The Home Depot — Local services in Vinings

My recent ridiculously horrible experience with Home Depot got me ENTIRELY SPEECHLESS. After three months of mental and physical torture dealing with the unprofessional and arrogant Home Depot team who screwed up my kitchen wood flooring replacement which caused SIGNIFICANT delay of my house selling and missing the best house market, now they ignored my loss and suffering, silently closed my customer issue case and walked away WITHOUT any resolution. It is less than 200sqft flooring work and I believe any team on Yelp can get it done in 2 weeks end to end; but can you believe it took them 3 months and each single step refreshed your lower limit of understanding how unreliable and awful a team can be? Flooring department: completely unprofessional and incapable. Their alleged-professional flooring measurement team quoted me materials for a nail down wood installation after their in-person inspection, when I tried to double check with them if the subfloor is concrete, the flooring department told me to NOT DOUBT THEIR PROFESSIONALNESS.Then the entire nightmare started from their profesionalness. Odering: Even with the above quoted material, the placed order stuck in some nearby city forever. Waited for weeks with no updates, contacted store/customer service/etc., rescheduled shipping with weeks of delay, then got stuck again, called again, had to write escalation email in the end to draw attention to just place the order. Shipping & delevery: The first delibery of the flooring boxes came mostly damaged. But given the weeks already delayed just to get these delivered and I tried to get the installation done ASAP to list my house to the marketed, I lived with it. They sent over a thin driver to carry the 10 boxes of flooring, even my agent couldn't believe that and she helped the poor guy moving all boxes inside. Installation: I had no issues with the installation guys, they went over for installation, rippped some flooring strips, stopped and called me, saying it's CONCRETE subfloor and they could not proceed with the wrong materials meant for wood subflooring. Then I had to start another round of LONG, INEFFICIENT coordinations with the Home Depot customer service and the Cumberland flooring department, trying to get them pick up the wrong material and restart from the ordering step. Customer escalation team: redundant and unreliable organization that always provided outdated follow ups and only adding confusion into this entire chaos. For an example, during coordinating the wrong material pickups, since they insisted not picking up the flooring inside the house, I had to ask a friend to move all 10 boxes of flooring outside my door, then triple confirmed with the escalation team on the second day picking up, because it's a limited common area with neighbors and I clearly expressed my concerns of getting complaints from neighbors if they were not picked up as discussed; guess what, the escalation lady confidently guaranteed the timeslot but the flooring boxes were left there the entire day with NO ONE coming over. Then the second day I got neighbor complaints, and had to escalate again to get them removed. For some other examples, the team was following up on picking up not happening as expected when it was already done, they were following up on delivery schedule when the flooring was already installed. What's the point of having such an unreliable and inefficient organization, to add customer frustration?

I have been a Home Depot customer for over 8 years and I can strongly feel their deterioration as a big company, from every aspect of the customer experiences. Their ordering and shipping tracking system, their store department teams, their customer service team, being a customer, you can clearly tell the chaos in this huge system, how out of sync the communications happen between teams, how poorly trained staff operate at their position. As a customer, you suffer from their low quality services with much frustration, dealing with the teams who don't care at all. Yet, the issue is...

First off I want to write I appreciate Home Depot, your products and services but I think you may have lost your way. If I proposed this an example of poor service I think someone in management would say this could never happen, well it did. 1st item; my wife and I chose to go to a store so we could talk to a salesperson and buy a new a new dishwasher. Talked with salesperson, found dishwasher and checked to make sure it was in stock. Attempted to buy and set up delivery. Store computer would not allow this. (Cumberland store, we live 3 miles from store), 2nd item; we had to go home and but the item online (frustrating) and pick a delivery date. 3rd item; Day before delivery we were called to be told our item would not be delivery the next day and that someone would call to re-schedule. 4th item; no one called back. I had to call home depot to get a status. Guy on phone said he could not understand what was going on with our order, appeared to be in some kind of limbo. Solutions cancel order and re-re-order. He canceled order re-re-ordered item 5th item; we were told next attempted delivery would be on Saturday but we would get a phone call to confirm the day before. No phone call. 6th item; I checked online and our delivery date was moved to Monday, no call, no email, just moved. 7th item; was called on Monday morning and told our item would be there today but not until 10a. Text around 10a to let me know we would see our item between 11a & 2p. Missed again on both accounts. 8th item; no additional contact until crew shows up at 2:16p. Guy wonders why I am a little upset. Spoke with supervisor felt better start install. 9th item; crew asks me if it is a plug-in or wiring harness, I said wiring harness (customer shouldn't know that but I do). After wiring box he asks me to look at it and it is wired incorrectly. I tell him how to fix he fixes it, I look at it again. Wires looped wrong way this time. 10th item, behind washer is dust, dirt, etc and they ask me if I would like them to use their hand vac to clean it up a little bit, yes thanks. Hand-vac does not work! I clean floor by hand with paper towels and cleaner. 11th item; they install but do not know how to use the mounting clips, I show them. 12th item; installed but installed crooked and damaged cabinet face with small gouge in wood. 13th item; I complete survey (not glowing) and get a call during work ours wanting to discuss, great I call back and after 30 minutes of trying to get help I eventually get disconnected. Exact Extension option would have fixed that. 14th item; after two additional phone calls both ending with long hold and then automatically disconnected I am exhausted trying to work with you on your constant errors, lack of communication, and poor (not strong enough word) customer service. If anyone wants to reach out to me I am more than happy to discuss and possibly work with someone on process...

This is a very nice store that I have shopped at for many years. Whenever I have bought smaller items that I have carried out with me all has been great, no problems. Returns are never an issue at this store or any other Home Depot. I really appreciate that.

My issues I have had recently have been when I purchased 3 appliances from them. The first purchase in 2017, a dishwasher, was delivered and installed when promised, no issues. The second purchase was a microwave and gas range purchased online which came through this store. When Spirit Delivery delivered both appliances the range was installed properly but the counter next to the range got chipped which was blatantly denied by the installer. I had to refuse the microwave as it did not fit properly in the space I had. They took it with them. I was told the microwave would be credited back to my credit card.

I purchased a second microwave on 11-16-18 which was supposed to be delivered on 11-21-18. I took a vacation day so I could be home when it was delivered. I got a call from Spirit Delivery that the microwave was not put on the truck so it would not be delivered. I rescheduled the delivery for Saturday, 12-01-18 and again waited for several hours and it was not delivered and I never got a call or anything. I called Spirit Delivery several times and never got a return call or anything. I finally got help when I called Home Depot and the delivery was rescheduled and the new microwave was installed. It is a GE microwave and it looked like one of the installers was from GE, his shirt had a GE logo on it. This install was done properly and it was done on a Saturday, they showed up when they said they would and it is done.

Next, when I was going through credit card statements to finalize my taxes, I saw that the microwave I refused was not credited back to my credit card. So I called this same store and was on hold for a very long time before I talked to a person who looked up my purchases but then told me to call back on Monday when the correct person is working which I will do.

The reason for this long, detailed review is to help other consumers who purchase appliances from Home Depot that need to be delivered. You will have to deal with Spirit Delivery, just want to make you aware of how much time and energy got wasted on two very simple purchases. And now phone calls as well.

I have always enjoyed shopping at Home Depot but I probably will steer clear of using their external vendors whenever possible because their external vendor's customer service and business practices do not line up with what I have come to know from shopping at Home Depot.

If Home Depot ever changes their appliance delivery vendor I will be more than happy to revise...