Home Fix needs a DIY fix

The old house my parents bought had one of those nice old solid pieces of wood that you rarely find on hand rails these days.

The heavy hardwoods are usually painted and as the house gets transferred from owner to owner, each one adds his/her own coat of paint to it.

But I rarely like wood painted. I like to see the natural colours of the wood emerge.

We decided to take down the banister, but it’s been hard for me to throw it away, so I’ve had it cut down to four pieces.

I’ve spend about five days sanding the pieces of wood, and now they’ve been completely oiled with a tin of oil I purchased from Ikea. The oil brought out its natural deep red colour. The transformation from a black painted banister to red was quite remarkable.

I’ve been using one of these electronic sanders my sister lent me. My sister got it, I presume with great dreams of sanding something, but the truth is that, only I have ever used it.

The first time, again, was on some banisters when we moved after our first en bloc sale. Same story. The owners had slopped on some terrible blue paint on it and we had to strip more than five layers of paint off and sanded it down.

Now, three years, two en bloc sales later, here I am using her tools again.

Anyway, with these sanders, you go through the sandpaper really fast, because you’re going at high speeds, and the middle portion of the sand paper isn’t quite as efficiently used as the outer circumference of the sand paper. So you find yourself replacing them pretty fast.

So it turned out, I was out of sand paper and I asked my father to go get some more at the Home Fix store at AMK Hub, a 15-minute walk away.

My dad returns, forty five minutes later, with the last packet of the required sandpaper. I open the box, and instead of five sheets, there are only four and one of them has been used.

I call the shop and am told to go and swap them at some other outlet. No apology made.

I go down to the Thomson branch and there, without issue, I get one swapped. Easy enough. But no apology again.

Then I told the salesperson there, that I wanted another packet of the same, plus, one more, but of fine grain.

And the guy goes, “What size you want? 60? 120?”, the numbers referring to the roughness of the sand paper.

So I refer to the 3 symbols on the packaging, symbolizing fine, medium and rough. I point at fine and say,  “one packet of this” and then I point at rough and I ask for “one more of this”.

The sales person then returns with six packets, two each of fine, medium and rough and asks again, “So which size do you want?”

I take the two boxes I want, then I decide to check the contents of each of them. I didn’t want to go back to the shop again for another swap.

It turned out, I was clever. In one packet, again, only four sheets instead of five sheets. The sales guy then looks into another packet where there are five sheets, takes out one, then inserts them into the box with four sheets.

Why do I have to have these painful encounters? There are so many issues, I don’t even know where to begin.

I can only conclude this is why so many of our service jobs are going to foreigners who can barely speak English. You can go to a hawker centre and point at food you want and get it. But not at Home Fix. You point at something and are specific and they come back with the same question. You can go to a country where you don’t speak the language and use your fingers to point and gesticulate and people will understand you. But not in Singapore.

I still don’t have any apology for the inconvenience caused to my father and myself. I used to be a member of Home Fix. I’m no longer one. And it was long before this incident. With this kind of service, can such shops retain a loyal customer base?

Finally, who is the unlucky bloke who’ll buy that packet of sandpaper with only four sheets inside?

Why are opened packets put back on the shelf? Why are half used things being sold?  Are there customers who are stealing sandpaper? Employees stealing sandpaper? How can stock at shops be so low there are no alternatives than to go to another outlet?

Looks like Home Fix needs a fix. They should start by firing all their managers.