The Home Depot — Local services in Westminster

I am partial to Home Depot as I worked at the Ellicott City store when it was new, years ago and loved the corporate culture and entrepreneurial spirit encouraged among employees. Today was not a good experience at all. We needed two items from plumbing and the employee in that dept asked if we needed help. My husband told him he was looking for a 1 1/2" to 1 1/4" PVC compression fitting. Immediately the employee said compression fittings are brass and over there, pointing. Hubby told him he doubts there are 1 1/2" brass compression fittings and reiterated that he needs PVC. The man insisted the store doesn't carry such a thing. Hubby continued to look and the employee came back and said, "Oh, you mean a kitchen sink reducer." Well, still a compression fitting. Hubby found it. We needed a few other items from other departments and I had been gathering them then I went to plumbing for a back splash to match the Glacier Bay vanity in stock. I didn't see any accessories for the vanities anywhere in plumbing and finally happened upon the employee who had been so willing to send my husband to another store with his adamant insistence that the store didn't have what he needed. The man was deep in conversation with a customer so I waited. They stopped and looked at me so I asked the employee where back splashes are for the vanities in stock. He told me they were in flooring on aisle 46. We had begun our journey in flooring to get the tool to install allure click lock luxury vinyl flooring. I questioned a plumbing accessory being in flooring and he was insistent. So approached the flooring dept with skepticism. At the desk a very helpful man took me over to the vanities, which I knew well so I showed him the one I was installing that doesn't come with a back splash and I also needed a left side splash. Ultimately he said I'd have to go online and order it. I had figured that much by then but he was genuinely trying to help me whereas the man in plumbing should be in another line of work. Ultimately the store arrangement is vastly different and the products we needed were not in common sense locations at all, except the stainless steel faucet hole cover my customer's kitchen sink, as they were actually hanging under kitchen sinks on display. However to illustrate my point about the store layout making no sense the kitchen sinks were not near the plumbing department. I had to wander a good bit before I found them on the back wall behind or beyond the cabinet department. The couple that with only self check registers that don't have a scanner wand to scan the very items people buy at HD THAT CAN'T BE WAVED OVER A SCAN TABLE, and it adds up to us likely going to Lowe's first from now on. I would rather stay loyal to HD and do believe the Allure is a superior flooring product to what Lowe's offers, plus we love out Ryobi cordless tools. But years of HD having people who walk around with clipboards trying to sell services we don't need, often interrupting our conversation as we walk quickly to buy what we need to finish a job as time is money, and it's a store experience that has been declining for years. It's always a bit frustrating to know more about the products in a department than the employee and we do all types of home repair so we usually only need to know where to find it and do use the correct terminology. But I bet most HD customers don't know the correct terminology and the employees should be more than willing to help them find a solution even if they aren't exactly sure what the customer meant in asking for "the thingy that makes this pipe fit this drain" which I bet is a common type of problem. Pleeease HD, get it together!!! And get rid of employees who aren't going to...

I had such a wonderful experience at the Westminster, MD Home Depot thanks to Rich in the PVC aisle! He was incredibly friendly and offered assistance as soon as he saw me. I shared my DIY project idea—a Christmas tree fort/teepee for my kids—and he went above and beyond to make sure I had everything I needed to bring it to life.

Rich helped me choose the right materials, including electrical tape for temporarily holding the base together and a fantastic set of PVC cutters. He even offered to cut the PVC pipe down to fit in my car and showed me how to use the cutter effectively, marking the pipes for consistent cuts. His advice saved me so much time, and what I thought would be a late-night project turned out to be a breeze thanks to his tips.

The PVC base ended up being the quickest part of making the tree, and my kids LOVE it! Rich was genuinely excited about the project and shared so many helpful tricks along the way. I truly hope to see Rich again on my next DIY adventure—his enthusiasm and expertise made all the difference. Thank you, Rich, for such a great experience!

(Attaching pics of the PVC base and...

I ordered appliances in November. They weren’t to be delivered until February and I completely understood, being as it was a Black Friday special. But now I am on my third delivery for the same order because of damaged products. I told at least three different people that I cannot receive the order before 10AM, because I have to take my son to school. The delivery team still showed up at 7:45AM. I even got my other half to leave work to try to make the delivery work. They said they would stay until 8:02AM. He got there at 8:03 AM and they were gone. I understand you have a schedule that you have to make, but it is amazing that they couldn’t wait 1 minute when they couldn’t even listen to my request of not coming before 10AM. On top of that, my first delivery day they didn’t even hook up my dishwasher correctly and it flooded my upstairs and my basement. I’m blown away at what terrible service I have been provided. I have been paying on a product that I don’t...