Home Depot
$400 gift card rebate denied on kitchen cabinet purchase

On April 29 I purchased kitchen cabinets, granite countertops and appliances from the Home Depot store on Taylor St in Green Bay. I was going to purchase elsewhere, but they had a $400.00 gift card offer with the purchase of kitchen cabinets, so I went ahead and ordered. I filled out all of the rebate information and sent them a copy of the special work order, as instructed, with the specific amounts highlighted. Then I started the waiting game.

After about 9 weeks, I casually mentioned the tardiness of the rebate to Dennis, the designer at Home Depot that I was dealing with. Oh, he said, that can take up to 16 weeks, due to the high volume of requests. OK, I'm by nature a really patient person, so I waited some more. June and July passed, still no word. Finally, in August I got an email: your request is being processed! Yes!

Uh, NO. After 9 more weeks (it's now Sept 29th, folks) I got a nice little note in the mail stating that my purchase was "not eligible." What? I specifically purchased those cabinets in that store because they were eligible.

Oh, there's an 800 number, I'll call and see what's up. After 12 minutes on hold, I got Jennie on the line. She explained that in order to review my request, I need to fax the whole 14 pages of fun to a number she gave me, but she cautioned me that it may take several attempts to send it because it's always busy. I asked if it's that busy, they must have a lot of issues with unpaid rebates. This got no response. I asked if I couldn't just fax it to her directly or to her attention. No, the fax machine is in another state and it will probably take some anonymous person 2 weeks to get it and then process the review of my request. I was given another number to call in 2-3 weeks to see if my information has been received.

This is the last time I will ever shop at Home Depot. We spent nearly 30K at this store on our remodeling, and the experience overall was lousy. This is just the icing on the cake. I'm a realtor by profession, and I talk to a lot of people considering a remodel, usually prior to listing their home. I will tell them to not even consider working with Home Depot, whom I now call Home Despots!

Why doesn't our department of consumer protection do something about rip-off rebates? I can't be the only one!

Company: Home Depot
Country: USA
State: Wisconsin
City: Green Bay
Address: 810 South Taylor Street

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