The Home Depot — Attraction in North Port

Hello, here’s some advice from a frequent customer of Home Depot. I understand they are within their rights to do what they did, but I strongly recommend everyone start using Lowe’s instead.

Lowe’s has a far better credit card system, their staff is much more helpful, and their rental service is a million times better than Home Depot’s.

I recently rented a jackhammer from Home Depot, which came with a power cable and a demolition blade. I used it for one day and returned the jackhammer to the store. However, I accidentally left the cable and blade at the job site, which is far from the store, so I couldn’t return them the same day.

I asked the store manager if they could at least pause the rental charges until I could bring the items back the next morning. The response was a firm no — they said it’s Home Depot policy and there was nothing they could do. The problem was mine to deal with.

I then asked if they could just charge me for the cable and blade alone. Again, they said no — they would charge the full rental fee. Technically, that may be in the contract, and they’re probably within their rights. But I’ve rented blades separately from other stores before. I truly believe this should have been a store-level decision, handled with flexibility.

So here’s my advice: If you can, start encouraging your teams and contractors to use Lowe’s. You’ll notice the difference immediately. The customer service is superior, the environment is cleaner and more welcoming, and the entire experience is better.

I used to be very loyal to Home Depot, but after switching to Lowe’s for a few reasons — especially what happened today — I’ve realized that from now on, I’ll avoid Home Depot whenever possible.

To all customers out there: Give Lowe’s Home Improvement a try. You’ll see the difference the moment...

We purchased LVP flooring, which was installed by one of their subcontractors. Great result. Everything went well. Then we bought countertops, which were installed by one of their contractors. What a nightmare. The subcontracted plumber came and disconnected the sink then quickly ran due to having to get back to Brandenton. There was a leak under the sink five minutes later. We called him; he told us to fix it, so we did. The next day, countertop sub brought countertops that looked like someone who was drunk cut them: crooked edges, sink cutout didn't remotely fit. The installers didn't make the countertops level. We couldn't get one of the drawers open after they left. After much deliberation with Home Depot's store manager and Home Depot corporate not to mention a ton of gaslighting about everything being "okay", the countertops were removed. Finally, after 35 days, we finally got countertops that were corrected and properly installed. Nearly the whole countertop experience was a debacle. There's nothing like having no kitchen for five weeks due to no running water and no countertops. The countertop job was supposed to take about 3 days, not five weeks. I could go on and on, but I won't. Just don't hire Home Depot North Port for countertops. Get a lot of estimates, and you'll find good deals out there with reputable local...

We went to the North Port location at right around 7:30am thinking we would beat the rush. We needed to buy a refrigerator. We waited about 30 mins for help after having two different employees paging for assistance in appliances and several staff members walking past us we finally decided to leave. As we were walking out I told the front employee that she could cancel the page for assistance. Her response was, I requested help but I mean the department doesn’t have anyone scheduled until 8:30am. This upset me because how would I know when they had staff scheduled for each department not to mention you would think a member of management would have heard the page. Our sale wasn’t that important enough to respond. Needless to say we went one mile down the road to Lowes and was in and out within 30 mins with a refrigerator purchased. When we told the Lowes representative the response we were given about Home Depot scheduling they responded by saying that their appliance department isn’t staffed right now either but when the page came out any available staff member was to respond. All this told me was our sale was more valuable to Lowes then the North...