maybe a coupon. Somehow my dad always gets coupons for complaining. Nope. This morning, I get a personal phone call from the manager at the store! I was mortified!!!!! He had me describe the situation and kept apologizing for what had happened. I kept apologizing for my outburst because I felt a bit overly dramatic. He also had me describe the girls that helped me so he could make sure it didn't happen again. It was definitely one of the most embarrassing phone calls I have ever had.

I am officially terrified to make a complaint to a store ever again. Now I'm worried those girls will lose their jobs, which is so not what I want. I just wanted my dang humidifier! So let this be a warning, if you complain to Wal-Mart, you will most likely get a response, so be prepared!