Were we just screwed by Home Depot?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I think we were and my dad thinks we were, but my husband’s not so sure. I am BOILING mad right now.

Our faucet broke several weeks ago. My dad (he had been trying to install a new water filter) broke the collar off (not his fault, it was old). So he went up to Home Depot and bought us a new faucet (unecessary, as we could have gotten it, but it was very nice of him). My husband went up a few days later to pay for installation - they told both my dad (when and my husband that unless something in the sink was not up to code, it was $99 to install.

They were there this morning to install the faucet. My husband called a few minutes ago and told us that the contractors charged him an extra $80 because ‘our garbage disposal was installed too low, and they could not fit under the sink’. Apparently, they disassembled the garbage disposal, installed the faucet, and reassembled the garbage disposal (in the SAME PLACE - it’s not possible for it to be installed any higher - and the garbage disposal was professionally installed when we bought it), then charged my husband the additional $80.

NOTHING was mentioned by the contractors about it not being up to code. Absolutely nothing. And that was the only reason that Home Depot gave us for anything additional being charged for the installation.

So were we just screwed over?

2

I assume they meant that the disposal was so low that they couldn’t fit under the sink to work on the faucet. So they had to remove and reinstall the disposal, thereby adding $80.00 of labor to the project. Which they then charged you for.

Seems kind of expensive, though, for something that would only take a trained plumber 10 or 20 minutes to do. I’d call Home Depot, chew them out, and see if you can get credited back some of the money. It’s at least worth trying.

3

[QUOTE=Finagle]
I assume they meant that the disposal was so low that they couldn’t fit under the sink to work on the faucet. So they had to remove and reinstall the disposal, thereby adding $80.00 of labor to the project. Which they then charged you for.

Seems kind of expensive, though, for something that would only take a trained plumber 10 or 20 minutes to do. I’d call Home Depot, chew them out, and see if you can get credited back some of the money. It’s at least worth trying.
[/QUOTE]

That was my thought. If we had been informed ahead of time that there might be additional charges by the contractors that related to something like this, I wouldn’t be so pissed off right now. But we were told unless it was for something OTHER than code issues, the charge would be $99 - this was NOT an issue dealing with the sink not being up to code. It’s not necessarily the $80 (although I’d rather go spend the $80 on clothes or books), it’s the principle of the matter.

4

Did you get screwed? Yes.

Is there anything you can do about it other than never shop at Home Depot again? No.

The extra labor involved in removing the garbage disposal was probably a set minimum labor charge. The faucet installation was an “all-inclusive” price. When it required labor outside the contracted-for specs, you got hit with the minimum labor charge, even if it only took them 10 minutes to remove and re-install the disposal. Call and bitch, but I’ll bet that’s what they tell you.

5

Was your husband there when they did the install? Did they inform him of the extra charge before doing the work, or did they just do it and give him the higher bill after the fact?

We have had bad experiences with Home Depot installers before. It’s a pain to fix because the installers are often not Home Depot employees, they contract local people to do install. We fought over badly installed carpet for a long time, but Home Depot did come through for us in the end when the installers refused to refund our money. Your best bet is to talk to the manager at Home Depot and not the installers themselves.

6

[QUOTE=silenus]
Did you get screwed? Yes.

Is there anything you can do about it other than never shop at Home Depot again? No.

The extra labor involved in removing the garbage disposal was probably a set minimum labor charge. The faucet installation was an “all-inclusive” price. When it required labor outside the contracted-for specs, you got hit with the minimum labor charge, even if it only took them 10 minutes to remove and re-install the disposal. Call and bitch, but I’ll bet that’s what they tell you.
[/QUOTE]

Actually, I called and spoke with a very nice manager at Home Depot, and we should not have been charged that $80. She’s sending the check back as soon as they receive it (it was made out to Home Depot, which is good - had it been made out to the contractors, I’d be putting a stop payment on it right now).

I have had horrible experiences with Home Depot lately (we’ve not had one thing cut right the past few times we’ve gone), but I am impressed with the manager right now.

Velma - they didn’t tell him anything beforehand. They just said after they’d done it that it was an additional $80. I think he’s just too nice and doesn’t question things enough.

7

Good for you! Glad the manager was reasonable. There’s a first time for everything it seems! :smiley:

8

FWIW-quoting an all inclusive price is nonsense. There are simply too many variables. That’s exactly why I’m loath to quote things sight unseen.

