The Case of the Missing Kitchen Faucet

This story has a happy ending.  But it made for a very stressful Thursday.  I was expecting a somewhat stressful Thursday, with a countertop install scheduled for afternoon.  But our anxiety was ramped up when we couldn't find the kitchen faucet.

I thought it had arrived and that we put it with the sink.  Nope--other things had arrived, like soap dispensers and a drain.  The Lowe's website showed that it had been delivered.  We turned the house upside down looking for it. My spouse looked under the house and in the shed. I checked the cars.

We had gotten stern e-mails about what had to be on hand for the install to happen, and the faucet was one of them. If it wasn't on hand, we might need to pay for an additional visit.  I figured they wouldn't leave with the countertops.  Happily, my spouse looked up the faucet template, and the installers were able to drill the holes--one for the faucet, two for soap dispensers.

That still left us the problem of not having the faucet, with the plumber scheduled to come on Tuesday to hook up everything.  Having to get a duplicate faucet wouldn't be the worst thing--if we could get it on time.  We didn't buy the super-duper, top of the line expensive model.  But still, I didn't want to pay another several hundred dollars to replace a faucet that we had already paid for.

And it left us with the lingering where-is-that-faucet questions.  Was there someplace obvious we hadn't looked?  Some not obvious location?

 I decided to call Lowe's, just in case the faucet was still there.  I expected to be told that the computer said it was delivered, and that would be that.  But the delivery manager looked through the photographs of what had been delivered to our house and didn't see a picture of it in his house.  He said, "Let me check the pick up pile."

Sure enough, it was there.  I got in the car and went right over to pick it up.  We live so close to Lowe's that I got to the Customer Service desk before the Delivery Manager did.

The faucet looks great, as do the countertops, so I'm trying to see this as an all's well that ends well story.  At the same time, part of me is distressed about the fact that Lowe's didn't deliver the faucet and that we didn't figure that out for weeks.