A few weeks back, NBC ran a story about Home Depot customers complaining about poor contracting work. From promised due dates that took years to complete, to shoddy jobs and unfinished jobs, to un-repaired cabinets and plumbing.
If you missed it when it aired, here is the story on the investigation. Since the story ran, NBC has been flooded with more than 300 complaints.
Has anyone had any contracting work done through Home Depot and if so what was your experience with them?
"From promised due dates that took years to complete, to shoty jobs..."
Shoddy jobs?
I haven't done any contracting work with them, but I have a friend that is a contractor that Home Depot tried to contract out to do some work for them. Basically Home Depot is a middle man, for independent contractors. The people that do the work don't really work for Home Depot and according to my friend they didn't check the work, references for people they were assigning jobs to.
And the people in the Home Depot (around here, at least) don't often know what they're talking about. So far I've been sold sealant that globs and some TSP substitute that doesn't degloss ANYTHING.
I had the worst experience ordering sod through home depot. After driving to 3 different home depots and dealing with several people who didn't know sod from soil, we ordered it (turned out we could have ordered it at any home depot), scheduled the delivery, had our reciept and everything in writing, took time off of work to prepare, etc. and the night before we call to confirm and they had no record of our order although the money had already been taken out of my account. It turns out that the person who placed the order did not do it correctly. We had friends coming over to help, coolers of beer ready and after some screaming and several phone calls later, they magically happened to have some extra sod they could deliver. Cut to the next day, they call and say that their truck broke down and couldn't deliver the sod. Cut to the day after, and our sod finally arrives. It looks great and we're happy with the quality, but the hassle and heartbreak of the experience was just too much. They sent us a $50 gift card, which we did use, but now I just go to my corner fix-it store when I need anything.
There is an entire category at www.askthebuilder.com devoted to Home Depot horror stories: http://www.askthebuilder.com/HomeDepotStories.shtml It has been up for over a year now. You'll find more information about the topic there.
Having worked at Home Depot for several years, I'll admit that many employees aren't extremely well-informed on some of their products and that alone was the biggest downside of the job.
I remember starting on day 1. I was working in the Seasonal department which covered plants, plant accessories, soil, various types of fertilizers to snowmobiles, lawnmowers, insecticides, shovels and tools, animal cages, cardboard boxes and all cleaning products.
Needless to say, it was a huge burden to learn every product's in-depth specifications and use and the training at Home Depot is virtually inexsistant. You're basically thrown on the floor and are to learn from your fellow employees.
The problem lies within their training sessions: if the first guy on top is shooting random jibberish on, for example, XYZ Fertilizer, then everyone else will swear by it.
Thus, shotty worksmanship and mis-informed customers. Overall, Home Depot employees are generally very knowledgeable still, but do seek a second opinion on important things and contest their sayings and force them to look it up properly.
I must have gotten lucky. A shed ordered from Home Depot and the assembly and painting and all contracted through them was a painless , quick and done by a pro, you could tell the guy knew what he was doing, it was a real pleasure to watch a workman get it done. Funny, isn't it? So much is done so badly , on such a constant basis , from the cashiers that can't make change, to contractors that show up late and seem confused by the task, that it was striking to see someone competent.
We are remodeling a house and quick and painless is not how you how you can describe most experiences with contractors.
Without boring you all with the details, let me just say that Home Depot is now known as Home-f***ing-Depot around my house.
My big beef with The Home Depot is that (much like furniture stores), they never pay any attention to me when I go without my boyfriend. Even when I seek out help from their employees, they always look at me like I'm a stupid woman and try to direct me toward the ready-made items. Home f***ing Depot is right.
i got my kitchen cabinets throughh them, and while the thomasville cabinets i ordered have held up well, the experience with the home depot staff was a giant headache. so much so that i convinced them to refund me nearly $1000 of my $4000 purchase price. that's the only good thing about the big box retailers. to them its chicken feed, so getting them to refund you money when THEY screw up is not as hard as at smaller places.
My inlaws had their kitchen completely redone by Home Depot in Long Island. Everything from ceiling lighting to flooring was done; tiled backsplash and counters. They were very satisfied with the completed work. We had Home Depot install outdoor carpeting and they were very professional. They do subcontract work, so it may be the subcontractors and not specifically Home Depot, but they are still the general contractor.
www.homedepotsucks.com
I prefer Lowes, but only marginally. Lowes is generally cleaner and the people seem a little happier.
But, yeah, Home Depot tries to cut corners by cutting service. I knew it was only going to get worse when they installed the self-service checkout machines.
We had a nightmare experience with Home depot and our kitchen cabinets.
The space was mismeasured, wrong cabinets were ordered. Whatever could go wrong went wrong.
We received next to no customer service. The managers were completely unresponsive.
It was a most unpleasant experience. I will NEVER buy anything bigger or more expensive than a lightbulb at home depot again.
There isnt enough space to go into the horror story of our experience!.
Thanks, Meghan
for the Home Depot link at askthebuilder. I've been to that site many times and never noticed. Now I'm going there to see whether ANY story beats our own Home Depot experience. We had a small room carpeted by them. After they cut the carpet too short, the two men tried to stretch it with their FEET by bracing themselves against the newly painted walls. They did not have any installation equipment. They were day laborers. But ... they did bring a broom. Why, we'll never know.