Let’s look at some hypotheticals which illustrate the stuff I run into on a daily basis:
Swap out a kitchen faucet. No big deal, but there’s a disposal in the way. Remove the disposal, and discover that the trap slip nut connection has had a slow leak, is frozen, and the pipe breaks off when I put the wrench to it. I have a replacement trap assembly in the truck, so at least I don’t have to go to the supply house. Complete trap repairs. With the disposal set aside, I’m back to replacing the faucet, except the shutoff valves to the fixture don’t completely stop the flow of water. Now I head into the basement to try to find the water meter and main house shutoffs. The basement is finished so I spend 15 minutes moving boxes of crap, kid’s toys, and exercise equipment to access the little door hidden in the wall covering the meter and main shutoffs. Open taps at the laundry tub to drain the house plumbing, and disassemble the under sink shutoff valves to replace the rubber washers which are old, dried out, and badly scored. Unfortunately, the washer screw is corroded and breaks off in the stem assembly. Also, the valve seat is pitted, and will tear up a new washer. Back to the truck, get out a torch, heat the broken screw and (luckily) get it to back out of the stem. Fit a new washer and screw, get out the seat wrench. Thankfully, the seat breaks free, but of the 8 different seats I stock, this isn’t one of them. An hour later, I have a new seat, the shutoff valves are reassembled, the system repressurized, leak tested, and I can finally finish the simple faucet replacement you asked me to do in the first place. BTW, that simple job has now sucked up half of my day, and I was calling my other scheduled stops while running to the supply house to apologize and reschedule.

I hand you a bill. You look at me as though you’ve caught me raping your Grandma, because I’d originally told you it would only be x to replace the faucet.

9

[QUOTE=danceswithcats]
FWIW-quoting an all inclusive price is nonsense. There are simply too many variables. That’s exactly why I’m loath to quote things sight unseen.

Let’s look at some hypotheticals which illustrate the stuff I run into on a daily basis:
Swap out a kitchen faucet. No big deal, but there’s a disposal in the way. Remove the disposal, and discover that the trap slip nut connection has had a slow leak, is frozen, and the pipe breaks off when I put the wrench to it. I have a replacement trap assembly in the truck, so at least I don’t have to go to the supply house. Complete trap repairs. With the disposal set aside, I’m back to replacing the faucet, except the shutoff valves to the fixture don’t completely stop the flow of water. Now I head into the basement to try to find the water meter and main house shutoffs. The basement is finished so I spend 15 minutes moving boxes of crap, kid’s toys, and exercise equipment to access the little door hidden in the wall covering the meter and main shutoffs. Open taps at the laundry tub to drain the house plumbing, and disassemble the under sink shutoff valves to replace the rubber washers which are old, dried out, and badly scored. Unfortunately, the washer screw is corroded and breaks off in the stem assembly. Also, the valve seat is pitted, and will tear up a new washer. Back to the truck, get out a torch, heat the broken screw and (luckily) get it to back out of the stem. Fit a new washer and screw, get out the seat wrench. Thankfully, the seat breaks free, but of the 8 different seats I stock, this isn’t one of them. An hour later, I have a new seat, the shutoff valves are reassembled, the system repressurized, leak tested, and I can finally finish the simple faucet replacement you asked me to do in the first place. BTW, that simple job has now sucked up half of my day, and I was calling my other scheduled stops while running to the supply house to apologize and reschedule.

I hand you a bill. You look at me as though you’ve caught me raping your Grandma, because I’d originally told you it would only be x to replace the faucet.
[/QUOTE]

Preach it, babe.

10

[QUOTE=danceswithcats]
FWIW-quoting an all inclusive price is nonsense. There are simply too many variables. That’s exactly why I’m loath to quote things sight unseen.

Let’s look at some hypotheticals which illustrate the stuff I run into on a daily basis:
Swap out a kitchen faucet. No big deal, but there’s a disposal in the way. Remove the disposal, and discover that the trap slip nut connection has had a slow leak, is frozen, and the pipe breaks off when I put the wrench to it. I have a replacement trap assembly in the truck, so at least I don’t have to go to the supply house. Complete trap repairs. With the disposal set aside, I’m back to replacing the faucet, except the shutoff valves to the fixture don’t completely stop the flow of water. Now I head into the basement to try to find the water meter and main house shutoffs. The basement is finished so I spend 15 minutes moving boxes of crap, kid’s toys, and exercise equipment to access the little door hidden in the wall covering the meter and main shutoffs. Open taps at the laundry tub to drain the house plumbing, and disassemble the under sink shutoff valves to replace the rubber washers which are old, dried out, and badly scored. Unfortunately, the washer screw is corroded and breaks off in the stem assembly. Also, the valve seat is pitted, and will tear up a new washer. Back to the truck, get out a torch, heat the broken screw and (luckily) get it to back out of the stem. Fit a new washer and screw, get out the seat wrench. Thankfully, the seat breaks free, but of the 8 different seats I stock, this isn’t one of them. An hour later, I have a new seat, the shutoff valves are reassembled, the system repressurized, leak tested, and I can finally finish the simple faucet replacement you asked me to do in the first place. BTW, that simple job has now sucked up half of my day, and I was calling my other scheduled stops while running to the supply house to apologize and reschedule.

