Carolina Ace — Local services in Travelers Rest

One of the check-out ladies with brown hair and freckles is not pleasant at all. She was curt and unsympathetic to my situation below.

I live in SC, but I went to Asheville, NC to pick up a cabinet. Because of the timing, I wound up having to load it by myself. I went to an ACE near Asheville to buy a hand truck and a dolly, but I wound up only needing and using the hand truck.

A week later, I went to an ACE near my house in SC and tried to return the unused dolly (I used the hand truck so am keeping that), to which they said they don't carry that, but the new Carolina ACE in TR does carry it, and they may accept a return even though I didn't buy it from there. So, I drive another 20 minutes to this location, kindly explain the situation, and the initial blonde lady is nice and says "let me check," and motions the brunette over. The brunette looks at the receipt and snaps "Nope, didn't buy it here, we can't take it," and hands the receipt back. I say, "Even if you guys carry it...? I just came from another store that said you might be able to help.." And she says, "all stores are independently owned, it has to go to the original store" (over an hour away), and she walks off. No "sorry for the inconvenience," no "we might be able to do a store credit", nothing.

Surprised by her curtness, I say "....okay." and turn to leave, and the blond lady says, "sorry about that," and I say "it's alright." So good on her, but the brunette was kinda rude and seemed to be annoyed with her job in general - not the kind of person you want interfacing...

I visited the store on 7/18 around 4 PM in search of a Milwaukee Forge 12Ah battery. According to the store’s website, there was 1 unit of the 12Ah and 2 units of the 8Ah in stock. Since the batteries are kept behind the counter, I approached the front to make a purchase.

When I asked the employee to check for the item, he quickly told me they were out of stock—without even making an effort to look. I inquired about the other models listed as in stock, but those were also "unavailable." For reference, this is a $299 power tool battery, not a minor accessory.

I asked whether the website inventory was inaccurate, but the employee had no response and seemed uninterested in helping further. The lack of effort and dismissive attitude were disappointing, especially for a specialty store.

If this weren't the only hardware option in Travelers Rest, I’d have walked out even sooner. Save yourself the frustration and go to Home Depot or Lowe’s instead—at least there, customer service still seems to matter.

Edit: the employee was a middle aged man, not a high...

Purchased a generator with a 1,000 dollar price tag from this location yesterday. Got it home set it up put gas into it and it wouldn’t start up. Sat on the phone with Generaic for over an hour and they told me return the faulty generator. Lugged the 200 pound thing back into the box and brought it to ACE and they proceeded to tell me there was nothing they could do about it and even had signs all over the front door saying “no returns on generators” (none were on the door when purchased) which makes me think they sold everyone a faulty generator and had a influx of people trying to return them. I would just stick to homedepot or lowe’s for a hefty purchase since they actually value you as a customer and are willing to make things right in these type of situations. (I even called corporate ACE and they told me I could return it) Now i’m out 1000 bucks, and going on day 5...