My husband and I purchased a dining room table from Hanks a few weeks ago. We were told the table would have to be shipped in, and we could pick it up on Wednesday of the next week. My husband made special arrangements to go pick it up with our son, but when he got to the store, he was told the table did not come in. The manager could not offer a good explanation for why it didn't come in and only said it probably missed the truck. We were told to come back the next Wednesday. I could live with that even though we would not have the table for a party I was planning that weekend.

Once again, my husband made special arrangements with my son the next Wednesday and went to the store to pick up the table. When he arrived, he was told that the table did not come in again. My husband asked for a reason, but the sales people said they did not know. They said that maybe the store manager put in the wrong delivery date. The manager was on vacation at that time, so there was no one there that could offer a good explanation. Then, a sales lady said that some of her customers furniture had not come in as well. They told us to come back in another week to see if our table had come in.

We were very upset because we had already missed having the table for a Christmas party the previous weekend, and now we would just be a week away from Christmas if the table arrived the next week. Because I have family coming in for the holidays, I wanted to make sure we were going to be able to get the table in time, so I called the corporate office to complain and ask for assurance that we would receive our table before Christmas. The lady I spoke with was nice at first and said she would check into the situation. I fully expected she would call me back and give a definite delivery date and even offer to deliver it for free because of our trouble. Instead, I did not hear from her again.

Two days later, I called the customer service lady back again. After 15 minutes on hold, she finally came to the phone and her attitude had completely changed. She said that I would have to talk with the store manager about the situation. I explained that we had already spoken to the store manager, and now he was on vacation. I asked her if I could speak with a regional manager or someone higher up than the store, and she said no. I insisted that I wanted to speak with a manager over the store, and she said I could not. I then told her that Hank's advertisement states that customer service is #1, and I did not feel I was getting good customer service. She told me I was entitled to whatever opinion I wanted. I told her if she did not have an upper manager contact me, I would list my complaints on-line or in a newspaper. She told me to do whatever I had to do and hung up on me.

Here is the B.S. written on Hank's website... " Our philosophy is centered around the belief that when a customer comes through our front door, they are doing us a favor, and it is our obligation to provide them with courteous service, intelligent advice, a pleasant shopping experience, and, of course, excellent values."

If there is anyone out there that wants to fall for that bull, I have some swamp land in Arizona that I would like to sell. We cancelled the order for the table and will never buy anything from Hanks again. I am going to tell everyone one I know about the rude service we received and warn them about the similar complaints I am finding on-line.