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.

Home Depot, You Suck.

Grrrrr.
I am mad.
Okay, not so much mad but disappointed.
Hubby and I set out to buy a new washer which we needed to replace pronto and a dryer so the new one wouldn't feel weird being the new kid on the block.
I didn't want a front load, I don't need the fanciest model. Just something that met our needs.
One of those needs was to be able to handle washing towels or rug loads without getting out of balance.
Grrrrr.
We had a very helpful salesman. Peter.
Peter listened to me and I had a lot to say. He looked at my husband often, who would give his "What she said..." encouragement.
When it comes to laundry I'm the boss. He's lucky if he remembers to sort...we won't go into that.
So when I told Peter I wash a lot of rugs, he told me about this one machine.
Guess what?
It was a front loader.
Hmmm.
As Peter was pointing out it's features a couple walked up and said "Excuse us, we couldn't help but over hear you talking about...We LOVE this machine."
They gave us some more details about their experience and walked away.
After Peter left us alone to debate what we were going to do. The Man came over again and talked about the machine. We thanked him and talked it over. We decided to purchase just the washer, it was a few hundred more then the top load, but it had all the features to meet all our needs, therefore worth the price and since it was the washer that wasn't working well we felt this was the way to go.
I asked about the pedestal price. Peter answered honestly that sometimes the prices rings up lower then the sticker price, but not always.
I was confidant that if we had any price issue that it could be solved with their price matching policy.
Once at home I went to work looking online at all the competitors in our area: Lowes, Menards, Sears, Best Buy. They all had the same price on the machine, however Home Depot.com had the pedestal $100 cheaper. That is some major cha-ching in our world. I printed off the information so we could go back the next day.
We were told we'd need to speak to a manager and since the manager was on his lunch break the assistant came over. He spoke to the clerk saying " They could not match the price because they would not get it for that price." He then added "Tell them to order it online." He then flippantly walked away.
He did not speak to US standing there, he only spoke to the clerk as if we were not there.
We said told them to cancel the order. If they couldn't give us a price match from their own website, they did not deserve our $1200 sale.
My Bro-inlaw told me nobody matches online pricing, that we either pay the price at the store or pay shipping for an online purchase.
Ah, in this particular case the shipping on the web was free and free install same as the store. Which you might be thinking okay order online then...well yesterday was Sat., today is Sunday the prices on the website have conveniently changed.

I'm sorry but I think it is appalling that a store can not or will not match it's own online pricing. It's utterly ridiculous in my opinion and since it is my blog, that's all the matters right? ;)

I can honestly say I will not set foot in another Home Depot store.