Delivery Woes

This post is definitely not a complaint about Menards delivery service.  Considering I only had to pay $69 for them to pick my entire list of roofing materials, 10,000lbs+ worth, and deliver it to my driveway, I'd say it's an excellent deal, even with all the hassles.

Ah, hassles.  It took 3 weeks and a day for everything to get delivered to Menards, so they could deliver to my house.  Not a huge deal, I wasn't in a rush, except being anxious to get started. The soffit was special ordered from one manufacturer, and the shingles were special ordered from another. It was supposed to take 2 weeks and be delivered 5/5, but after checking tracking on 5/4 and seeing that some of my stuff wasn't even at Menards yet, I knew it wouldn't be 5/5.  A call from Menards confirmed it.  They'd be in contact when everything was ready for delivery.

Everything was received at the store by the following Monday, but I never got a call from them. Gave up waiting and called on Wednesday to check, and, oh yeah, we can scheduled delivery for Friday, 5/12.

Thursday (5/11) rolls around, and I get an email about a new special order I had just placed that day.  Except I hadn't been to Menards in a couple days.  It was for 12 pieces (1 box) of 12' soffit panels.  I called Menards, and they said that while I special ordered 2 boxes, only one box was actually delivered.  They started that order to cover the situation, but they had an alternative that had just arrived in store: Boxes of pre-cut 1' and 2' sections of the soffit.  4 panel, 2 vented, 2 solid, white, basically pre-cut versions of what I wanted anyway.  I needed to make sure it would work, and that my soffits weren't actually 2' 1" or something.  I checked and the pre-cut soffit would work just fine.  Preferable, even.  So I called them back on Friday and said to send the boxes of the pre-cut soffit, but the truck had already left.  She said she'd call me later to schedule a separate delivery.

Let's take a break from the soffit for a moment to talk about another issue.  Fascia.  I'd ordered 17 of them.

Obvious damage before the strapping was removed.

1 of them was severely damaged...

Not cool.

and 3 others were slightly damaged.  But that wasn't the main problem.  The main problem was, I'd ordered 6" white smooth aluminum fascia, and received 6" white rustic aluminum fascia.  With a very fakey looking woodgrain.  The receipt said smooth.  The pick sheet from Menards said smooth.  Delivery sheet said smooth. But the barcode (and obviously the product) came up as rustic.

So, Sunday, 5/14 rolls around, I take my delivery paperwork, original receipt, and pictures of the incorrect fascia to Menards.  I'm glad I wasn't in a hurry because it took an hour for them to finally go through enough managers to help me.  We got the fascia squared away (they'd pick up the incorrect fascia and deliver the correct fascia), and I'd save them the hassle of delivering small boxes of the soffit to me, and just pick them up that day.  The guy got it squared away in their delivery system, and handed my original paperwork back to me.  I was standing by a checkout line and pointed to the 12 boxes of soffit in my cart and asked how I'd get through without paying for them.  And without looking like I'm trying to steal them.  He said, "No, it'll be fine."  Riiiight.  So, I take not 10 seconds to walk over to the checkout line, and when I explained the situation, the cashier wasn't buying it.  So, they called over the manager that finally approved everything, and she said it was fine.

The delivery of the correct fascia was uneventful.  The day before that, I got an automated email from Menards saying my second box of 12' soffit was in (that I had already swapped with the boxed soffit).  Guess they never canceled the order.  Oops.