Unfortunately, Lowe's doesn't seem to offer a sign up for email notification when something on their website is back in stock. Does anyone know of any free, preferably non-registration websites that can do this for Lowes? Thank you.
In these days of questionable supply-chain deliveries - slow boats from China and Canada-US border closures etc you would rather trust some free 3rd party web source for your local Lowes inventory - ? - than simply checking with them ? OK .. if you say so. Good luck with that. John T.
My pet peeve is when the store's website shows an item "in stock", and you go there and the shelf is empty. And the clerks won't check "in the back".
In one case where I showed them a printout, showing the item in stock, they did grudgingly check and yes they had not yet set out the item.
IME the only "big box" store that is relatively reliable are in-stock is WalMart.
And why is it that one grocery chain can keep an item instock, but another has not had that item for months ? :-(
Originally I was going to say this to the OP:
Seriously? Do you really think that some 3rd party has access to Lowes' internal inventory system and monitors every single product's information waiting for it to flip from "Out of stock" to "In stock"?
Then I remembered camelcamelcamel.com
That's a 3rd party that apparently monitors every product that Amazon carries. The site not only stores price history going back years, it will also provide price-drop alerts based on dollar value or percentage.
It's not always perfect, but that's a huge amount of data to be storing and monitoring in real-time. It's not clear to me where the data comes from and it doesn't mean that Lowes data would be available for inventory status,, but there is a precedent of sorts.
One example with 10 years of price history:
My Lowes pet peeve is just the opposite - when the website shows an item is out of stock and you go to the store and see that there's plenty on display. In my area, that happened frequently last year regarding dimensional lumber and especially PT pine decking. When I mentioned it to Customer Service they said the Pros know it's in stock and will come in to buy it, while the homeowners will just check the website, thus the Pros will get what they need first. I guess it makes sense, but I learned to visit the store even when the site says no stock. That's how I was able to build two decks while my neighbor waited and watched.
That's a trick question. There is no "in the back" at Lowes or Home Depot, is there? Everything is out in the store, although in some cases it might be placed up high for storage.
Different suppliers, I suppose, plus different priorities, different supply chains, different price structures, etc.
Some stuff is. I recently bought some tiles for the backsplash. The guy went in the back to get the tiles, mortar, grout, caulk, etc. Some tile was out front.
I bought a water heater at Lowes last week. It was on the second shelf of the rack. I asked an employee how to get one down and she said she'd get someone with a lift to come over.
A few minutes later, Beep, Beep, Beep, this guy comes rolling up on one of those platform lifts and brings it down. He then spent the next 10 minutes with me grabbing a pan, fittings, hoses, shut-offs, etc. Even asked some questions about my current set-up. "Hard-piped or flex tubes?" "Using your old overflow tube? Never mind take one anyway. Bring it back if you don't use it." Stuff like that. It was like he actually wanted to make sure I had everything I needed to get the job done.
You don't get that kind of service quite as often as you used to.
Cool, good to know. In the stores that I'm familiar with, "in the back" would be on pallets, outside behind the store, but there's precious little space out there and nothing of any value. Just stacks of empty pallets. I guess I don't know where "in the back" would physically be located. Is it code for inventory that's located at a nearby store?
I guess I'm showing my age, using the expression "in the back". IME it is/was a common shorthand for "do you have this item somewhere else in the store, as there is none in its normal shelf spot ?"
What he's suggesting is a possible third party company that would do the checking with Lowes for you on particular items that you need and want to know when Lowes has them back in stock. No reason you could not have that and do some periodic checking yourself too. But unless you want to check daily at Lowes, this would save you the effort. But IDK of any such service.
Lowes will show you directly if other nearby Lowes have the item in stock. HD you have to keep checking on your own from one store to the next.
My closest HD has a huge indoor storage area in the back corner. I've had employees go back there (supposedly) looking for stuff that was listing as "in stock" but not on the shelf, either down low or up high.
If your stores have no "in the back", where do pallets of newly delivered products go? I can't imagine that the truck drivers want to wait around while store employees move pallets into the store aisles. What happens during inclement weather? They don't leave stuff outside, do they?
They unload the trucks into the wider-than-normal aisle in the lumber department, just inside the big garage doors. (Exception for many items that go directly to the garden department.) From there, the pallets get broken down and moved to the aisles where they need to go. If there is no shelf space, items get stored way up on top of the shelves, directly above the shelf space where they will eventually be displayed.
I've been to a bunch of HDs and Lowes in Kansas, Texas, and MS, among others, and I've never seen a store that has a designated inside storage area. I believe you guys but it's something I haven't personally seen.
I'll stick my head in the next time I'm at HD and see what it looks like. My walk-by glances seem to show that it's pretty big, but maybe it's an illusion. It looks deep (and full) but maybe it's not very wide.
The "upper shelves" are common to all of the home centers, although "directly above" isn't always the case. Space matters. ;-)
I was looking for a particular Mobile 1 oil at Walmart. Online it showed the store had it. I looked at the shelves, that stuff is easy to spot, not only was there none there, the shelves were full and there was no empty space where it could be. After being unable to find it elsewhere, I decided to order it for pickup at that Walmart. Went there in the afternoon and to my surprise, they had it waiting.
We can assume that it was actually in the store but maybe they are as fast as TireRack when it comes to moving product around.
Back in January, I ordered snow tires and wheels from TireRack. I was told that they would be shipped via UPS from a warehouse that is about 400 miles from my house. ~25 hours after I placed the order, they arrived at my house, mounted and balanced, ready to be installed on my vehicle.
They weren't stocked as a mounted set. You choose tires, then choose wheels and they mount them, balance them and package them with items specific to your vehicle: centering rings, lug nuts, lug wrench, etc. I was impressed with the super fast turnaround.
So here's a good one...just happened this morning.
I needed a thermal expansion tank, so I checked HD's inventory. Web site says they have 2. Great. So I go over to the store, look in the specified location and, yep, there they are, but up high where I can't get to them.
I find an employee (not from the plumbing department) and he gets one of those rolling ladders and climbs up.
Now, here's the situation: The boxes for the two tanks are sitting one on top of the other, and both of them are on top of a bigger box containing some other product. The top tank box is dented on the corner and on one side, but the other tank box looks fine.
I say to the guy: "Could you grab the good box, not the dented one?" He says "Sure". He then shoves the top box (the dented one) towards the back of the shelf, where it falls behind the big box. Gone. Out of sight from the floor and even from up on the ladder.
The web site has already been updated to show "1" but right there are only
2 people that know where it is. Me, and the guy that pushed it behind the big box - a guy that doesn't even work in the plumbing department. (He actually asked me what an expansion tank is used for.)The only way that thing will be found is if someone is willing to grab a ladder, climb up and starts moving boxes around. What are the odds that that will happen? My bet is that most employees will just say something like "The web site says we have 1? Well, you know, the web site isn't always perfect. Sorry."
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