Home Depot
Kitchen Remodel Problems: Wrong Granite Cut, Delays, Poor Service

Rather than rant again, I am going to copy the letter I sent to Home Depot's president and vice president 2 days ago:

Gentlemen:

I am writing this in an effort to make you aware of an extremely disappointing experience we are having with your company.

On or about August 25 [typo - this was July 25], my husband and I went to your store at 9600 Metcalf, Overland Park, KS to shop for some items for a kitchen remodeling project we had undertaken with the assistance of a local contractor. Our initial contact was a salesman named Bill in appliances, who showed us several items we were interested in: a refrigerator, microwave and oven. He mentioned not only the rebates available but the fact that if we signed up for the Home Depot credit card, we would receive an additional 10% off all our purchases. Thinking this was a good deal for us, we decided not only to sign up for the credit card, but to purchase several additional items to maximize the 10% first purchase discount. We made the decision to buy not only over $4,000.00 in appliances but a $1,000.00 French door, a $300.00 sink, a faucet set for approximately $140.00 and over $4,000.00 of granite countertops. When the salesperson who sold us the granite told us that not only was the granite not eligible for the discount, but also there was no more than $200.00 total discount available, we were understandably upset, feeling that we had wasted an entire night in your store only to have the "rules changed" on us at the last minute.

At that point, we were directed to speak to Shane, the general manager, who discussed the situation with us and said that, after realizing how much money we were planning to spend, he would give us our 10% discount on the following Friday if we would buy/order everything that night. That was acceptable to us, so we went ahead and ordered our items.

While we were in the kitchen section ordering the granite, agreeing to pay an additional $175.00 for our sink to be undermounted, the salesman who helped us choose our sink happened to overhear our order and asked, given the color of granite we were ordering, whether we would like to see a sink that was virtually the same as the black sink we had chosen, but was in a custom color and had been returned. We agreed, and as the sink was a good match for our granite, we accepted his offer to sell us the returned sink for the same price as the stock black sink. The saleswoman in the kitchen area who was writing up our granite order was observing, commenting on how well the colors would match. At no time did either salesperson check to see if there was a "template" in the sink box for the granite contractors to cut a hole in the granite for the undermount sink.

The first thing after that to go wrong was when our contractors went to pick up our French door the day it was supposed to be in your store per the "delivery date" printed on the invoice, August 8. My contractor called me asking where the door was. I called Home Depot and was told the door was delayed. Not more than a day or two later, I received a phone call from Maytag saying that the $1600.00 stove we had ordered would not be available until September 23. I called Maytag the next day and was told that only a certain amount of appliances were allocated to Home Depot, and those had been exhausted. The Maytag rep could not help me (her suggestion was to cancel the order and go to Sears), but she did confirm that the same stove in a different color was in stock. About this time, when the granite contractor came out to measure for our counters, it was discovered that the template in the sink box was for a top-mounted sink, not an undermount.

I called the Home Depot, first speaking to Carlton in appliances about the unavailability of our stove. He said he remembered ordering the stove for us and mentioned that "if it wasn't in stock, the computer would not have let me order it," and promised that he would call Maytag and see if they could shift the stove we wanted to Home Depot in order to get it on schedule. When I went to the store that evening after work, I told him that, if this was not possible, we would take the stove and microwave in the different finish that Maytag had previously confirmed to me was in stock. I also mentioned to him the problem with the sink template. He said, "Let's go get that fixed." He took me to the section where the sinks were, but there was no salesperson. After a short discussion, I mentioned that our "custom" sink was supposed to be the same as the black sink in stock, and he immediately opened a box containing a stock sink and gave me the template from there.

The next place I went was the lumber section, where I was told that the door promised to us on August 8 would not be available until August 17 at the soonest. After being shown some much poorer quality doors as replacements (I already had a 6' x 8' hole in my house waiting for the door that should have already been there), I decided to cancel the door and have my contractor provide one. Mind you, no one had called me to tell me ahead of time the door was delayed. I only learned of it after my contractors wasted a trip to pick it up.

Thinking our problems were solved, I took the template and went home. The next wrinkle came when I had a message on my cell phone from Pat Harvey, our Home Depot "customer service representative," expressing surprise that there was a template for the sink at our house (the one Carlton had so kindly procured for me) when the granite people showed up AGAIN to measure. According to the granite contractor, though, the template was not right, and she would have to contact Blanco, the sink manufacturer, to send us the correct template. I agreed to have her order one and let the granite contractors know when it came in. At this point we had been without a kitchen sink for almost 2 weeks and were relegated to washing dishes in our bathtub.

On September 1, I arrived home to find a FedEx envelope from Blanco that contained an undermount template for a single bowl sink (the sink we bought had a double bowl). The invoice showed that Pat had ordered the correct template, but Blanco sent the wrong one. I contacted Pat the next day to let her know, and she expressed concern and said a correct template would be re-ordered. By the next week, no template had arrived, which I informed Pat of. About this same time, we had received our stove and microwave and, rather than continue to live off fast food for another week, reluctantly decided to have our back counters installed, not with the granite we had originally ordered but with stock Formica tops (our stove, a drop-in model, could not go in without the countertop being installed first). The night we chose those countertops (at a competitor's store), we saw a different color of granite that we really liked. The next day I called Pat and asked her, since our granite had not to my knowledge been cut yet, if she could check and see if her contractor had the same color. When she called me back, she said they did not have that color but one with a similar name. I said I did not care for that choice, but I did like the one Home Depot had called "Blue Pearl." At that time I was comfortable feeling that Pat was aware of the fact we might want to change our color choice.

