Home Depot’s are understaffed and unfriendly.
Any associate visible to the naked-eye, either doesn’t want to be bothered or has customer relation issues. Last visit, Hispanic worker is seen helping hispanic customer. I ask for assistance and he immediately blows me off saying, " I’ll call someone to help you" I should have asked him what year? No one shows and a few minutes later Mr. Amigo is helping another latin customer. Next time, I’ll wear a Serape and a Sombrero and maybe I’ll find out wear the Duct Tape is!
Oooh, this’ll be a fun one!
So, to clarify, you’re accusing the employee of being racist?
My Queen…
Yes, or maybe my duct tape question was too mind-boggling.
Next time, look for a robot worker to help you.
He was already helping someone and you interupted. He stops and tries to get someone for you and then goes back to helping his original customer. He has assumed someone would actually do so. He then goes to the next customer (who just happens to be Hispanic).
It’s probably a coincidence that the next customer was also Hispanic.
Next time you need help, try the customer service counter. While there, ask for a big case of get-over-yourself.
Mr. Blue… I didn’t interrupt the guy…it was 10 minutes later and Mr. Amigo was by himself stocking a shelf. As I walked down the aisle to ask him for help,
he took-off in the oppo direction and after I said “excuse me, where’s” he immediately became unhelpful. Hey, next time your in the Depot,work your way over to the Lumber isle and sit on a pointed 2x4!
Hmm… What section of a store would DUCT tape be in. I wonder where you’d find DUCT tape. Huh, what a funny name. I wonder if it’s designed to tape DUCTS? Perhaps it might be worth checking out the HVAC section? I bet thats where the DUCTS are… 
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna don my sombrero and curl up with my burro under the sarape and sup on some menudo as I watch a television show about a fat man in a bumblebee who gets poked by a man in a goose costume holding a giant syringe. It’s hilarious!!!
Then why didn’t you say that. In your original post you indicated the guy was helping someone when you asked for help.
:rolleyes:
You still should have gone to the service counter to ask for help and, in this case, reported the unhelpful employee.
Back to Pitting Home Depot…
I ordered an item from their internet sales site three weeks before Christmas for a present to a family member. Went through the ordering process, and was assured that the item would ship in “two to three days.”
The item was finally delivered - on January 12th. Every time I called their Customer Disservice department, I was given incorrect information on the status of the order (including a totally bogus tracking number for the shipment) - I concluded that Customer Disservice was simply making up information in order to get me off the phone.
I never received an apology for their poor service. They never attempted to satisfy a customer.
Insult to injury: the item finally arrived at the destination - with the price of the item prominently displayed on the box.
Home Depot = :mad:
I will forevermore be a Lowe’s customer.
Is there actually any difference between these two companies? They seem to have the same layout, and, at least around here, the same locations (in Lewisville, TX, they’re literally across the street from eachother).
I recently priced some pressure-treated wood for an upcoming project, and they had the exact same prices, down to the cent…
Don’t know, but I’ve never had a sucky experience with Lowe’s.
I guess, given time, Lowe’s will be on my shit list too…
As a professional remodeler, 90% of my “small job” customers like to get their material from the big boxes ie. Depot or Lowes.
This is one reason I hate Lowes. As far as store layout, the Depot wins.
For ex: At the Depot, starting from one end to the other, you generally have drywall, concrete, stucco, plaster,etc then roofing, insulation and so on. Next is sheet products like plywood, OSB, siding, soffit, blah blah.
Moving on down, you have dimensional lumber, then FASTENERS! What?
Fasteners are a good thing, stuff like nails, screws and so on. Good concept to have fasteners one aisle over from building materials. Next is hardware like hinges, doorknobs and stuff that uses fasteners to bond to building materials.
But fucking Lowes? No. They do have some common things like drywall screws, common nails, etc near the building materials but the rest of the fasteners/hardware are clear at the other end of the fucking store by the garden center. WTF?
I could go on and on, and possibly some Lowes are laid out differently, but here they are a pain in the ass.
When you are trying to buy material in the morning and get to the fucking job, Depot wins, aside from the usual understaffed bullshit.
And another thing, when I need nails for my pneumatic tools, they are in the fastener aisle at the Depot, but are in the power tool section at Lowes, which is set up like a fucking sally port at a state pen to even get into.
I usually use my account at the locally run lumber yard, but for the little jobs, I have to go where the customer wants.
Home Depot and Lowes are both equally clueless when it comes to customer service. They’re not being racist, they’re equal opportunity deficient. They’ve killed off the good little Mom and Pop hardware store/lumber yards in many areas, so that’s all you have. I’ve had friends hit me on Nextel to ask where something is in the store, because they can’t find an associate. That’s bad.
I don’t hate Home Depot, but this thread is going to attract people who do, and they’ll appreciate this story.
I ordered some fairly major bathroom furniture at HD a couple of weeks ago. They printed out a purchase order for me to take up to the register and pay for. I decided to apply for a Home Depot credit card so I could use the 10% discount on the first purchase for my bathroom stuff - it was about a $200 savings. But I had forgotten my wallet and my wife for some reason only had an expired driver’s license as a second photo ID, which they wouldn’t accept. So we called it a day without paying for the purchase order.
