A Home Depot Hate-Fest

Home Depot seems to have an infinite capacity to irritate me. Their customer service sucks so much at all levels (corporate on down) that - in my opinion - you better hope what you want is already in stock and on the floor and that nothing requires ordering.

Like last year, when we closed on our house and had only semi-working garage door openers that were quite frankly dangerous. Given that, I asked the salesman over and over how soon they would schedule installation, and his best answer was “we’ve never had any complaints.” A week later without a phone call to even set an appointment, you better believe I was complaining! I ended up cancelling that order and switching to Sears. Wish I’d gone there in the first place.

Most recently I went to the local brick & mortar looking for shade cloth, which I recalled they had carried the year before. The clerk informed us that their Atlanta office had not sent a supply for the 2009 year, but that we could order several shades online. So I did that. July 1. According to their web site, the shade cloth was in stock, and would ship in 2-3 business days.

Fast forward to July 7 (yes, that is nearly a week later). Not only has it not shipped yet, but I received an email stating that my order was cancelled. It gave no explanation. It offered up no alternatives.

I called their online customer service, and was informed that the product was no longer in stock. (Interesting, because I’m checking the web site, and it still shows that the product is in stock.) I offered a few kind customer service suggestions, then the clerk placed me on hold to verify that a similar product in a different shade would be in stock that I could order instead. I waited on hold for nearly 10 minutes. Then I gave up and hung up. Because even if the answer were “yes,” I have lost complete and total faith in that company. In the immortal words of my former neighbor as he was setting fire to his girlfriend’s car, “Eff you and the horse you rode in on, <bleep>!”

We now return to our regularly scheduled programming of Michael Jackson: Fans in Mourning.