The other day I bought carpet…
I’ve had the same carpet in my bedrooms for the last 20 years. So, my husband and I decided since we were already painting and moving everything that we should buy carpet for the bedrooms.
We went to our local carpet store and talked with the owner. We selected three different styles of carpet for each room — a floral pattern for the master bedroom, a shag brown carpet for my son’s room and a grey berber for my daughter’s room.
As he was writing up the order, he was talking about his dog and how much it cost him to have his dog operated on. He talked about this in great detail.
We left the store and we went back home to clean out the rooms.
The day the carpet arrived, we were excited. They came on time as expected and the men were very nice.
As the men started to put down the carpet in my daughter’s room, I noticed that it wasn’t the right carpet. I told the guys to stop. I called the carpet place. “This isn’t the right carpet,” I said. The owner told me that that was the one I chose. I was upset. It didn’t go with the room. It looked brown and the room was gray!
“Well, if you’re not happy, come in and I’ll eat the carpet,” the owner told me.
That weekend, we went back to the carpet store. As the owner spoke with a couple of customers, my husband and I went looking for the original carpet we saw. We couldn’t find it. After some time, the customers left and the owner started to talk with us.
The talk became a bit of a screaming match between the owner and my husband. The owner claimed that he never “made a mistake in 25 years.” And, my husband said, “are you calling us liars?”
It wasn’t a pretty scene and my thought was to leave and get the carpet elsewhere but my husband insisted on staying. We selected a new carpet and the owner told us he would split it with us. (I thought he said he would eat the new carpet? Guess not!)
Quite often he told us that he never made a mistake in 25 years and I just kept thinking that is a miracle. I’ve made mistakes and my clients have made mistakes but one think I know for sure is that I always end up eating the cost, even if it’s the client’s fault. Because you know what?
The customer is always right!
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