Home Depot Inc

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This is a mixed review: Otherwise good service spoiled by a couple of bad apples. In short I needed to buy about $7,500 worth of materials and flooring for a remodel project. All of the positive things I have to say about the service at this Home Depot (and in my experience other HD and Lowes stores) assumes that you shop during regular business hours. If you need help finding something after 5:00, forget about it. You might as well shop in the middle of the desert! haha My specific review of this home depot has to start with how impressed I have been with some of the employees in the store. Glen in Flooring, Chris in Pro-Services, and some guy in the door department whose name I forget were all great. (My apologies if I have the names wrong of the other guys, as I'm only 90% I'm remembering them correctly.) The problem I have with this HD is this: I needed 950 sq feet of hardwood or laminate flooring and 450 sq feet of carpet for a house I am remodeling. After comparison shopping, my carpet choice came down to a Flooring America product or one from Home Depot. The bid from Flooring America (Centeron) was for $960 for everything (carpet, pad, install, and tax). HD's was going to be about $20 more, but I went with HD nonetheless, moreso out of convenience than anything else since I was buying the rest of my supplies from there. Now bear with me while a change gears for a moment: As for the laminate, HD had a special on intallation of laminate flooring for $499 for the whole house, up to 1000 sq. ft. on any laminate over $1.50/sq ft. purchase with a qualifying under-laminate. Not surprisingly, they have a bunch of laminate around a dollar a square foot, and a bunch about $3/sq, but not hardly anything around $1.50. They did, however, have a nice enough laminate for $1.39/sq. ft. I asked if I could get installation special on that laminate since I was spending about $5k with them on the project and was told no. I then asked if they could up-charge it .11 sq. ft. so that it would qualify and was told, and quot;yesand quot;. So I scheduled a measurement. Getting the meaurement scheduled, or rather getting the measure done in a timely manner is a whole other story - the delay in which cost me a few hundred dollars because another promo for 10% off the entire purchase (of over $5k) expired while waiting on the measurement to be done a week and a half later because the measure HAD to be done before I could make the purchase during the promo period (which expired the DAY before the measurement was done). ARG!!!!!!!!! (BTW, whining about this to customer service was worthless.) So back to the real story... When the measurements finally arrived at the store, the guy helping me in flooring saw in the notes that I was going to pay $1.50/sq ft for the $1.39 laminate I chose. He laughed and said he was not going to mark up the flooring 11 cents a square foot but that he'd give me the special installation price anyway. I thanked him for the gesture. So at this point, all is good save a couple of frustations: (1) the approximate $500 discount I lost due to a promo expiring while I waited a week and a half for someone from HD to measure the flooring; and (2) the fact that according to HD's own measurement, I had 940 sq feet to be floored in laminate. Their special installation price was for and quot;up to 1000 feetand quot;. Now I understand that when you have 940 square feet of floor space, that you will undoubtedly need to buy more product than that to account for cuts and partial pieces and such, generally to the tune of approximately 10%. I get that. What I do not get, is that while they sell you 10% more product (unused boxes of which can be returned), they also charge you installation on the and quot;extraand quot; product. So since this estimated extra 10% of product pushed the total square footage OF PRODUCT over 1000 sq feet, I got charged an extra hundred buck or so for the estimated square footage of PRODUCT purchased, regardless of the actual square footage of the floor space to be covered! Having to buy extra product, I understand; having to pay for installation on it above the actual square footage to be covered, I do not. Nonetheless, I was told by some guy name Phil that is normal. One other contractor I know says it's not; and yet another says it is. In the end, though, you should know that Home Depot is going to charge you installation on 10% more flooring than you actually have in your house! (Quick side note: When you return the unused flooring that you were told to buy in excess of your actual floor space, they do NOT refund the installation you paid for on that excess, unused flooring unless you are prepared to make a stand and waste a lot of time dealing with the matter. (I sound like I argue and cause a scene, don't I? I really don't as I don't want to embarrass myself or those around me.) So back to the biggest issue... After I paid for the Carpet (yes, we've switched gears back to the carpet now), I examine my receipt that evening to realize that I was charged all sorts of extras that I had not been explained to me. About $300 worth of extras. I went to HD the next day and asked about the and quot;extraand quot; charges. I was directed to a guy named Phil. I did not like nor appreciate Phil's customer service attitude. He expained that since I wasn't charged the extra 11 cents on the flooring that I should just consider it a wash and not worry about it. (In case you're wondering, that still left about 2 - 3 hundred dollars and quot;I shouldn't worry aboutand quot;. This conversation went downhill very fast. In short order, I told Phil to cancel my carpet order (so I could take that business to Flooring America where they later did exactly what they said they would at the exact price they quoted), and to do and quot;whatever he had to doand quot; about the 11 cents that the guy in flooring said they would NOT charge me for, and that if his pleasantries went any further, that I'd return my entire $5,000 purchase from the day before. (Can you tell I didn't like this guy's attitude? What's funny is that everytime his name is mention around the store by me, the reaction I get from co-workers is unequivocal. Enough said, huh?) Much to my surpise, the guy ACTUALLY deducted the additional .11/sq. foot from my refund on the carpet that I cancelled after I discovered the hidden charges on. Really?!! I understand that I was agreeable to paying the 11 cents intially, but it just rubs me wrong that HD said they would not charge me for that until I returned a product and they then said something to the effect of, and quot;well in that case....!and quot; I called the next day to share my experience with a store manager. I learned they don't have a store manager right now and that the store manager's duties are being shared by the three assistant managers. So I left a message that was returned, but that i missed, so I returned that message to learn none of the acting managers were available at that time, so I left another message that was never returned. End of story. The bottom line is (1) Don't buy carpet there without getting a written estimate of all charges first so you can compare apples to apples, and (2) WHATEVER you do, don't have deal with Phil. A final side note is that while the pro-services guys are great (at least Chris, whom i dealt with was), it's not worth your time and energy to go that route. The saving was MINIMAL and in now way worth the added time for both purchases and [especially] returns.

The hot water heater hasn't worked right since I bought it. The Electrician hired by Home Depot comes out gets it running and leaves. Apparently their is a breaker in the hot water heater that continues to blow and I never know when I am going to have cold water. I would never use Home Depot again. Their phone system does not work right to their store. No matter what button you push it always ends up with the guy in pro dept. The last time I talked to him he told me to get an electrician. We had a perfectly working hot water heater in this house for 10 years. The house is only 12 years old. We decided to replace it because we figured it would not last much longer. Since using Home Depot it has been nothing but trouble Do not use home depot for hot water heaters. This is an update: Shortly after writing this the store manager came to my house with installers and put in a new heater. He was a nice guy and I feel he handled this well. The hot water heater works great. I am impressed with their corp. response and this manager making sure it was done right. I think I would use them again since they went to such links to make right. I suppose this is one of the advantages of using a major corp. like Home Depot. Things get messed up sometime but they eventually fix it.

Great.

Everything went well without any problem. We found the color they wanted, we went ahead and ordered it, and got it put down. They had already shopped around and checked out some prices, and they were all way, way higher than what we found at Home Depot.