We once had a toilet in our master bath. The hubster decided it was time to replace it with a low water flush model. He found a tank on clearance and decided he could order the bowl to match. So he placed the order and chucked the old toilet. The new one would arrive in a few days and he'd install it right away [I know, gripping isn't it?] This is how things REALLY happened:
1. Ordered the new toilet from Home Depot. It was delivered to our home via UPS...broken! [see below pics] Not just a crack, but split all the way up both sides. Nothing like a few 'Fragile' stickers to make the people handling it do their jobs properly, right? Home Depot lets us return that one and;
2. Order another one, and this time they will deliver it to the store on their own truck. It arrives in one piece (yay), my husband installs it, and........it's the wrong toilet. It doesn't match up with the holes on the tank to connect them together. Turns out that Kohler changed the model; Home Depot knew this but never bothered to change the picture on their website. Gee thanks. So my hubby un-installs it (not fun) and returns it to Home Depot. They tell us they can no longer get the old model so we get a refund.
3. Hubby goes-to-Lowes (hey that rhymed) and they assure him (never trust people who assure you of anything ahead of time) they can get the old model. They call eleventy-hundred warehouses and find one and order it. Yay Lowes! Only to get a call two days later telling us 'hey, Kohler changed the model and we'll have to order that one'. Uhmm, we already knew that and no thanks, we don't want that one. Been there, done that. Boo Lowes! So we get a refund.
4. We research the Internet and find an online guy who sells discontinued models and purchase the old model from him. It is shipped to us via UPS...........broken! This time in a gazillion pieces. People, you are shipping what boils down to a large porcelain statue. Package it to protect from breakage for goodness sakes! We arrange for UPS to pick it up and do their thing, and contact the shipper who arranges to send out a replacement toilet who 'Assured' us it would ship on Monday (this was Friday) It never arrived! He told us three different times that it had shipped on three different dates. we began to smell a rat, so we had to call the credit card company and reverse the charges.
5. We ordered from yet another online company and waited for a shipping date and tracking info. And waited................[cue the crickets] While waiting for any communication at all from them, we get a toilet delivered, via UPS. We thought it was from our most recent order, but it turns out it's the replacement one shipped out by the guy in the above paragraph. Yep, the guy who we had reversed the charges on weeks ago. Confused? Yeah, so was I. This was the first time I had received something and had no clue which company had sent it. Oh and I probably forgot to mention. It......too........was........broken! So we call UPS again, they pick it up - more phone calls to the warehouse that shipped it, blah blah blah - it's like "Groundhog Day" -- wake up, order a toilet, return a toilet... wake up, order a toilet... you get the idea.
6. We finally hear from the most recent place we ordered from, only to find out something completely brand new [insert sarcasm]. Kohler changed the model of this toilet and they can no longer get one. He went on and on about how he called every warehouse in the country and found ONE lonely toilet in New York [sounds like a bad lifetime movie title doesn't it?] and we can have it for the same price that he advertised--plus an additional $150 because it's discontinued and extra shipping (via UPS of course) and are we still interested? Uhmm that would be a negative!
I tried to get the man to take pity on us and explained the whole saga to him and he offered it for $30 less. Which if you're doing the math is still $120 more than we agreed to pay him originally. Double negative! I explained there was no way I would take another delivery from UPS when they clearly can't do it safely, that it would need to be packaged better and shipped via freight on a pallet. He said, 'sure', for an ADDITIONAL $150 dollars! Can you say clueless to our plight? He emailed me three times asking me if I was sure I wanted to cancel our order. **screams in frustration**
We cancelled all pending orders. My husband went to Lowes and bought the new model at full price and it was just installed yesterday. We still have an extra tank with no bowl to go with it. Any takers? We've had NO toilet in our master bath for over 10 weeks.
Anyway, here are the before and after just to show you how nice the new one looks.
