Monday, March 17, 2008

Home Depot

I have used Home Depot for years. Like many of you, I go there for supplies, tools, parts, and things for the house. I have spent thousand of dollars there. I have bought two ride on mowers over the years and countless clippers, weed eaters and yard tools. Recently I got involved with THE HOME DEPOT HOME SERVICES. I wanted to replace the windows in my house, including the sliding glass door. I wanted double pane hurricane resistant windows - about a $7k job. The salesman was wonderful, personable, and promised me that the job would be a quality job - just the kind of service that I was used to from Home Depot. I signed a contract and we scheduled the installation for the last week in February. That was the end of my dream; the beginning of my nightmare. An argument began between me and the project manager. He told me that I would need hurricane shutters for all of the windows. I told him that the salesman told me that the hurricane plywood that I have used with "Plylox" clips through the last two hurricanes would suffice. He told me that the clips & ply were no longer approved by my building department. I disagreed and called my county building department. They told me that the plywood & clips WERE APPROVED. I informed the project manager of this and he told me that the building codes have changed and that my building inspector was wrong. From there we were at a stalemate. Home Depot said that they could sell me more expensive windows and that then the shutters would not be an issue. Playing the old "bait & switch" game. I am so disapointed in a company that I thought was reputable. Now I am stuck in a situation because I don't want to lose my deposit. They now tell me that they have ordered the windows and are ready to install them. They cannot be paid until after the building inspector approves the job. So we will see what happens. It looks like it is going to be a fight to the finish. I hope the windows that I have waited so long to get turn out perfect - or they will be doing them over & over until they are right. However the job turns out, I am through dealing with Home Depot - you will never see me in the orange store again.

2 comments:

Motherkitty said...

I feel your pain!!! We, too, have dealt with Home Depot for a long time. I really, really like Lowe's better, but we got suckered into getting a HD credit card and we have used it for any number of things. As we were driving home this evening from a day out shopping and running errands, we got into a discussion over a chipper/shredder we had purchased from HD. We spent about $600 for this sucker and husband only tried to use it once. He soon discovered that our little red gem will mulch up leaves and small branches but it WILL NOT shred brush. For those who are not familiar with brush, that's the small branches on larger branches and that's what we most have stacked up in our yard since our recent ice storm where we lost so many big branches and small branches. Our "helpful" HD employee sold us a bill of goods when he insisted that this $600 useless piece of equipment would do the trick. Since we can run over our leaves with our ride-on mower and have no use to mulch them, what are we to do with this brand-new piece of junk.

Last year we purchased an outbuilding from them. I had to personally call the company that was building it for us and nag them repeatedly until they got it finished to our specs and had it delivered.

I agree with you about their tactics. I guess it's back to Lowe's for us. Hope you get your situation straightened out to your satisfaction. Keep us posted.

Kerri said...

What a disappointment! I'm sorry to hear that the company has destroyed your confidence in them. We've never made any big purchases from them, so don't have any negative experiences to relate.
I'm assuming you stuck with the original windows ordered, rather than going to the more expensive ones. Is that right?
I'll be interested to hear how it turns out and am hoping for the best!