The Home Depot — Local services in Town of Henrietta

We contracted with Home Depot (Henrietta NY) to have a bathroom tile floor and carpeting installed. Home Depot contracted with American Carpet South to do the work. The tiling was done EXTREMELY rudimentary; they took NO precautions to contain the related construction dust/grime (from the tile floor rip-out) from spreading to all areas of our home (they didn't close vents/put up tarps, and they even REMOVED our bathroom door w/o covering the opening). Not only did we have to deal with a poorly laid tile floor, poor placement of the tiles, hiding gaps in tiles by hammering molding against the gaps, and our toilet/ bathroom closet door being uneven, we also had to deal with layers of dirt/grime throughout our home/ furnace. Home Depot & American Carpet South did not want to resolve our complaints in entirety - we asked for a new tile floor to be installed, and reimbursement for cleaning our home/furnace. Home Depot & American Carpet South tried to place the blame with us/accused us of lying about the extent of poor quality of work and the dirt/grime in our home. After much pressing on our part, Home Depot sent American Carpet South back with a new crew to replace the tile floor. The second crew took precautions this time to contain the construction dust/grime. BUT even though they promised to resolve the dirt/grime in our home and furnace from the first tile laying, they didn’t, with Home Depot going as far as to say "we don't clean houses". Despite appeals to the both local and corporate, neither would help - they had many excuses why they would not resolve our complaint to our 100% satisfaction. We sent a formal complaint (with pictures) to the Better Business Bureau & the Attorney General's Office. But, we only heard back from Home Depot Corporate when we escalated our complaint to Consumer Frauds. Then, Home Depot Corporate couldn't work fast enough to resolve our issue by extending a check to cover the cost of Furnace/ Duct cleaning (by this time, one year had passed; by then we footed to bill for the house cleaning ourselves). Both companies state they put the customer needs first, but both drop the ball when a serious problem arises. Unless we hadn't vigorously/relentlessly pursued what was rightfully/legally ours to have resolved, both Home Depot & American Carpet South would have continued to remain silent and let things go. Home Depot & American Carpet South are doing this to hundreds of customers - just like us - people who, in good faith, contract for services, but then have an issue, and have to literally beg for honest/fair customer support/resolution. Maybe both companies feel they can get away with behavior like that since they are so large, and the customer, in general is so small. And for the fact that many customers don't know enough to pursue a complaint through the channels that we did. There should be more checks and balances and accountability on the part of Home Depot & American Carpet South, as well as consequences for both companies if they continue to fail to do the very right thing. Perhaps even going so far as to end the relationship between Home Depot &America Carpet South. Yes, we did finally get reimbursement, but at such a cost. It's inexcusable that the process of resolution should be so difficult for the customer. Shame on both Home Depot & American Carpet South. We will NEVER use Home Depot again for such a project, and that's a shame since we grew up with them as a household name. We ended up going with another vendor for our carpeting. Home Depot Credit Card was charged for everything at the same time. Be careful when requesting a refund (which we did for the carpeting that was pre-posted to our related charge card) - we had to go through the refund amount line-by-line from the related Home Depot Invoice, and found that they were going to under-refund us. That also was resolved once we brought that up to Home Depot Local and Corporate. This was a...

So I went to this store on Saturday this past week. I needed to order parts from their windows and doors department. Very nice man took my information and said there would be no way to contact the vendor for parts that evening because they were already closed, but that when he returned to work on Monday somebody would call the parts department of the vendor and get right back with me. It’s now almost Thursday, and I received no call from them.

So I called just now to the store and through the process of selecting a department on their automated phone system, I asked for the windows and doors dept. It rang, rang, rang, and rang some more before someone picked up the call without so much as a hello and immediately put me on hold to listen to HD advertisements of all they offer and of how good they are. Or I dare say supposed to be, but apparently aren’t.

I waited over six minutes on hold hearing ads over and over again. So I hung up and called back. This time I asked for the front desk and was greeted by an associate who didn’t seem to care very much about my situation. So I proceeded to tell him of my experience of which he dismissed by just trying to justify it saying “we do have customers in the store right now and they may be busy helping someone else”. I replied that I do understand that however it would’ve been nice if somebody answered the phone and explained that to me before putting me on hold for six minutes. I also shared that customers whom seek assistance by phone and online are just as valuable as the ones in store they see face to face. My experience was that I called listened to 1000 rings, no greeting then slapped on hold and waited over six minutes before I hung up and called to speak to you whom seems to be one to lack empathy and caring. He went on to tell me the best he could do is page Mark and if he’s available he’ll answer. Really? Well thanks Home Depot. I spent literally thousands at your store these past few years. Thanks for your LACK of caring so much for those that keep you in business and loyal accordingly.

I’ll wait to see if I hear from Mark Tomorrow. Not so confident. Although despite this issue I have to say that Mark on Saturday was very nice and seemed to want to help me.

It seems today that retailers are losing the personal service standards and its either lack of training or lack of accountability to deliver excellence to every customer that’s creating these bad experiences in stores.

Hire people how are passionate about helping people, not people that work only for discounts and paychecks. Mutuality is clearly absent at HD Henrietta. So...

Always given a hassle at customer service desk. A sign with an arrow that points to a computer touch screen says, "Pickup Online Orders"...so I use the touch screen, the African American woman yells at me that I "shouldn't be touching that" and that I'm going to get someone into trouble using it because they were still logged on. She then proceeds to tell me how the arrow is pointing at her...which it clearly is not. I apologize and try to lighten up the mood, she glares at me, and seemingly disgusted that she has to go get my order tells me she has to go get it in a very nasty tone of voice. Never have issues at Lowe's, but Home Depot had the specific item I needed. If your only job is Customer Service, and you can't be friendly and helpful, why are you in that position?

Additionally, our Home Depot credit card kept getting denied, and Customer Service didn't help us to contact the right dept when we were told to call to fix the problem in order to complete our purchase. They left us standing there, and we had to talk them into talking to the credit card rep to try and figure out what was going on. The rep needed to know what the error was, and the CS person thought we should explain it--we had no idea what was going on. Again, it was the same CS person as the previously described incident.

On the flip side, we have purchased numerous things and the cashiers have been super helpful with measuring lumber and trim--very nice, and a pleasure to interact with. Hesitate buying anything at this point as every interaction with Customer Service has been unpleasant.

One other problem was when we purchased laminate flooring. We needed to buy the threshold trim. We were told they didn't have it and we would have to order it online to get it. We asked if another store had it, and we were told they didn't. We went to the Ridge Rd store and they had it all nicely laid out, it was very organized and they had exactly what we needed. The laminate trim products are not organized well, and they don't fit well where they are making it very difficult to get the piece out you want when and if...