Waters Hardware- Manhattan — Local services in Manhattan

UPDATE 4-19-24: Finally talked to the owner "Rusty".. He accused me of complaining to much. Lol. Then said he's never has complaints... I guess old Russty does not read his other Google reviews...

Original review: I hate leaving bad reviews on local company's but at this point I have no choice. Over the last 3 years the customer service has taken a consistent decline. Every time we rent a bounce house it gets delivered dirty & smells putrid of stagnant water (4 years in a row). Two weeks ago my office manager called to rent a bounce house again for our company Easter party. The moment I realized she rented from them again I instructed her to call back and cancel because of the past bad experiences. She canceled 30 mins after booking the rental. When canceling the rental they explained that the money ($670) can not be refunded & must be used for a store credit. We tried to fight the issues with to resolve. Fast forward to today. I need a chainsaw so I figured with my $670 store credit I would use that to purchase a new one. NOPE, apparently that $670 can only be used for RENTLAS now. Again I tried to escalate the issue with no resolve. So, now that I'm stuck using this money for rentals only I try to RENT a chainsaw. Chainsaw #1: Drive 15 mins home for the chainsaws throttle to stick in high when you let off the trigger as well of the chain break not engaging, making it unsafe to use. I then drive back to the rental place. Chainsaw #2: Drive 15 mins again with another chainsaw. The moment I try to use it the chain pops off. Upon further inspection I see its missing one of the two bolts that secure the chain mechanism to the head of the chainsaw. So I gave up, requested all my $ be refunded back to the store credit I have & left.

Now I'm left with a $670 store credit with a company that clearly has a uninvolved owner, no oversite, poorly trained managers who don't keep there staff trained or hold anyone accountable. This place is a product of mismanagement and that starts from the top. Whoever the owner is, you need to do better. You need to invest in your employees, train them more and create systems that will allow your business to...

So, I called a week ago to rent a bouncy house for my daughter's birthday party today. I got the Disney one with the obstacle course, bouncy house, and slide. They called me two days later saying there was A glitch and someone else booked it before me. So, I could have one half off. The original one I wanted was $183 for 24 hours. Anyways, I chose a regular Disney princess bouncy house instead. And half off was $100? Didn't make sense to me that half off the other one was less $100 and had more stuff, but whatever. They called and delivered it the morning and I asked the guy that delivered it if he could set it up for me because I never had one before. Gladly set it up and had it ready.. but later realized after he left he didn't stake it to the ground. About an hour into the party, my 4 year old daughter and her 3 year old cousin were in the bouncy house and the wind picked it up and blew it about 15 feet (only reason it stopped was because it hit my car). As it blew away, it also unplugged it and started deflating on the girls covering the entrance. I panicked and was able to get the girls out after a couple minutes. Luckily, the girls are okay, just shaken up. They guy came back to pick it up and said it wasn't mandatory for Waters to stake it down? Anyways, Water's, I HIGHLY recommend you make this mandatory before you get yourself into a lawsuit. Shadow, your deliverer, was ignorant and said just because it wasn't blowing hard when he set it up, that he didn't have to stake it unless it was blowing 25 mph. I don't even think it was blowing that hard when it blew that heavy bouncy house...

I pride myself on the frequency with which I shop local — as an employee of a small business, I understand just how important it is to keep our dollars in the community.

I tried so hard to be a customer at Waters but found the shopping experience to be “meh” and the staff less than friendly. Prices are “good enough” and the stock is not-great-but-not-abysmal. Nothing really stands out about the store… EXCEPT THE OWNER.

I asked Rusty about his decision to force his employees to open at regular time during the blizzard despite the fact that the City asked — nay, BEGGED — people to stay home during the early hours of the snowpocalypse cleanup. He told me it was “his business, his choice” and that they were essential despite the fact that they were out of stock of pretty much everything the common person could want during a freak snowstorm. When I asked if he was helping his employees get to work or providing additional pay since they are “essential workers” and he said that it wasn’t any of my business.

Weird, my business has our pay scale and inclement weather policies posted publicly on our website but go off, good sir.

Honestly, the only redeeming quality about Waters Manhattan is the manager Geri. She’s a top-tier human being who has only ever treated me with the utmost kindness. I might stop by to say hi to her every now and again but I’ll be taking my locally-owned, people-first dollars elsewhere...