Home Depot online purchase debacle

Bought a dryer online this morning... without going into detail, I overcame every obstacle HD used to discourage it.

Went through a dog & pony show of selecting a store by virtue of their inventories. My HD around the corner, luckily, or so it seemed, was purported to have 1 "in stock", while other stores within 10-20 miles were indicated to have 2 or 3 or none.

I couldn't complete the order w/o specifying a delivery date, but I figured I'd just run over and pick it up and called the store to say so.

They seemed stunned and nearly speechless to hear I had somehow come to the k00ky conclusion they stocked dryers at their store.

I listened as it was patiently explained to me as if I were silly that all that kind of stuff was at a local warehouse, they didn't have any dryers you could actually buy, and take home.

On the bright side, it only took 5 minutes to cancel the order by phone, not including tracking down my glasses to decode 800-HOME- DEPOT.

If only their customer service were so good on the front end... -----

- gpsman

Reply to
gpsman
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If only their customer service were so good on the front end...

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the 1 in stock was the floor model??

Reply to
The Henchman

And how did they compare with your local appliance dealer? You may be surprised to find the local guy will be equal or close in price and offer a lot of good service. I'd never buy an appliance from HD or Lowes.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

No comparison, price or free delivery-wise. Many if not most if not all our local appliance stores spam the living shit out of Craigslist.

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I do not reward blatant fuckwittedness with my dollars at any price point.

If it needs service, I'd rather do it myself... or more likely I'd just buy a new (used) one.

Neither would I, but neither of them make shopping Craigslist for a used dryer a interminable chore. -----

- gpsman

Reply to
gpsman

? "gpsman" wrote

Wow, I've never seen anything like that here. Our local dealers are reputable and pay for advertising in the local newspapers and shoppers papers. They offer delivery, setup, etc and are well within reasonable prices there days. I paid $20 more for my dryer and if you saw how it had to be put into the laundry room, you'd happily pay it. A few years ago, I bought a washer and it was delivered in two hours.

It was not always like that. At one time the local prices wee very high compared to others, but now they have buyer's co-ops and sell very competitively.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

=3D=3D Me too, I wished that it had been around when I last dealt with our local hardware/appliance store. I could have used it profusely with those turkeys. How some of 'em even got their jobs is a complete mystery. Incompetence is too kind a word to use in describing ability or service with this bunch. =3D=3D

Reply to
Roy

I tried to buy a bathroom vanity (the cheapo one they sell a lot of), couldn't find any on the floor. Employee told me they're out, I asked when they would be back in stock, he said to ask at the customer service desk. I asked, they said their inventory showed a dozen in stock. They're kind of too big to shoplift and it was clear there weren't any in the store. I asked them to special-order, they said they can't because it's a regular stock item. So I asked when they'd get more and they said not until the inventory declined enough for them to re-order. I couldn't convince them that would never happen because the inventory can't decline if there aren't any to buy...

A year later I bought something on-line at Lowes (to be picked up in the store). I called the store to see if they really had it, explaining that HD's inventory wasn't accurate. They said "This isn't Home Depot, if our computer says it's here, it's here." Picked it up the next morning. Sold my HD stock, bought Lowes stock.

Reply to
Shaun Eli

One of the local used appliance dealers not only stuffs Craigslist with their appliances, but they repost them every few days so they show up on more recent pages. It gets to be annoying when you have to keep filtering out the same ads when you are looking for something over time.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Danniken

Not just appliances- some of the cities I hang out in, the car and building material CL groups are close to useless because of that. Bad enough if it is a local guy, but these are from dealers 2-3 hours away.

Reply to
aemeijers

*Home Depot definitely has inventory control problems. I've experienced the above problem a number of times in several HD stores. Most recently a few weeks ago. I had the SKU from the web site and went looking for the vacuum cleaner hose that I wanted. The tag on the shelf was correct, but there were two boxes of the wrong hose. I went to the pro desk and asked them to check inventory and was told that there were two in stock of the item that I wanted. He called the associate over for that department and we went looking together. She took me straight to where the SKU label was that I had seen already, but the wrong merchandise was on the shelf. By this time in my mind I had figured out what had happened. After looking around on the surrounding shelves the associate confirmed what I had thought. Whoever did the inventory last, read the SKU and just counted two boxes without checking the model number on the packaging. I went to another store and found what I wanted.

A few years ago I was interested in some tile that was on sale and discontinued. The HD computer said there were 30 boxes in stock. Six associates could not find one. I had commented about the need to do an inventory and one associate told me that an outside company does it for them periodically, but since they are clueless about the merchandise there are always a lot of mistakes.

Reply to
John Grabowski

Yeah. These outside inventory services (RGIS, Washington, et al) move from store to store. The crew that's doing your store tonight, yesterday did a drug store, and the day before an auto parts shop.

I tell my customers that to the outside inventory company, things that look alike ARE alike. Unless a member of the store's staff hovers around, or marks the merchandise with Post-It notes, the bookstore is liable to end up with 166 copies of Cliff Notes "Red Badge of Courage," or 400 Kitten Calendars.

Reply to
HeyBub

I write all my own material The rest, I steal. -----

- gpsman

Reply to
gpsman

Here, there are categories for owners/dealers in cars and furniture and they pretty much abide by them, other than the fake owner ads.

The vast majority of private owner ads I find pretty much useless anyway. I need to know 2 things about a used dryer: cubic feet and the model number. Somebody specifies one or the other every month or so.

"Super heavy duty duper x-tra large capacity" means exactly nothing. Apparently the only factor most people consider when buying a dryer is $, 'cause that's how they sell them. Or, with the dryer's long and boring life "story". Often with the caveat of just needing an "easy/ cheap fix", which at first is amusing, but grows wearisome pretty quickly with repetition.

Cars. I'm always looking for cars. I find it amazing that with unlimited text capacity so many sellers describe theirs in 10 words or less, and often leave out the year, make and model, and only want $2500 over retail for their rig that "runs grat, just needs a tranyy".

Swerving to avoid a CL nitwit rant, I've pretty much screwed myself for a source of a dryer. Looks like somebody is going to have to compromise somewhere before the current one coasts to a stop... -----

- gpsman

Reply to
gpsman

same here. when shopping for fridge local dealer provided feedback on reliability (as they have a service department) which pretty much squared with my own research, pricing was competitive, and I just associate HD with incompetence and annoyance. If it weren't for their proximity and convenient hours I would avoid them even more than I already do.

nate

Reply to
N8N

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