The Home Depot — Attraction in Champaign

The HD employee I dealt with said I should write a review. So here it is.

Called in to reserve a rental tool, two days in advance and, while on the phone asked that he confirm the tool was actually there. It was, and I made the reservation. Went in two days later to pick up on the reservation date, and a different employee said my tool wasn't there and "they never had it" to begin with. I said I called ahead and verified, and plus here it is on the store website .. and showed him the picture on my phone with the Champaign store set as my location. The employee said "I've been here 5 years and we don't have it." Then he bad-mouthed the employee he assumed I made the reservation with saying that guy is "lazy and should be fired". He suggested that "I could go over and look for the tool myself" which I did, and I found it easily. However, it had a note on it saying it needed repaired for "working only intermittently". The 5 year veteran employee finally came out on the floor and I asked if he could put gas in it and test it. Since I drove in from 40 min out of town and if it worked just "intermittently" I would try it for my small project. He refused to even test it saying he didn't want to upset me with a failing tool. He went back to sit at his computer to find my reservation and try to prove that I had been emailed a reservation confirmation and a notification of cancelation. I pulled out my phone and saw that I had no emails from HD and told him that. I said "since I'm already here what difference does it make anyway ..let's just focus on if this tool is truly not working?" He refused again and continued to talk poorly about his co-workers and saying the computer system should have worked. The disappointing part is this was the 5 year self-proclaimed rental dept expert .. better than his co-workers .. but he didn't even know they had the tool to begin with, and didnt want to do any work that pulled him from his chair. There was no line of customers behind me .. just me. He had time to test the product. He did try very hard though at arguing .. displacing blame .. and not getting out of his chair. Typical Big Box experience .. no wonder these companies are working so hard to find AI replacements. It can't be any worse than the unhappy, unmotivated, uncaring individuals they continue to churn out. I always try to shop locally owned when I can .. only possible way to maybe find somebody a little motivated to actually help. Sad thing is.... this 5 year HD veteran complains about the work ethic of our youth when it's him setting the worst...

Update: After the horrible purchase experience. I've had nothing but problems with the mower. Drive belt constantly falls off. Every once in a while it makes a very concerning weird noise when the pto is engaged. Hopefully they don't give me grief or problems when I go to return it and get my money back.

I've always been a fan of home depot. I recently went in to buy a zero turn mower. I approached an employee and told him I was interested in purchasing a zero turn mower. He had no idea what a zero turn mower was. After I explained it to him, he sent me to the rental department. The guy there was really nice and professional. He told me to go to the front desk. I went there and there was a girl working. I went to ask her for help with the mower, but before I could even ask anything. She says, "he'll be right back." An walked off. She came back an I told her what I wanted. She then paged someone from gardening. I sat waiting for about 15 minutes. More employee walk up to the counter. They asked if I'd been helped. I told them I was interested in a zero turn an someone had been paged 15 minutes ago. Then they continued to what they were doing. After another 10 minutes of waiting. I decided to go to the garden center myself to get help. The lady there was really nice. She told me to just follow her and she'd walk me to the manager. As we were walking back. We ran into another employee. Can't remember his name, but je had dreds and he took me the rest of the way to the manager. We get back to the manager office and he let the manager Brandon know I was interested in a mower and had been waiting for almost half an hour. Brandon walks us outside. Unchained the mower and told me to take a pic of the serial number then walked off. You would think knowing I've been waiting for half an hour an dealing with horrible customer service. The manager would stick around to make sure the rest of the process went smoothly. Nope, he went right back to his office. After paying $3500.00 in full. I asked if the keys were in the mower. The employee said he didn't know. So I took it apun myself to walk out to see. An no, the manager didn't even think to make sure the keys were in it or let the employees know...

Dishwasher acquisition from Home Depot in Champaign has been a total nightmare (a nightmare that has not ended, nearly a month after making my order online). The delivery people arrived last week-- they were extremely rude and had a horrible attitude the entire time they were in my home. Then, they removed my old dishwasher before realizing that the dishwasher they were supposed to deliver was damaged and couldn't be installed. After damaging my floor and making a huge mess with water everywhere, they left without providing an estimate of when another dishwasher would arrive. Most importantly, they left my sink inoperable because they removed the water supply line to the dishwasher without capping it. . . .and apparently it is the same water supply line as my sink. When I turned on my faucet, water sprayed everywhere! It took me two days, lots of youtubing, and and some amateur plumbing just to use my sink again. 0/10 would not recommend the delivery service. I wish I had just rented a truck and handled delivery myself. I am furious. After almost a week since the first delivery disaster, there is still absolutely no information about when a new dishwasher might arrive, despite several attempts to contact customer service (currently on hold and losing hope of ever communicating with a human being). Actually, I wish I had never bought this dang dishwasher and I will ask for a refund if I ever get through to customer service.

**Update: The dishwasher finally arrived! It took more than a month to finally get it, but this time a different delivery team was very careful, helpful, and polite. They offered to install the dishwasher for free to partially atone for the chaos that ensued last time. I'm still not too happy about how long it took to finally achieve dishwasher, but the new team did a...