I hand you a bill. You look at me as though you’ve caught me raping your Grandma, because I’d originally told you it would only be x to replace the faucet.
[/QUOTE]

If you quote me one price, and then 4 hours later hand me a bill for an increased price, I’m going to want to know why in hell you didn’t tell me it was going to cost more as soon as you discovered it would. You DO NOT wait until the end, after you’ve done the work, and then jack the price up and claim you had to do more work than you thought. That reeks of bait-and-switch. If it’s going to cost more and you want to get paid for more, than you damn well better get my approval before you actually do the work.

11

[QUOTE=Turek]
If you quote me one price, and then 4 hours later hand me a bill for an increased price, I’m going to want to know why in hell you didn’t tell me it was going to cost more as soon as you discovered it would. You DO NOT wait until the end, after you’ve done the work, and then jack the price up and claim you had to do more work than you thought. That reeks of bait-and-switch. If it’s going to cost more and you want to get paid for more, than you damn well better get my approval before you actually do the work.
[/QUOTE]

There’s a plumber around here, that not only get’s your approval, but also get’s the money before they start.
For example, from a real expierence a friend had with them…
Okay, so your toilet is backed up, that’ll be $50 (stands and waits for homeowner to write $50 check)

Okay, the plunger didn’t work, we’re going to need to snake it out, that’ll be anohter $50 (waits for another $50 check)

Okay, the 8 foot snake didn’t work, it’s gonna be another $75 for the 200 foot snake (waits for the $75 check)

and so on and so on.

As annoying as it may have been, at least the homeowner couldn’t say they didn’t know how much it was going to cost. OTOH, I’ll bet they’ve been thrown out of a few houses over the years with that method. (“What, another $75, get out of here, I’ll call someon else” whereas if they got the whole bill at once, they would just bitch about it and send in the money).

12

[QUOTE=Turek]
If you quote me one price, and then 4 hours later hand me a bill for an increased price, I’m going to want to know why in hell you didn’t tell me it was going to cost more as soon as you discovered it would. You DO NOT wait until the end, after you’ve done the work, and then jack the price up and claim you had to do more work than you thought. That reeks of bait-and-switch. If it’s going to cost more and you want to get paid for more, than you damn well better get my approval before you actually do the work.
[/QUOTE]

If someone was working for four more hours, why wouldn’t you think you had to pay him? What did you think he was doing when he was running up and down the stairs, and out to the van, and getting new parts, swearing? I’m sure all the response he received from you while this was going on would be, “Oh, ok, just fix it.”

And if you weren’t there, maybe he tried to call? And you didn’t answer your phone? So, now he is stuck. Either fix the job to completion, and hope he gets paid, or leave it in a heap on the floor until you decide to answer your phone and he gets your approval. And then come back. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. Then start all over again. For a simple little job probably across town.

And just to let you know, I do have a extra charge for someone being a pain in the ass homeowner, Turok. Rarely used, but it’s coded in the billing system. Using the phrase “bait and switch” to the above scenario would tempt me.

13

[QUOTE=Turek]
If you quote me one price, and then 4 hours later hand me a bill for an increased price, I’m going to want to know why in hell you didn’t tell me it was going to cost more as soon as you discovered it would. You DO NOT wait until the end, after you’ve done the work, and then jack the price up and claim you had to do more work than you thought. That reeks of bait-and-switch. If it’s going to cost more and you want to get paid for more, than you damn well better get my approval before you actually do the work.
[/QUOTE]

Never heard of the unexpected?

14

[QUOTE=ParentalAdvisory]
Never heard of the unexpected?
[/QUOTE]

Yup. I’ve also heard of price gouging and unnecessary work being done(or not done).

15

Lesson learned: never have Lowes or Home Depot do work for you. Each has a list of substandard contractors whom they rely upon. Lowes/Home Depot simply gets a cut of the action. And no one is treating you as a loyal customer.

If you want quality work to be performed, work directly with an independent contractor you can trust. You’ll probably pay more, but you’ll get better service.

16

[QUOTE=danceswithcats]
FWIW-quoting an all inclusive price is nonsense. There are simply too many variables. That’s exactly why I’m loath to quote things sight unseen.

