The Home Depot — Local services in Wilmington

I have rarely seen such disorganization in a retailer/installation group partnership as I have experienced with my recent Home Depot carpet order to be installed by USIG. The original carpet order with HD was placed on 12/20 under the impression that carpet would be installed into the house we bought the week of 12/28 (prior to moving in). USIG contacted me around the 23rd to confirm they had received all the product and would get me on schedule that week of the 28th. Then...nothing. No call about scheduling ever came. So I reached out to them, and they seemed in a state of complete disarray. They said they didn’t know when they were going to be able to schedule my install. “It could be days, a week, weeks”..they “just didn’t know. They “don’t have a crew for Wilmington right now.” I called Home Depot, who failed to advocate for us at all both locally and at corporate level (so far). The local team instead threw USIG completely under the bus rather than speaking on behalf of their partnership and/or any potentially mismanaged information between the two of them. The message, loud and clear, was “We just sell the carpet, the rest is out of our hands.” Which may be true, but don’t advertise as if you can assist customers with all angles of a project when you can’t (or won’t) take any actual responsibility for that. I called the HD customer service number to ask for a refund and explain why, and was met with additional excuses, pawning off the entire blame on USIG. Also, corporate refused to refund me by phone even though it was totally fine to sell me $2k of carpet on a freshly opened HD credit card by phone only weeks prior, insisting that I must physically go to the store to be refunded. I decided to wait it out. It wasn’t until around 3 weeks ago that we finally got on the schedule for today. We’d had to move into our house and get somewhat settled, which I made clear to the USIG manager, who told me not to worry, the installers could move some furniture around. The installers (an adult man and possibly two younger teenagers) show up at 1pm, take one look at the place and say “Oh no, this is too big of a job for this late in the day. You’re not ready.” I was dumbfounded. They said they weren’t told how big the project was and we had too much stuff in the rooms. 2 out of the 4 rooms were empty! And we said we’d move the few personal things in the other rooms as they completed the first two empty rooms. It was very, very little. They said they were going outside to make a call and just...never came back. Now we’re back to not knowing when or if this carpet install will ever actually happen. And USIG mgmt seemed equally as dumbfounded as we were, and said there was a “miscommunication and they shouldn’t have left, but it’s too late now!” as they drove away. I will NEVER use Home Depot for a project that requires install ever again and I will certainly never rely on USIG again if I can help it. RUN-don’t walk-away from this retail/flooring install partnership! There are plenty of smaller vendors who can manage to provide quality service in a reasonable amount of time. IF we make it to the end of this transaction with HD, it’ll be because of Liz (assistant manager of this HD location) getting involved and trying to advocate for us. We should’ve been forwarded to her when we called the flooring department weeks ago with concerns....

Manager Allan and another worker named Rhonda were both incredible! I recently lost air conditioning late one night in my home. Very panicked about my 5 year old daughter overheating, my mom impulsively purchased 3 portable ac units just in case our AC wasn’t able to be fixed that night. Thankfully it was fixed and we never needed to use the portable units. When I went to return them I was met by worker David and worker Craig, both were extremely rude from the very start! I have no idea why they were so upset I was returning these unopened, unused, in perfect condition ac units. I had my receipt, my id and the credit card they were purchased with. There was no reason at all to be as rude as they were. They told me I could not return them, then said I could return them since they were unopened, then went back and told me I could not return them. The worker David said “this is ridiculous, i’d rather you deal with a manager” then walked away. Worker Craig just stood to the side, sighing heavily to himself while appearing very annoyed for some reason. As I waited for the manager to come, worker David proceeded to talk nasty about one of his mentally challenged coworkers; ironically enough also named David! Who from the sounds of it was mentally challenged and David was talking about how his coworkers brain didn’t work properly. Just an awful thing to say out loud about another coworker who is mentally challenged, right in front of customers! These men were vile, crude and should absolutely not be working in customer service. Manager Allen and another worker named Rhonda were both swift, kind and fantastic! There was no eye rolling, no heavy sighs and no being told I’m ridiculous for wanting my $1,025 back. They were great and I wish I could express how great they were! They took care of business without any complaining and I cannot thank them enough! Safe to say I will never again return here and have posted about this experience all over neighborhood apps to warn others. Basically, go ANYWHERE else but here! But if you must go to this location, stay far far away from an older man named David and another older man...

Worst Delivery Service, Best On-site Management! Bought kitchen appliances for kitchen of rental property. We live 3 hours away. Purchasing was easy, fulfilled by friendly staff on floor. Execution was terrible. Delivery was a closed loop robo-call system that did not give you delivery window until day prior, no ability to talk to a real person, and no one showed up during time scheduled. This was after driving 3 hrs with 2 kids to wait all day. Then we got a call saying the truck broke down, we'd have to reschedule. We rescheduled to following Saturday, again driving 3 hrs each way. Delivery people could not find our unit so they left (it is on the main road of the only street in/out of town). When we called asking why no one showed up, we got customer service in another state that told us there was nothing we could do, and have to reschedule...again! They said the delivery team is outsourced and cannot be reached. We went to store to discuss with Rich, the store manager. He connected with the local delivery team, and arranged a special delivery for us the next day, saving us from another wasted 6 hr drive for the 2nd rescheduled delivery window. THANK GOODNESS FOR RICH! He followed up afterwards to ensure we were happy. The delivery guys they sent were the green berets of delivery guys, complete rockstars, very careful, polite and informative. Almost worth the headache with 2 prior botched deliveries! I was going to write the entire HD management team about their terrible delivery process, but will be more forgiving due to Rich's follow up. Would not recommend every buying appliances at HD due to their 3rd party logistics setup - but happy to know we have people on the floor who readily step in to help fix problems, even those...