Home Depot made it right.

I gotta say that after yesterday I never thought I'd say that stores name again unless it was followed by "sucks".
I did all the things one would do.
I wrote Home Depot an email explaining what happened to us, and when I hit the send button I got an error page, which I thought was pretty ironic since their costumer service was so stellar. (dripping with sarcasm.)
It sighed and said well, they wouldn't look at us in the store so why would they want to hear about our experience on their website under contact us.
I blogged about it, I facebooked about it, I sent an email to our local paper "the Watchdog" who intervenes on consumer's behalf when they can't get anywhere.
So imagine my surprise when I got home this afternoon and found there were 3 voice mails from Home Depot.
The first one came from Corporate headquarters.
The other two were from our local store: The General Manager and Assistant Manager respectively.
All of them  sincerely wanting to talk to me about my experience and make things right.
I sat there, breathing in and out.
In ~ patience, mercy...
Out ~ resentment, hostility...
In.
Out.
In.
Out.
With each new breath debating whether or not I should call.
Could I explain myself in a calm, collected manner?
Did they deserve the chance?
In the end it was my need to be heard that won. I was looking for nothing in return, I wanted to be heard, I wanted to tell them they had a policy and they wouldn't honor it and then they simply disregarded us. That is was wrong, dishonest.
If not for us, then hopefully a change would come from this and someone else would benefit.
That was what I hoped for when I decided to call them back.
It was the sincerity in the voices that gave me the courage to call.
I first talked to Grant, at our local store, he is the assistant manager.
He was kind, concerned and humbly apologized.
He made us an offer and then asked if I could hold just a moment because his boss, the GM, wanted to talk to me.
Barely 5 seconds pasted and I was speaking to another kind, concerned voice; Jeff.
He humbly apologized and told me "I want you to know things will be handled, and that's putting it nicely." when I told him the name of the employee who *cough* helped us last night.
We chatted about their policy, I asked a gazillion questions. He assured me.
I told him I only wanted what I thought was fair. A price match. Again he assured me.
We were speaking the same language, on the same page, seeing eye to eye.
He asked us to please come back in, let them earn our business back.
I told him I'd have to talk it over with my husband.

We talked it over with his Dad. (His dad was there the night before and witnessed the poor treatment, and let me tell you, it takes A LOT to rile Gary. He was even ready to to boycott H.D.)

I did my research and realized that the machine we had purchased & canceled was "miss represented" to us. The salesman told us it had a steam feature, it did not.
The upgraded model was the one that had steam. It was also nearly $300 more in price.
I found a price online I would be willing to pay for the upgraded model. The price included tax and shipping. I also brought along a price quote for the model without the steam feature, just in case.

Grant came and met us when we got to the store, He sat down with us, apologized again and reiterated that they wanted to make this right.

I showed him the price matches I found, Rob explained the miss-representation on the lower model and one that had the steam feature.

Grant offered us the upgraded model for the online price of the lower no steam model.
That was a huge difference in price in our favor.

I declined.

I told him we would pay the price I found for the exact model as long as he matched that price.

I think he was stunned.

I know my husband was! Sorry Honey, I'm too honest.

It was the fair and honest thing to do.

I hate dishonesty, it crushes my spirit and felt that it would be dishonest of me to take advantage to this situation. They had already offered to give us the pedestal free.

We agreed on the price, got 10% off because it got the energy star discount.

Rob and I walked out of there in disbelief. We thought we were going to get the pedestal price matched. They did one better, the price matched an upgraded machine and gave us the pedestal.

They turned it around, they took our needs and our concerns and honored their policy.
Which is all we wanted in the first place.

Thank you Home Depot, for answering my email, when I didn't even know it actually went through!
For passing it on to our store.
Thank you to Jeff, who was honest with me, listened to my concerns and answered my questions. Who restored  trust.
And a BIG THANK YOU to Grant who made us feel like costumers, who gave us his attention, for showing his concern and for caring about making a wrong situation right.