This isn’t a rant, just a serious disappointment in one of my favorite hardware stores. My wife and I were in the process of buying a house, we had everything lined out, we had purchased $7200 worth of flooring, almost a thousand dollars in tools, painting supplies, etc. Why? Because I love Home Depot and wanted to help keep them alive against larger competition like Lowes and such.
After the home inspection some serious molding was found in the crawl space, and the owner didn’t want to fix it properly and so we had to back out of the house purchase. We came back to return the flooring, which we were told we could. At first they said they couldn’t return the flooring at all, I was devastated. Then they said they could but charged me a 15 percent restocking fee.
I understand there is a process for these type of situations, but I know the manager had the ability to wave the fee, I was told this from the Pro services and another helpful staff member as well. I’m not a contractor, just a loyal customer and a normal person with a 10 month old little girl and a baby on the way and a van with a broken Air conditioner that needs fixed in July.
I tried explaining that this was all out of my control, but they still forced me to pay 880 dollars for the restocking fee.
Home Depot, you’ve lost a loyal customer, and it hurts to say that I’ll never be back to your stores, and from now on when I need flooring, lumber, paint, or anything else I’ll go to your competitors.
It may seem like a better option to charge your customers this fee for the short term, but long term it will hurt even more. And for management there, where is your heart when it comes to your customer base who spend thousands of dollars to keep your stores up and running.
