"The original" Lakes Appliance Lakes Appliances No refrigerator, Rude service, damaged my floor, Medford New Jersey

There has not been an apology. Period. And you know it. You have an open forum here, maybe you can post an apology for the world to read. There's an idea.

Threats and contacting police. I hope they asked for the whole story, as they should, and maybe even investigate your allegations. I am sorry to hear you felt threatened. I am sure the 75 year old consumers with a broken foot felt great when you dropped a refridgerator down her hardwood floor, and just left. You / Your team just pulled up and left her with NOTHING. Except a broken step. You did leave that. Thanks for that. If the authorities ever need the whole story, I will be happy to provide all of the records, which you neglect to address. I will also respond by filing charges against you and your company for the cost of the damage to the floor. I have pictures, and your welcome to see them, or inspect it yourself. 

But you will not inspect the property, because you know your at fault. Now making up stories about threats "visiting the store, and adding out of context comments about dental work"...give us all a break. Your the "local" business owner, and we have no doubt bumped into each othern numerous times since this incident. No one has approached or otherwise bothered you. You say this sort of stuff online to discredit the consumer claim against you pitiful business practices. I have to assume, since I have purchased from Lakes before, that these responses are not even from the real owner. I have to hope he has better sense than this.

As far as facebook threats and pages...I have copied all of the records that the Mrs. Lakes Appliance posted online on the 08055 website / group, which started a feedy frenzy of attacks on your customer. So, please don't even bother pointing fingers about attacks. You are the business and I would be ashamed if I ran a business where I posted personal attacks against my customers. That is a breach of privacy between consumer and business, something that our consumer protection laws protect against. 

By the way, regardless of what you advised me when this started, I still believe my mother more than I believe you.

First of all the person who filed this report was never involved in any conversations or attempted deliveries of the product.  Everything he wrote is hearsay.  I am really surprised that you would print anything without a simple attempt to verify the information.  A phone call to the real customer, this person"s mother, should confirm the facts concerning this botched delivery.

The facts are:  A refrigerator was purchased on Thursday 5/28/15.  It was special ordered, received Friday 5/29 and delivered on Saturday 5/30.  The delivery men pointed out a crease in the side of the refrigerator to the customer.  A call was made to our store and n accordance with Whirlpool"s damage policy, an allowance of $125.00 or a replacement was offered to the customer.  We explained to her that because no orders were placed for appliances on Saturdays, the new refrigerator would be ordered Monday, received Tuesday, and delivered Wednesday.

This news was not accepted cheerfully.  The customer had just cause to be upset.  It was left that Scott, the store manager, would call first thing Monday morning and try to expedite things.

On Monday Scott located a refrigerator in stock that had actually been sold to another customer, who agreed to put off his delivery to that we could accomodate Mrs. Carroll.  We notified her that we would do the job that day.  She felt that this  second delivery should be done without additional delivery charges and she was told that was standard practice for a repeat delivery.  Then she told us she felt that she should get a refund of the original $30.00 delivery charge.  We were told that if we didn't waive this charge she would never buy from us again.  That is contrary to our policy.  We do not waive delivery charges.  Keep in mind that we were sending out two men and a truck, twice, for $30.00.  In our 25+ years of doing business, we have learned that sometimes there is a type of customer that we don't want.  NEVER were the conversations on our end rude or confrontational.  We were simply trying to expedite her delivery.

During the second delivery, in the rain, one of our delivery men slipped on her wet stairs and injured his foot.  The replacement refrigerator was damaged.  When Scott called the customer about 20 minutes later, she asked him to cancel her order and refund her $100.00 deposit.  He told her the paperwork for the refund would be processed Tuesday morning, which it was.  We were never informed of any damage to her floor or stairs.  This all happened on Monday, within 48 hours of the original delivery, not on Wednesday, as your complainant stated.  We apologized for the entire mess because it is obviously not the norm for our business.

At this point we felt the situation was over.  We had two damaged refrigerators, one injured delivery man , and a lost customer.  It was time to move on.

On June 3rd we were issued a complaint that had been received by the Better Business Bureau. It was the second complaint against us since 1982.  We take this very seriously.  I quickly notice some false statements in the complaint.  In my book I call them lies.  Claim #1 was an offer of 5% off for the scratch and dent.  She was offered $125 which is more than double 5%, and she refused.  Claim #2 was that we gave her a series of excuses.  Not true.  We worked very hard to get our customer her product.  Claim #3 was that we gave her a runaround on the refund.  We processed her refund the following day. I believe these statements were an attack to make us look bad.  Her deliveries were a disaster, no question about that, but not the result of negligence or any desire on our part to ignore our customer's needs.

After we responded to the BBB, we were attacked on line by the sons of this customer.  They have threatened me personally (saying they hoped I had good dental insurance and threatening to come into my store) and I have reported this to the NJ State Police.  They created a fake Facebook blog using a local page and we have reported them to Facebook. We are not happy with what we consider a libelous situation, but we are getting a little tired of wasting time and energy on these people.  It was a bad situation all around.  I am glad they found a new store and that she has a new refrigerator.  Enough is enough.