Let’s look at some hypotheticals which illustrate the stuff I run into on a daily basis:
Swap out a kitchen faucet. No big deal, but there’s a disposal in the way. Remove the disposal, and discover that the trap slip nut connection has had a slow leak, is frozen, and the pipe breaks off when I put the wrench to it. I have a replacement trap assembly in the truck, so at least I don’t have to go to the supply house. Complete trap repairs. With the disposal set aside, I’m back to replacing the faucet, except the shutoff valves to the fixture don’t completely stop the flow of water. Now I head into the basement to try to find the water meter and main house shutoffs. The basement is finished so I spend 15 minutes moving boxes of crap, kid’s toys, and exercise equipment to access the little door hidden in the wall covering the meter and main shutoffs. Open taps at the laundry tub to drain the house plumbing, and disassemble the under sink shutoff valves to replace the rubber washers which are old, dried out, and badly scored. Unfortunately, the washer screw is corroded and breaks off in the stem assembly. Also, the valve seat is pitted, and will tear up a new washer. Back to the truck, get out a torch, heat the broken screw and (luckily) get it to back out of the stem. Fit a new washer and screw, get out the seat wrench. Thankfully, the seat breaks free, but of the 8 different seats I stock, this isn’t one of them. An hour later, I have a new seat, the shutoff valves are reassembled, the system repressurized, leak tested, and I can finally finish the simple faucet replacement you asked me to do in the first place. BTW, that simple job has now sucked up half of my day, and I was calling my other scheduled stops while running to the supply house to apologize and reschedule.

I hand you a bill. You look at me as though you’ve caught me raping your Grandma, because I’d originally told you it would only be x to replace the faucet.
[/QUOTE]

And you know what? Had they said “The base price is $99, but if there are any extras that they need to do, like move stuff around, or disassemble parts of the sink, there may be extra charges”, we would have been FINE with that. As it was, Home Depot specifically told both my dad and my husband that the ONLY extra charge would be if something was NOT up to code. The garbage disposal had absolutely NOTHING to do with anything being up to code.

We were not being unreasonable homeowners, but I was not about to hand over an additional $80 to Home Depot because their contractor said so when Home Depot had quoted us a certain price AND given us a particular reason for any variables. We held up our end of the deal, and I expected Home Depot to hold up theirs. The contractor being paid is between Home Depot and the contractor - it’s not our responsibility to make up the difference if Home Depot didn’t inform us of the charges correctly.

We plan on having our kitchen floor redone soon, and that will be done by a regular contractor (actually, I know someone through work that we’ll use). Using Home Depot wasn’t really our choice, but we still had $100 in gift cards to get rid of, and this was the easiest way to do it.

17

[QUOTE=Crafter_Man]

If you want quality work to be performed, work directly with an independent contractor you can trust. You’ll probably pay more, but you’ll get better service.
[/QUOTE]

And if all you’re doing is replacing a sink, call a handyman. Barring any major plumbing issues, any handyman should be able to do it.

18

[QUOTE=Elza B]
And you know what? Had they said “The base price is $99, but if there are any extras that they need to do, like move stuff around, or disassemble parts of the sink, there may be extra charges”, we would have been FINE with that. As it was, Home Depot specifically told both my dad and my husband that the ONLY extra charge would be if something was NOT up to code. The garbage disposal had absolutely NOTHING to do with anything being up to code.
[/QUOTE]
Right, I was just going to post this. If Home Depot promises price guarantees like this, presumably it gets them extra business from people who are nervous about being taken advantage of. If they don’t want to honor offers like this, they shouldn’t make 'em.

The other situations mentioned in this thread are different. With contractors, I’d prefer they ask me about cost increases, but I understand that’s not always possible. I think common sense should prevail. If the $100 job is going to really run $1,000 after you survey the situation, then, yeah, I will pitch a royal bitch if you don’t check with me first. If the $100 job turns into a $175 job, I may not be thrilled (and if I get a vibe you’re screwing me, I won’t ever use you again), but I’ll grit my teeth and pay.

But if you give me a well-defined guarantee (no cost increases unless something’s not up to code) then I’ll expect you to honor it.

19

Something like this happened to me at Sears, although I did catch it before the fact, which may matter. I wanted to get a gas stove. I had an electric stove. I called them up and asked how much installation would be, considering that it would have to be changed over, and they said it’s a flat rate, $95. Okay, says I, and I go down and order a stove. (Which was amazingly freaking difficult, although not really part of the story.) When the installer calls me to set up a time (and it took more than a freaking week to get the thing actually in my house, also not part of the story but still makes me mad) I confirm the cost with him and he says, are you crazy lady? It’s gonna be a couple hundred. I says, excuse me?

So I call up Sears and work my way up the managerial line until I actually pull “Steve” out of a meeting. I give Steve six kinds of hell and he says “Wow, I’m sorry that happened to you. If we said $95, I’ll make sure we stand by that.” And he did. The installer spent less than 45 minutes at my house and told me that it would have been over 500, all told. He was kind of awed that I got it practically for free (just delivery would have been $75, I think.)

20

[QUOTE=fisha]
And just to let you know, I do have a extra charge for someone being a pain in the ass homeowner, Turok. Rarely used, but it’s coded in the billing system. Using the phrase “bait and switch” to the above scenario would tempt me.
[/QUOTE]

Then it’s a good thing we live in different parts of the country so I never have to worry about reporting you to the BBB for fraudulently overcharging me.