Hi there,
Today I am going to tell you how an incompetent Leroy Merlin salesman tried to intimidate me into buying a paint that he had done wrong.
On August 4th we went to Leroy Merlin to buy some things I needed for the house; among which was a liter of “charcoal gray” exterior paint which is the paint with which I have painted the entire exterior of my house.
It is a paint that has to be done on the spot.
We had always been served by a very competent woman and one day we were served by a man who sold us 15 liters of “charcoal gray” paint.
In the house, when we started painting, we realized that he had given us a lighter gray and we had to return to Leroy Merlin to make a complaint. The usual woman was there and explained that her colleague had made a mistake choosing the base. We got our money back and had to come back when the correct base was available.
At that time, we still didn’t have a car so imagine the waste of time and money.
For this colossal blunder of the incompetent salesman we had neither an apology nor any kind of compensation from Leroy Merlin.
So, with this experience we were already very careful because I had no choice but to continue buying that paint because the whole house was already painted in that color.
On August 4th there was a guy I had never seen before. I told him that I wanted a charcoal gray matte exterior paint and he told me that there was only “cinza betão” (another gray).
Already seeing how stupid he was and that he wasn’t even able to look up the paint in the system, I should have left.
I told him to search by my name and he said that it was not possible, which was false.
I asked to give me the catalog to look up the color and the response was “Let’s see who is going to find the color among so many catalogs“. It took me less than 5 seconds to find the color.
He proceeded to put it correctly into the system and finally found it.
We went off to get the other stuff while that incompetent guy was left to work on the paint.
When I returned, the guy was gone, and I waited for him to open it and show me the color to verify that it was correct.
When he finally returned to his workstation, he sees me and says: “That’s your paint, take it away”.
I replied that logically he had to open it for me to see the color; he opened it reluctantly.
I confirmed my suspicion since the paint was lighter than the color I had asked for. Charcoal gray is almost black and the color he had made was a light gray.
I explained it to him, and he started to tell me that I had to buy the paint because otherwise it was a prejudice for him. I told him that I was going to check Diego’s App if the photo of the base was there to verify that the base was correct.
Since the base was not on the App, I told Diego that we should leave.
It was not worth going to give any explanation to that incompetent who from the beginning did not want nor knew how to do his job.
To my surprise, when we were paying at the cash register, the salesman arrived with the security guard to tell me “That I had to buy the paint”.
The security guard looked like he wanted to get out of there.
I started arguing with the guy, more and more shouting, telling him that he was incompetent and that he had not even been able to look up the color in the system.
He insisted that I had to buy the paint because he was the technician and he assured me that the paint that looked light gray, when it dried it would look dark gray.
This was totally false, and I knew it very well, as I had painted the entire exterior of the house and had bought countless liters of that color. The paint looked the same when it dried.
As the discussion did not end, I asked what he was trying to do by bringing the security guard, that he was not going to intimidate me and to call the police immediately to solve the problem because I was not going to take a paint of the wrong color.
At that point, the incompetent salesman mumbled a few words and left.
All of this, for a measly 13-euro liter of paint that was a loss to the company.
If he cared so much about the company, it was better and more profitable to do his job well.
Logically we arrived at the house to put the claims in Portal Queixa and Livro de Reclamações, but if you read my blog, you know that in Portugal there is neither law nor justice, so those claims were not going to get anywhere.