We had Home Depot install a hot water heater and it was a nightmare. (I wrote about it on my blog here:
http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2006/11/home_depots_hot.html">http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2006/11/home_depots_hot.html">http://blog.stayfreemagazine.org/2006/11/home_depots_hot.html
I had 2 good experiences. Both times, (I contracted them to install carpet and a granite countertop and sink in my upstate home--Copake, NY) they came all the way from Queens and did a splendid job.
I TRIED to have some contracted work done by Home Depot -
I ordered a door to be installed,
I stayed in for the guy to come and do an 'official measurement' for the door (a standard 36" opening).
He didn't show. Twice.
Then he showed, barely measured, smelled like pot and TOLD me it looked like 36".
He never submitted the measurements to Home Depot, they never arranged for the installation.
To their credit they offered me a discount when I complained - but it was more fun to rip up the order and get a refund.
All told it was about three months. And countless phone calls.
I've used Home Depot a few times with mixed results. The guy that came to install my carpet made me VERY nervous - and I'm not a nervous nelly. I ended up calling a male friend and asking him to come to the house quickly to hang out with me. I also used Home Depot to install a new door off of my porch. The installation was fine and the installer was great, but the quality of the door itself (it was custom, through HD) was really bad. My CAT ended up walking through the door (screen door) within a week and the screen settled poorly, it's sorta cockeyed. For future jobs, I plan to use nice/local/possibly more expensive mom & pop shops.
my ordeal can be summed up thus:
- purchased a new refrigerator that was a more appropriate size (smaller) for my kitchen. delivery included removal of the oversized old 'fridge.
- the delivery men had no tools to remove the door of the old fridge to get it out the apartment door, so they left the new one in the hallway and said they'd come back.
- they never came back.
- after HOURS of trying to reach a live person on the phone at the store (in vain) i had to go there in person to try to fix things. i waited there another HOUR before a manager with a brain cell could be found to tend to my situation.
- TWO DAYS later, they were scheduled to remove my old fridge. instead they delivered a SECOND new fridge. at that point, i had THREE refrigerators. plus, no tools to remove the doors of the old one to get it through the threshhold.
- solution: if you open fridge doors so it's configured like an L, you can sometimes angle it out. like parallel parking, i guess, but with fridges. that was my idea, and it worked. eventually life was back to normal.
- i figured out the company's email configuration and sent an angry email straight to the CEO's inbox. (the meat of my complaint was not with their third party deliverymen, but with the excruciatingly inaccessible customer service.)
- within 24 hrs the CEO's secretary called me to personally apologize and sent me a $150 gift card.
Only dealt with Home Depot by getting a quote for a ceramic floor tile installation. We bought the tile from Home Depot. The floor to be tiled had carpet over a very smooth slab. 210 square feet. Their quote was $1,200. We thought that too high for labor only. We found another installer by asking around at work. He was only $500 and did an excellent job. We tipped him a $100 and still beat Home Depot's price by half.
We are in Houston. Land of cheap labor.
I have found this great website which has devoted a whole category on Home Depot. There are many useful home improvement articles and resources there. The site is located at www.need2build.com. Awesome!
I have found this great website which has devoted a whole category on Home Depot. There are many useful home improvement articles and resources there. The site is located at http://www.need2build.com. Awesome!
yes the home depot is incompetent i should know i install windows for them they give me mis measured crapy materials to do jobs low pay long hours and even steal money out of my check tell me to do things wrong then yell at me for doing it thier way i have been installing windows for 8 years and i have guys that use to stock shelves in the store telling me how to do it wrong if i dont im fired if you think it sucks being a home depot customer than you obviosly couldnt handle being an employee they gave the ceo milloins to go away and im still trying to collect money from them for windows i installed months ago now do you think when they treat thier employees like shit that thier going to do good work? i have never seen shoty work like this done by any other window company ever
i work for home depot and i feel sorry for our customers if it makes you feel any better though not only do they screw customers they screw employees talented
i recently hired home depot to do siding on my house a job that was suppost to take 2 days turned into to month finnally the job was done and it looked good that is until a week later when we received a storm winds reached 30 miles per hour which is common for this area the winds tore the siding off my house because it wasnt installed correctly when i called to compain they laughed at me and called me a lair stating that there is no way this could have happend home depot you suck ill never buy anything from you again
youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu sukkkkkkkkkkkkk depot
I am currently a part-time Home Depot associate and there are some things that I disagree with as far as how the company is being run. I fell like I am always being screwed over, long hours little pay. When a full time position is opened they give it to someone else rather than to a used-to-be loyal associate like me. Yet they give me almost 37-38hrs. a week but I don't get the same benefits as full-time associates. My other complaint is the hiring of young unknowlwdgeable workers, y hire'em if they aren't familiar with this type of work! How are they supposed to help customers if they don't even know anything pertaining to home improvement. The training is ridiculous! we have to travel far out to the training center which is an hour and a half away when they could have just done the "cheap" training at the store u work at.(they don't even pay for the cost of traveling!! Gas isn't cheap!)