We went to the Bad Boys furniture retailer in Barrie to look for new appliances for our basement apartment we were building. We were looking at the different models of stoves in the show room, and their salesman eventually directed us toward a stove wedged between other appliances. He said they were trying to sell this floor model, and that we can save a couple hundred dollars if we took it. My wife and her father was with me, and we decided it looked like a decent stove so we paid for it in full (big mistake) and said we'll be back in a few days to pick it up when we can bring a pickup truck.

When we picked it up and took it home, we removed the card board wrapping, and the stove didn't have any side covers, you can see through to the internal wirings of the stove. I phoned them up and asked why it's missing the side covers, the manager immediately got on the defensive, and the first thing he tried to say was that the stove was out in the open in plain view (which it wasn't), and then said that it was a slide in model so they don't have side covers. I told him that this slide in model was no good for us with our kitchen setup and wanted to return it, and again he got defensive and rude saying that "I don't live in your house, how should I know that?" He kept on trying to defend himself and his salesman, and saying it wasn't his problem that we got the wrong stove, I think he forgot that it was HIS salesman who pointed that stove out to us in the first place and told us we should get it without telling us that it was a slide on model, and it wasn't placed in a position that was readily available for us to see. He kept going on and on about how the stove was in plain view, even though he knew it was a lie, and it didn't make sense for us to buy something we wouldn't like if it was in plain view like he claimed.

What I thought was going to be a simple phone call to return the stove turned out to be a big argument before he finally allowed us to bring it in to exchange for something else, which was a good move on his part because my next step would've been to contact the Better Business Bureau if he refused, there's no way we were going to keep that stove. If it wasn't for the fact that they would only let us have store credit, we wouldn't even buy another stove from there, and we're definitely not going to get the rest of our appliances from any Bad Boys retailer ever again. I think their sales people and management team are very poorly trained, I work in sales myself and one of our most important rule is to let people know everything there is to know about the product they are buying, it saves us a lot of inconvenience down the road, and people usually appreciate the honesty and that's one way we build a clientele. The people at Bad Boys seem to rather make a quick buck then think about building clientele.

In contrast to how Bad Boys work, there is a Home Depot nearby where we've been getting some materials for our basement renovation. Usually their people are very informative and help us pick out the right materials and tools for the job, and when it turns out the materials we purchased wasn't the right ones, or purchased more then we needed, they never gave us a hassle when we went to return, and as a result we've made most of our building material purchases there.