I stopped by this Home Depot on Monday evening around 7:00 P.M. to exchange a dogwood tree that I had bought there last year, Memorial Day weekend. I was blessed with a green thumb and have bought between $150 and $200 in the gardening department at this store for the past three years.
They opened this Home Depot about three years ago, and even though it is a tad smaller than the store in Florence, where there is also a Lowes, this Home Depot is five miles closer to our home in Park Hills, Kentucky.
I have never taken advantage of their one-year guarantee on live plants because I look the plants over when I buy them, and if they die, it is my fault. However, this past year we bought a dogwood and planted it at the end of May. Of course, we went on to have the worst drought in 50 years. I watered the dogwood every day for two weeks before cutting back to three times a week, and the little tree was looking good. However, this spring by the end of April it was evident the dogwood was dead as a doornail.
This brings me to Monday, May 5 at 7:00 pm, when I took the tree in a small box with the two tags still on it. One is the regular Home Depot label, "Pink Flowering Dogwood" Cornus florida 'Rosea', with planting instructions on the back, etc. The other label is a white plastic strip that reads the same tree, 7 gal, 987-433 031012100440, Grown by Stewart's Nursery McMinnville Tn 37110, $24.98.
I do not have the receipt, but I do have my Home Depot card that I have had for several years. The person who waited on me scanned my card and could not find it. Then I remembered getting a new card the first part of the year and told him (a male, around 20-25, 6'-6'2", 190-225 lbs). He said that without a receipt there was nothing he could do. I did not realize he was finished, because he did not even say "sorry," so I stood there and he repeated himself, so I left.
This leaves me very upset, because, as I stated, my spouse and I spend $150-$200 every season in your gardening area. In the last two years, besides odds and ends, we bought custom front and back doors and screen doors for both. We also bought a clothes washer from you. Off the top of my head, we also bought two kitchen faucet hardware sets and one bathroom faucet hardware set.
All I wanted to do was exchange the dead dogwood, the first live plant I have ever taken you up on your one-year guarantee for, and get a new one that I had made sure you had, for $29.99, so I would have had a net charge of some $5.00 on my charge card.
But after being treated the way I was, and having to take my dead tree, put it back in my vehicle and take it back home, I am not sure I do not want to start using my Lowes card and put my Home Depot card at the back of my wallet.
Give me a reason for staying with Home Depot?
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