[fabsroman]

Very good post Lilred.

Short of the matter is I hate Home Depot and Lowes, but they are here to stay and I have to deal with it. Pretty soon, there will be no more mom and pop shops of any kind. I live right next to a shopping center that has a Target, Kohl's, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Home Depot, just to mention a few. The Target, Kohl's, and Wal-Mart pretty much have the clothes shopping market pegged across the board except for those upper society shoppers that need a Macy's or something along those lines.

As far as Lowes itself is concerned, I had one heck of a bad experience there, not once, not twice, but three times.

Peeve #1 - I was shopping around for solid surfaces for my counter tops (e.g., Corian, Granite, Silestone, Zodiaq) and Home Depot had the square foot prices marked on their board. Lowes didn't and required that I make an appointment with a kitchen design rep to find that stuff out. The night I went to Lowes to find out how much that stuff costs, my fiance and I stood in the kitchen center for almost an hour without a single person asking if they could help us. My fiance eventually went to somebody in the section and asked if he could help us and he said he would be with us as soon as he finished helping the people he was with. After he finished with them, he went and helped another couple. I was pretty hot. When I went to the Customer Service desk, they were pretty rude to me. So, I sent an e-mail to Lowes corporate about how I was treated and I never heard back from them.

Peeve #2 - before the above occurred, I had ordered almost $8,000 of hardwood flooring from Lowes and probably wouldn't have done so if #1 occurred before hand. I was told that I had to order the hardwood from the same dye lot to prevent large variations, so I did that. I was told it would be in in about 2 weeks. Two weeks passed and no phone call, so I stopped by and there was no wood. Since I wasn't really ready to put the hardwood in yet, I waited a month until I stopped back over there. When I stopped over there, they had my 4 pallets of wood, but never had bothered to call me. I happened to have the truck with me so I took a pallet with me and came back later that evening with two trucks and a trailer for the remainder. Of course, during the time between the first load and going back, I had my brothers and a friend carry all 24 boxes of hardwood up three flights of stairs to the 4th floor of the townhouse. When I got back to Lowes, I found that the forklift operator had dropped a bundle of wood from the top shelf and it was now splinters. The guy there offered to sell it to me cheap, and I told him the only thing it was good for was burning. My brothers and friend were really happy to find out that we had to carry all the wood back down and return it because I had to reorder the entire lot.

Peeve #3 - the second lot of wood came in about 2 weeks later, which was rather good news. Problem was that it wook them almost 2 hours to find a forklift to get the wood down from the top shelf. Next problem was that the 4 pallets were not from the same dye lot, but since one ended in 25 and the other in 26 and after inspecting both of them, I decided that they were close enough for me to use. However, I was pretty pissed about having to wait so long and when I complained to the Customer Service desk, I got the same lady that was rude to me on Peeve #1. I was steeming at this point, but she was actually really nice to me. I showed her the 1" thick stack of receipts that I had from Home Depot and told her that Lowes might have received more of my business if they hadn't screwed up the initial wood order and they certainly wouldn't be getting any more of my business after this event. She refunded 10% of the purchase price to me for my inconvenience and it made me feel better.

Short of it is that I have been back to Lowes since. Albeit, not as often as I go to Home Depot across the street, but that is because it is across the street and Lowes is 10 minutes away. However, Lowes does carry some things that Home Depot doesn't, so I go there to get them.

To be fair, I am sure that Home Depot screws things up too. They were late on delivering my bathroom cabinets and one of the matching mirrors came with a scratch. On my intial bathroom design meeting, the design guy told me I couldn't use the cabinets I wanted because they were frameless and could not butt up againt the wall because they needed to have filler along the side for the doors to open properly. Hence, he wrote up a ticket for more expensive cabinets that weren't my first choice in style anyway. I pondered it for a couple of days and then made a second appointment and then dealt with a guy that ordered the exact cabinets that I wanted. They are upstairs in the bathroom with a granite counter top on them right now and they work just fine.

If you want top of the line stuff, like faucets, closet accessories, etc., you have to go to a place like Expo Design Center, a company owned by the same company as Home Depot, or the Great Indoors, a company owed by Sears which is now owned by KMart. Don't get me started on KMart buying Sears because I love Sears hand tools and I hate KMArt.

Lastly, I have a lot of clients in the contruction business and my father has done a bunch of home remodeling over the years. I hear complaints about both Home Depot and Lowes, but I guess almost any place will give you reason to complain if you frequent it enough. As far as tile and granite is concerned, I go to a wholesaler to get it and it is about half the price that Home Depot and Lowes sell it for. Regarding drywall and lumber, I go to a client of mine that owns a drywall installation company and it is cheaper than Home Depot and Lowes too. In the end, it is all about shopping around for the best deals. For appliances, I go to a company where I know the VP of sales.

I am praying that in about a month or so, I will have almost no reason to go to Home Depot, Lowes, or anywhere else for consruction materials. I would prefer to be hanging around in Best Buy and Comp USA looking for home theater stuff and computer stuff and maybe a couple of furniture places too.