Patrick’s Rants

Hi Office Max,
here is a letter that I’m sending out in the next mail:

OfficeMax Corporate Headquarters
263 Shuman Blvd.
Naperville, IL 60563

Re: Negative shopping experiences with store # 637

I am writing to alert you to the recent negative experiences that I have had with your store located in Flagstaff, Arizona and to advise your company why I will not be shopping there anytime in the foreseeable future. The first experience involves a shredder that I purchased back in December of 2006. At that time, my wife and I researched many different shredders finally settling on an Office Max brand medium duty diamond cut shredder. Since we didn’t see the shredder that we had already decided that we wanted in a box my wife asked an associate whether there might be more in the back or even not nearby the display. Although he did attempt to find that model in the multiple locations that it might be displayed he assured my wife that we would be fine with a light duty model instead. He did not ask any questions about how much shredding we normally do, whether we were in business or for any other relevant information. He simply decided that we could use the light duty shredder.

My next experience involves an attempt to purchase a power inverter that I found on your company’s web site. After looking at your site as well as the sites of Walmart and Staples, I found a power inverter that appeared to meet my needs, item# 2043-9820. I called the Flagstaff store to find out if it was an item normally stocked. The lady who answered the phone looked up the item and determined that it was not in inventory. I asked if I could order it and have it shipped to the store. She told me that I could, but I would have to come into the store to place the order.

I finally made it into the store about a week to a week and a half later. I approached an associate to ask about ordering the inverter for shipment to the store. He first attempted to have me order the item online, which I did not want to do. After convincing him to let me order it from the store, he asked for the item number which I had neglected to write down. I described the item to him telling him that it was on the Office Max web site. He told me that he needed the item number at which point I asked whether he had access to the company website. He finally disappeared, presumably into the store office, and returned with the item number and an order form. He had me fill out the top section of the order form with my personal information, wrote “store” across the shipping information box and took my credit card number. This was on January 27.

On February 1, a charge appeared on my bank statement for $21.67. I was pleased about this as the inverter is priced $29.99 on your site. Sometime around February 12, I called the store to check the status of my order. I was advised that it was not at the store and that I could get better tracking information using the toll free number on the order form. On February 15, I called the toll free number on the order form to find out the location of my order. At first they seemed unable to help using the number on the Office Max order form and instead had to use my phone number to look it up. At that point I was advised that my order had been received at the Office Max store on February 2, signed for by “Joe”.

I called the store again asking for my order. “Joe” was not in and the man who answered the phone could not find my order. I then spoke to a manager named “Ben”. “Ben” tried to find the package and told me that “Joe” would be in between 5 and 3 the following day. At this point, I no longer cared about the inverter. I was extremely upset that not only had the package arrived nearly two weeks earlier, that no one bothered to call me, and now it appeared to be missing. I asked “Ben” if he was the manager and he replied that he was, “one of the managers”. “Ben” offered me a couple of different options, one was a refund, whatever would make me “happy”. I was not happy and was not going to be happy, but I told him that I would be in for the refund. When I arrived at the store about ten minutes later, “Ben” was with a customer at the register. I waited for him to finish and then told him that I had just talked to him on the phone. He had the white copy of my order form and processed a credit to my card.

Since this I have heard of other problems with this particular store, one involving a large print order that was lost after having spent a couple of hours in the store with the associate at the copy center.

Taking all of these experiences into consideration I will have a difficult time shopping in this or any Office Max store. Flagstaff still has a small town feel to it; for whatever reason this store has a large city arrogant feel to it. It used to be more pleasant to shop in this store, the staff used to be far more helpful.