MasterCraft Fumbles the Ball
Greetings All !
Well, as is my habit lately, I’m posting these events a few days after-the-fact. I apologize for that, but the rest of my “to-do list” keeps interfering.
On Friday, my wife once again became concerned about progress on the kitchen. When we last left our program, the cabinets were ordered and were suppossed to be “in” on November 1st. However, we hadn’t heard from our salesman / project manager in a while, so my wife had called MasterCraft and learned that he was on vacation.
That was prior to last week.
However, as I said, my wife still hadn’t heard from our salesman, Brent, so she decided to call MasterCraft. At first, it sounded like she got the janitor or something. Somebody who basically “knew nothing” took a message (this was at 9:30 AM on Friday)…. said that Brent was still on vacation… and that somebody would call her back.
A few hours later, the owner of MasterCraft, whom we’ve talked with briefly before, called. I handed the phone over to my wife, as she’s basically in charge of this whole thing (that’s our agreement)…. and I then watched her alternately tear-up and get mad…. over the next 10 minutes.
The owner told her that our salesman was “on leave”…. as in extended leave. The owner was apparently unaware of the November 1st promise of cabinet delivery. He said that due to some changes we made in the plans a few weeks ago, that had been pushed back to November 28th. My wife said that Brent had promised over and over again that the changes we had made would NOT push back the schedule. However, this was apparently not true now.
The owner then wanted to discuss putting in a tin ceiling, something my wife and he had briefly discussed about a week ago. I motioned for her to end the phone call. She did. I asked her why she wanted to give a penny more to this company before they proved they could do what they said they could do, considering how they’ve now fumbled the ball?
Granted, schedules are just rough drafts and get pushed back all the time.
The point is the complete lack of communication from them. They haven’t been calling to discuss the project with us at all. We’ve been calling them repeatedly to continue the process of planning the rest of the kitchen remodel.
Terry later received a call from MasterCraft’s secretary… a very nice, helpful lady whom we’ve spoken with several times before. She confessed that the salesman, Brent, had quit unexpectedly. He’d “gotten a better offer”. She has now been instructed by the owner to contact my wife and update her weekly. So, I guess she’s our new project manager?
My wife called her friend Sherry, who originally recommended MasterCraft to us. They together are now wondering if the whole company is under different ownership, as Sherry doesn’t recall meeting this owner ever before.
My take on this is let’s just wait and let them do the tear-out and install the cabinets and countertop. No additional orders or money until that’s done. We still want to do the ceiling and the backsplash, but we’ll hold off on that.
Oh, and that reminds me…. when my wife asked when she was suppossed to be picking out the piece of granite for her countertops… something she THOUGHT she’d be doing right about now…. the MasterCraft owner gave her the name and phone number of the “granite company” and told her to make an appointment with them for about a week before November 28th!! I would have thought THEY would have set up the appointment for her!
So, I became annoyed that once again… I’ve encountered a company that at first seems to be good at communicating with us, honest, and dependable, but then proves to be otherwise.
I can understand that losing an important employee can put a business owner into a bind. But if I were him, I would have immediately called all that person’s clients… been honest with them… and attempted to catch myself up (or whomever that salesman’s replacement is going to be).
Let’s hope MasterCraft can pick up the ball again and run with it.