Rant ‘n’ rave: Farm store’s ‘free delivery’ isn’t worth the price you’ll have to pay

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette

Friday, Oct. 11, 2024 — I normally don’t air my complaints in regard to customer service (or the lack of it) in column form here on the Nelson County Gazette. But after spending a considerable sum of money at a local retailer, I’m unhappy enough to vent my spleen in public. My apologies in advance to the easily offended.

Like many of my neighbors here in rural Nelson County, one of my favorite stores is Tractor Supply.

Seldom is there a time when I stop at TSC for one item and don’t check out with a basket full of items I wasn’t looking for but just could not resist For most men, there’s no shortage of impulse buying when you visit a TSC.

Last Wednesday, after discussing the purchase of a new woodstove with my wife at a lunch date, she went over to TSC to buy the stove we selected.

She paid for the stove and was delighted to find that it included free delivery to our home. As part of the delivery, she gave the store personnel, two simple instructions. The first was a request for the delivery guys to call my cell phone to let me know they were coming with the stove. The second was that the stove needed to be delivered to the front porch of our home.

My wife was out of the house the rest of that afternoon. When she returned, she asked me why our new woodstove was sitting in our unattached garage.

“Huh? You mean they delivered the stove already?” I asked.

Yes, it was delivered, though it appears the delivery guys ignored my wife’s delivery instructions.

It looks like they just dumped the stove at the first convenient place they found. The garage overhead door was open just high enough for them to shove the stove inside, but not far enough inside for the overhead door to close. The stove was nowhere near our front porch as instructed.

Needless to say, my wife was extremely unhappy to have spent more than $1200 for a brand new woodstove that arrived with some damage and on top of that, delivered to the wrong location.

My wife called the local TSC store. Whoever was on the phone told her that they weren’t sure they knew who delivered the stove, or that they could get them to come back to deliver the stove to our front porch. Apparently, “free delivery” translates into “Ignore the customers’ instructions and deliver and drop it anywhere.”

TSC uses contractors to make deliveries like this one, the man on the phone explained.

While the employee my wife talked to was polite, none of his answers addressed the matter at hand — having our brand-new stove delivered to our front porch.

The message I got from hearing my wife’s conversation with TSC can be summed up simply as, “Sorry, you’re screwed.”

Now I know the “free” delivery is supposed to be a nice feature for those of us who can’t haul a 240-pound woodstove home with us. After this fiasco, I would rather pay a fee to have a crew who will read and honor customers’ delivery instructions than use TSC’s “free” delivery and hope and pray the item arrives intact and somewhere at your house you can find it.

I’m sure not all of TSC’s deliveries are as screwed up as ours was. Just remember that the offer of “free delivery” might leave you in the same spot as we are in: We have a new 240-pound woodstove on a wooden pallet sitting in our garage and not our front porch.

We have to figure out how my wife and I can move it out of our garage over to our house, and up the stairs of our front porch.

To be clear, I’m not directing my vitriol at our local TSC; they’ve always been courteous and helpful. However, I believe TSC can improve who it contracts with for delivery to ensure a better customer experience.

Does anybody have a moving dolly to spare??

-30-