Here is a copy of the email I sent today to Frank Blake, the Chairman and CEO of Home Depot. It concerns the dreadful service I got from the company and its subcontractors while having a new kitchen floor put in.
Dear Mr. Blake,
My wife and I have spent months dealing with a very disappointing situation involving Home Depot, and I need to tell you about it. Please forgive the length. Home Depot and the firms it hires caused trouble at so many stages that the story simply takes a while to tell.
Late in November or early in December, we went to store #1225 in Brooklyn, NY, and paid for a new linoleum kitchen floor with installation. A few weeks afterward, MeasureComp, the estimating company Home Depot subcontracts, came out to prepare the estimate. Their employee raised just one tile to see which flooring was underneath. When the estimate was in, we booked the installation for January 16.
At that point my wife was in her eighth month of pregnancy. In case the work posed any risk, she spent two days at her mother's with our two-year-old boy. I emptied the kitchen and paid our building super to unhook the stove and refrigerator. The subcontractor, American Carpet South (ACS), gave me an arrival window between 1:00 and 3:00. At 2:50 they phoned and promised to be here within 25 minutes. The crew actually appeared at 4:35 and blamed an earlier job that took longer than planned. Nobody mentioned that I had been promised 3:15.
The installer examined the kitchen and declared that he could not do the job. He said a second plywood layer was needed as an underlay, and that chipping out the concrete beneath the tiles would create a lot of dust and take a full day at minimum, perhaps spilling into another. He wondered whether the estimator had raised a tile to check the subfloor, because the problem should have been visible then. I answered that the estimator had indeed raised one tile. He said the estimator had not done his job correctly. He called ACS, asked them to order the additional wood, and told them the job had to be moved to another date.
Several weeks later I phoned Home Depot and rebooked the installation for April 9, asking for 9:00 am. They agreed to that time and told me to call ACS myself nearer to the date to confirm. Ten days or so prior, I rang ACS, and they confirmed that 9:00 am was reserved for me.
By this time our second child had been born, and my wife again took both children to her mother's house for a couple of days for the installation. On April 9, at 9:40 am, I called ACS to ask why nobody had come. They said my name was not on their schedule that day, and that Home Depot had phoned them the day after I booked and changed the date to April 19. Neither company had ever called me to check on this change. ACS laid the confusion at Home Depot's feet. I added that I had called ACS ten days earlier and been given the 9:00 am slot. The representative had no reply.
ACS then located an installer who could make it, but he could only remove the old flooring, and the new floor would be laid the following day. They told me to expect him by 11:30. He came around 12:30 and was gone after 6:00. At roughly 3:15 that day, I rang ACS once more and was assured that an installer would show up by 9:00 am on the following day.
At about 9:45 the next morning, ACS called with word that the installer would be late, since the piece of vinyl cut for my floor had a flaw. Around 10:15 the installer himself called and said he was 25 minutes away. At 11:40 he rang again, reporting that his car had broken down and was being repaired. Shortly after that, an ACS representative called and said the car would be ready by 1:30.
I phoned ACS at about 1:30 for an update. The driver, I learned, was still waiting at Home Depot with his disabled vehicle. I requested someone in charge, either the owner or somebody supervising. I also wanted to know why he could not switch to another vehicle and leave a colleague with the disabled one, or why someone else could not collect the materials and do the installation, particularly after all the disruption my family had been through. They said someone would call me back. Nobody answered my request, and I never reached an owner or supervisor.
Just after 2:00, ACS called again, saying the car would be repaired in thirty minutes and then the installer would drive over, so he would arrive about 3:00. Their exact words were "Rest assured," which I thought was an amazing thing to say given the day's events. The crew finally came at 4:05.
After they inspected the kitchen, the installer reported that the vinyl came up short by 7/10 of an inch. None of the floorboard trim for one wall had been brought either. Again I asked for an owner or supervisor, and again I got only one of the ACS representatives who had been handling my case for two days. He said he had spoken with Home Depot and instructed them to prepare the right materials, which the installer would drive back to collect. His partner stayed to seal the seams on the wood underlay. The wrong and missing materials were blamed on Home Depot, and ACS took no responsibility for checking the materials before they came.
The installer left before 4:30 to get the correct materials. The seam sealing was finished in 10 minutes, and the installer who stayed had nothing further to do. His partner returned only after 5:30. The installer then decided that no second wood layer was required at all, which was the chief reason the original appointment had been postponed. They finished and left after 7:30. Because I expected everything to be completed by morning, I had to drop several things I had arranged for that afternoon.
After the job was finished, an ACS representative phoned to tell me he would speak with Home Depot about taking off the fees for unused materials and services, and about Home Depot sending us a gift card for the trouble we had been through. I told him this would be welcome. Both of us had already resolved never to buy from Home Depot again, but a gift card would partly make up for our frustration.
On April 14 there was a message from Home Depot on my phone saying they would handle the refund by phone. The next day I called back. The woman who had left the message was off that day, and whoever answered did not know how a refund by phone is done. She placed me on hold while she tried to find a person who did, and I waited 20 minutes before hanging up. When I called again, the same woman answered and said she had just come back to the line and still could not find anybody who knew the procedure. On the following day I got through to the woman who had originally called me, and she took care of the refund.
On April 19, I called ACS to ask about the gift card they had discussed with Home Depot. The representative sounded surprised that Home Depot had not yet contacted me. He said he would nudge them, and told me a $100 gift card was what we were to receive. On April 30 I called Home Depot and left a message for the expediter, and nobody phoned me back. Another message followed on May 4. This time someone left me a voicemail asking for the home number linked to the order, because I had given them my cell number. I called straight back and left the home number in a new message. No one has contacted me since. As I write this, it is May 20, and the gift card has not come.
Home Depot's customer service falls far short, and its subcontractors are not trustworthy. You should also know how ACS behaves when it works for Home Depot: it denies any responsibility whatsoever and points the finger at Home Depot for every problem. The installers told me several times during the day that Home Depot frequently messes things up, essentially shifting all of the blame for the past two days onto you. ACS also failed to say that its own employee was the one who put off the first installation by announcing that we required a second wood layer, and it never apologized.
I am grateful that you took the time to read this, and I hope to hear from you shortly. ACS and MeasureComp are receiving copies, and I have submitted the message through the Contact Us page of the Home Depot website as well. I wanted to send one to Kevin P. Bracken, who manages store #1225, but your website gives no email address for him. I am also sending this message to several consumer complaint websites, and I will be posting about this on my Facebook page.
0 comments