The next morning, I brought the order back to HD and got the credit card. I went to pay for it, but the girl at the register said I’d have to have the order reprinted, because it was dated the day before and that was no good for some reason. I was getting a little irritated at this point because of all the runaround. I took the order over to the service desk and the girl there (same girl who had just issued me the credit card) asked me if I wanted to apply the 10% discount to the order. I said yes, and she printed up a new order with 10% taken off all the prices, but she didn’t take the “10% off” coupon she’d given me before. The order didn’t state that the 10% had been applied - the prices were just lower.
So I take the discounted order over to the register. Now, I’m an honest guy, right, so I didn’t come out and ask for another 10% off. But I held the coupon in an obvious way so the cashier could see it. Sure enough, she says, “Did you want to use the coupon on this order?” I say, “Yep.”
She started to change the price on the order, but the computer gave her trouble. She says, " I don’t know why it’s not taking it." She called over to the service desk to confirm that someone had really issued me the card that day, so I was getting a little nervous. She tried again but the computer wouldn’t let her enter the discount. At that point, my conscience overcame me and I caved and “noticed” out loud that the order had already been discounted: “Ohh…She must have already applied the discount”
So anyway, I learned that Home Depot’s computer is smart enough to stop people from doubling up on the 10% discount. They must have programmed it to check due to having had trouble with people doing it in the past, because it’s a pretty subtle scam.
Isn’t someone going to come by and tell us how the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith’s Ghost of Free Markets™ has benevolently ensured that we’re getting the best hardware shopping experience we’ll ever have, and we should be grateful for that?
But they’re drug free :dubious:
I’ve been to Home Depot and Lowes countless times…and never had any problems…
Well, no. The free market doesn’t guarantee wonderful shopping experiences, it provides the things we want. It “knows” what we want by virtue of how we spend our money.
People don’t really want a great hardware shopping experience, if they did, they’d keep right on going to their local hardware store and lumberyard. People really want low low prices so they naturally gravitate to the big box stores like HD, Lowes, and WalMart that are cheap because they’re sparsely staffed.
People get exactly what they want, low prices, then bitch like pathetic little pussies about the low level of personal service they get. Next week, when Roboto here needs a box of screws, will we see him at his local hardware store, or will he be right back at HD or Lowes? The reality is, sadly, no matter how many times these places infuriate their customers, we go right back to them because they’re cheaper.
Nice try, but that ain’t how it started. One should look for it in the “ammo cases” section, obviously.
We recently completed a large-scale remodel - kitchen, dining room, family room, and living room. Since Lowe’s is lots closer to us, we did most of our shopping there, and for the most part, we got good, friendly service, whether buying, special ordering, or returning.
But on a couple of occasions, we were close enough in our travels to stop by Home Depot. The first time, we found the faucet we wanted (Lowe’s was sold out at the time) plus we decided to order a large kitchen window and some lumber and supplies for delivery. First off, finding someone to unlock the gate that protected the faucets was a time-consuming adventure. Granted, the first guy we asked was a trainee, but how hard is it to find a key? Someone difficult, I guess.
While I was standing in the faucet aisle waiting for the key guy to arrive, my husband went to have a look at building materials to decide what we needed. He made all his decisions and returned to find me still waiting, although Key Guy arrived shortly thereafter. Next stop was the window department, where we determined that they didn’t have anything on the shelf to suit our needs. I spent the next 30 minutes while Window Guy tried to figure out how to place my order. We’re not talking rocket surgery here, folks - I had the brochure in hand and I knew how to create the custom part number… Still, he got it all entered eventually, gave me a printout to take to checkout, at which point the window would be ordered and I’d get it in 4 weeks or something. Fine.
Since we wanted the lumber and stuff delivered, we needed to go to Customer Service to make arrangements. The wait was long, but then, we don’t want to interrupt those personal conversations, do we? At long last, we got to talk to a clrek/rep/whatever, only to be told that for some reason, we’d have to come back the next day to place an order for delivery. We never did understand the reason. At that point my husband demanded to see the manager, and she eventually moseyed over. We gave her back the faucet and the window order form, and informed her that we’d been about to spend $1000 but due to the shoddy service, we were taking our business elsewhere. And we did.
A week later, Lowe’s had the faucet we wanted back in stock - with a $20 rebate! Plus they had a window in stock that was almost exactly what we wanted for about 1/3 the price of the custom ordered window. And our delivery orders always went off without a hitch - right down to driving their forklift to our garage to deposit the big, heavy load of sheetrock.
Giving HD the benefit of the doubt, we were there a month or so later, and we happened to see just the chandelier we wanted for the dining room. Piece of cake - pick up the box, check out, go home. Well, except the only checkouts open were the self-serve, and only 3 of the 4 were operational. With one attendant. Who was having lots of problems. How hard can it be to scan one box and pay by credit card? Lots harder than you’d think. But we eventually got it done.
Then the stupid box wouldn’t fit in the car. OK, we can’t blame HD for that, but it was the icing on the cake. We had to unpack our chandelier right there in the parking lot… No we didn’t leave the empty box there - we folded it and took it just in case we’d have to return the light, which we didn’t. But we haven’t been back to HD since.