By the end of that week we had still not received our template. That Friday, when I called Pat (since she did not return my call Thursday) to let her know, she said she would look into the situation and get back to me. Later that day, she told me that "the fax order had gotten lost" and she had re-ordered. I told her that was not a problem, FedEx delivered on Saturday and surely we would receive it. She said she did not work on Saturday but to let her know if it did not arrive. When the template did not arrive Monday, I called her Tuesday. She told me she would check again and call me back. When she did call me back, she said that Blanco was being difficult and she had arranged to have the granite company pick up our sink and make their own template. I was fine with that, telling her that no one would be at our house until 5:15 pm due to work schedules, and asking whether the granite people would be willing to come out that late. After waiting for her to check and call me back, it was agreed that someone would come out Wednesday. Pat then asked me, "Did you make a decision on the color?" I replied, "No, I want to wait until they are ready to cut it" (needing to finalize the decision with my husband, as we were both aware the new color we considered was quite a bit more expensive). The conversation was over at that point.

I thought no more of it since Pat had asked me about the color decision and I had not made a commitment to her at that point.

Wednesday night a gentleman came by for the sink. He told me he was not from the granite company but was picking up the sink as a favor to his wife. I thought nothing of it at the time, but the next day I had some concern that I had let a $300.00 sink walk out my door with a stranger. I then put a call in to Pat (wanting her to make sure that the sink was actually at the granite company). I did not hear back from her that day or Friday, the day after, and unfortunately I was not able to follow up because my office was involved in drafting and filing a lengthy appeal brief. The next thing I know, Monday morning, the 19th, Christy from the granite company called my cell phone to tell me the installers would be there Thursday. I asked her if anyone had confirmed what color I wanted, and she expressed mild surprise, mentioning that if I had wanted to change colors I needed to go through Home Depot and write a new order. I said fine, I can do that, but she asked me to wait until she made sure the fabricators had not cut our counter from the original color we ordered. When she called back, alas, the granite was already cut and there was nothing they could do. I called Pat at Home Depot to convey my distress, and although at least 4 times she confirmed having asked me "Did you make a decision on the color?" she said she did not remember me saying anything other than "no" (not what I said, which was "No, I want to wait and decide when they are ready to cut"). She did say, however, that once I responded "no" to her question, she took that to mean no, I had not changed my mind from the original color. At that point I became upset, feeling that the decision about what I was spending my money on and how my kitchen job would be completed had been taken away from me. Pat continued to defend her position, offering no explanation other than that she thought she knew what I meant, and since the granite had been cut there was nothing that could be done. I went so far as to ask her that, knowing what we had been through so far, and knowing we might have wanted to change the color of the granite we ordered, would it not have crossed her mind to call one of us and confirm "What color do you want?" before the cuts were made, and she conceded that yes, it might have been a good idea, but she didn't do it, so here we are and that's what I got. I called her again Tuesday to make sure there was nothing that could be done to rectify our dilemma. I was again given the same explanation that perhaps she had misunderstood me, but what was done was done and I had no other recourse. On the verge of tears, I ended the conversation.

Today, September 22, I asked my husband to call Pat and get a total of the square feet of granite that would actually be installed in our kitchen. When she did not return his call after 2 hours, he called back and waited on hold for almost 20 minutes before she would take his call. Pat laughed at my husband when he mentioned that the order was "messed up," and my husband quite naturally took offense, reminding her calmly that it was not funny that we would apparently be left spending a great deal of money for something that was not what we wanted, and that if she had been doing her job this would not have happened. She unequivocally replied, "I am doing my job." He also went on to point out that one night when he had been in the store on another matter, the person at the service desk could not find documentation for the sink template having been reordered before September 8, at which point Pat told my husband "I'm not talking to you anymore" and hung up on him.

Tonight, after having spoken to Craig, the "acting manager" at the store, we were called by Brian, who identified himself as the kitchen department manager. After going over the situation several times with him, it was glaringly apparent that the purpose of Brian's call was not to rectify the situation, but to spin it so that we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that responsibility for our dissatisfaction rested squarely on us and the fact that we had, horror of horrors, changed our minds. There was also an outright accusation that we were trying to "get something for free." Brian spoke to me in a condescending tone about the nature of special orders and how we could not possibly expect to change the granite color "after it was cut" (even though I had discussed the possibility that we would change with Pat more than once before the sink had been taken from my home for the template to be made). He highlighted how seemingly unreasonable it was for me to expect to hear from my customer service representative when I indicated I thought I would receive some notice before the granite was actually going to be cut, by telling me that Home Depot could not possibly be expected to call each and every one of their customers constantly to see if they had changed their minds (although it seemed perfectly alright for Home Depot to change delivery dates, in-stock items to out-of-stock, etc. without notifying the customer who had already paid for the items, and the customer had better be the one running Home Depot down to find out where things stood). When he asked me what I would like in order to be happy, I indicated that having the countertop made in the color we were gravitating toward, the Blue Pearl, would be acceptable, and he said that could be done if we would pay for the one that had been cut as well. (I attempted to make it clear that I would be glad to pay the DIFFERENCE for the more expensive granite, but not for 2 full sets.) Since I have no need for 2 sets of countertops, around and around we went again until I asked him what HE would be willing to do for us since my request was not acceptable to him. His reply was, "I will have your countertop installed tomorrow" (which would have happened without his imprimatur). I then asked him if he was comfortable, if he was satisfied with customers having the experience we have had with Home Depot, and he said, "I don't do this for my satisfaction." The conversation closed with my asking to speak to a manager above him. We were not called back.

I would like to ask you, then, the same question I asked your department manager. Are you satisfied knowing this is the experience your customers are receiving? Does this have your approval?

Company: Home Depot
Country: USA
State: Kansas
City: Overland Park
Address: 9600 Metcalf Avenue

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