I love Home Depot......really, I do...honest...the staff is so knowledgable and helpful...

Thanks for the laugh Jim :¬D

Kate

Had a 4 pack of Home Depot fluorescent faux flolodlights for interior cans. Bought back in 2004. Six year guarantee on pakaging. Still had receipt stapled to pakaging with last bulb. Bulb 3 from pack was installed in a can in the kitchen March 23, 2007. Wrote date on bulb side part when installing.

Bulb flickered ever since install. Loosened, retightned it, swapped it out with other bulbs from other can. No joy, fickered wherever it was installed.

Put it back in original can, figured what the heck, its one bulb of 8 in the kitchen I can live with it.

May 25, bulb fails totally. Take it out, put last bulb from 4 pack in can and bulb 4 works fine, as are bulbs 1 and 2.

Look at HD receipt stapled to package. Paid $ 13.97 for 4 bulbs, figure I am owed either a new bulb or $ 3.50 for the six year guaranteed bulb that lasted 62 entire days.

Look closely at package for maufacturer name. Ain't none. Sole name on it is HD's (Custom manufactured for and exclusively distributed by Home Depot" Georgia address.) Does say "Made in China" but not by whom nor where in that country. DEcide its HD's problem to resolve.

So, various errands on Sunday, HD type stuff on shopping list, toss dead bulb, package and receipt in car and proceed on errands and eventually get to BORG central in Tigard, OR. Have one other return as well (1 'PVC pipe Ts, bought too many for bulding vege garden trllis to have pea plants climb on. Sure, I've got the receipt or those, too.)

Get to HD. Looong line at returns, two counters working. Get to front of line, present the two Ts and the receipt, and present the dead bulb, its package and the receipt.

Gum chewing, nose pierced with stud teenaged girl tells me that HD has nothing to do with bulbs, that I have to contact manufacturer. Tell girl I am contacting the manufacturer, HD, exactly as listed on package, and that I want either $ 3.50 for bulb or replacement bulb. Girl asks if I am too old or stupid to understand her, but HD doesn't take back bulbs , I have to contact manufacturer.

I say I may be older than she, but I can actually read the package. Only company on it is HD, and I have a receipt and I have a product from HD that didn't live up to guaranty on package. Invite her to read package. She refuses. I ask her to get her store manager. Says she won't. She demands I leave her register. At this point I still don't have the refund or he PVC Ts, or, of ourse the bulb. I decline, saying Im not going anywhere unil she gets her manager.

Goes from bad to worse.

Some manager type eventually shows up. I explain situation. Woman in line behind me, complete stranger, pipes up to manager type that the cashier was the single worst retail clerk the woman had ever see.

Manager sends clerk, "Danielle" off for a "break".

I wind up, at no charge, with four 2 packs, 8 bulbs total of something called N:Vision 65 nominal watt floods in return for the one dead bulb that had lasted 62 whole day. Seven year guaranty on these.

Oh yeah, I got a receipt too. Taped to the bulb packaging, sitting on the bulb storage shelf.

I don't think Ive paid for a compact fluorescnt bulb in 10 years.

I love Home Depot......really, I do...honest...the staff is so knowledgable and helpful...

And they keep giving me free stuff...

If it wasn't for the Gift Cards I cash in with reward points, I wouldn't even bother with them.

Couple months ago..I was working on a project and needed some plywood cut down...spent 35 minutes and 4 requests for help from Customer service before someone finally showed up.

Went back this weekend for a different project but again needed wood cut down. After 20 minutes of walking around looking for assistance, I went to Lowes. Grabed my wood went over to the cutting center and before I could turn around and look around for assistance, an employee asked me if I needed some wood cut!

Gotta love customer service everywhere these days...no appreciation for anything; especially their customers.

Who the hell keeps a receipt for a $13.97 item for 4 years. You is one sick puppy dude.

Mike

He obviously saw the light....

I did something equally ludicrous this month, but it didn't work out worth a damn for me:

A few years ago, while ordering some stuff from Harbor Freight, I made an impulse purchase of a "Stove Bolt Assortment":

A couple of weekends ago when I was bonding with young son under the hood of his '95 Civic and we needed a half dozen small bolts and nuts to fasten some sheet metal in place.

I got out the HF assortment, selected some 10-24 RH screws and hex nuts and started to install the first one while the kid held the pieces in alignment.

The space was tight (What space under the hood of a car isn't these days?) and I couldn't get the first nut started. I pulled the screw and nut out and went to thread them together in front of my nose. "No go". I took a close look at the nut. I was shocked, shocked to find NO THREADS!!!

Every damn 10-24 nut in the box had missed the threading operation somewhere on the other side of the world.

Since only the screw heads were visible, I scrounged a variety of 10-24 nuts from my lifelong collection and we finished the job with them.

Totally for s**ts and grins I dashed off a letter to HF and Scotch taped a couple of the unthreaded nuts onto it. I explained that when I received the Stove Bolt Assortment a couple of years ago I noticed the unthreaded nuts but assumed that the threads were "on backorder" and would be delivered later.

I asked them to please look into it and tell me when I might expect the backordered threads to ship. I couldn't wait to find out what I'd hear back from them.

Yesterday I received a reply from an HF customer service twit, probably a first cousin to your "Danielle", whom God had obviously gifted with boobs instead of brains. She wasted a paragraph of text explaining that they couldn't find my original order for the product and thus were unable to help me; So sorry.

Have you guys noticed that a good sense of humor usually denotes a person with higher intelligence and that the dummies just "don't get it" when you try and get a laugh out of them?

Jeff

Someone who expects an item to last as long as the guarantee says it will.

Major Snips

Exactly. You hit that right on the head.

Please God, help me not make the dicks for brains comment that's right on the tip of my tongue about all the people I'm cursed to deal with in customer nonservice all day long....

Jo Ann

Major SNIPS

Whatever.

I am very tired of manufacturers, vendors and contractors who will make almost any promise to separate me from my money, but refuse to honor those pomises when called upon.

I had to keep the package the bulbs came in. Its an effort approaching zero as an *upper* limit to tape or staple the HD receipt to the blister package. Bulb doesn't live up to the written guarantee the manufacturer choooses to *voluntarily* put on the package, I have no reluctance at all in seeking a replacement or refund.

Maybe you enjoy being repeatedly cheated by manufacturers, vendors and contractors?

I don't.

YMMV.

And as I said, I haven't paid for a CFL in about 10 years. And but for one ceiling chandelier type fixture in the dining room, for which CFLs simply are not made, every light in this house, table lamp, ceiling fixture or can, everl light in here is a CFL.

upper limit to tape or staple the

Actually, if I really expected it to last that long, I wouldn't bother keeping the receipt, because then I likely wouldn't need it.

nate

Same here when I sent a check in response to a statement's "Pay this amount" of $0.00!

Several weeks later I called the company and expressed concern that my check hadn't cleared...

They were completely flummoxed and got even more so when I offered to send a replacement check!

LOL -- good point!

I keep remembering the line from Peter Pan "I believe in faries, I do! I do!". My experiences with HD have been rather limited, fortunately.