Complaint Review: Home Depot

I have a complaint of breech of contract against Home Depot, as well as a blatant disregard for customer service against both Home Depot and Mills Pride. Each and every transaction that I have had with the two companies, since the purchase of our cabinets, indicates that they are completely incapable or unwilling to properly fulfill their obligations in a timely and professional manner.

The Home Depot
795 Fairview Rd
Asheville, NC 28803

Mills Pride
Sales and Service
250 South Australian Avenue, 13th Floor
West Palm Beach, Florida 33401

Per the Home Depot Special Services order numbers our cabinet purchase was to take 6 days to install, by the installer they would assign. Installation began on November 27, 2002.

During the next month, I had several conversations with the Fairview Rd, Asheville, NC Home Depot, about my misgivings on how the install was progressing, both in appearance and the completion schedule. In mid December, the installer informed me that the job was virtually finished, and requested that I sign off on the POs. In response, I requested that the store send a representative, for independent assessment of the problems I saw in the job.

A meeting was set up, and we were asked to compile a punch list of problems. After viewing the installation, the inspector for the HD cabinet department agreed corrections were needed. An appointment was set up to return in early January, with the original installer. Though his return was against our inclination, it was explained that allowing the original installer the opportunity to correct the problems was company policy.

Some of the problems were resolved in early January. The bulk needed to wait until replacements for warped cabinet doors were received from Mills Pride, the manufacturer. This was anticipated to take two weeks, as HD receives orders from Mills Pride every week. On January 30th, I reinitiated the process by faxing a notice of dissatisfaction, along with a large, but incomplete list of over 90 outstanding problems.

On Wednesday, February 12, 2003, as requested by Home Depot, I met with Ben Harden of Mills Pride, Eddie Roberts, assistant manager of the East Asheville Home Depot store, and Mike Corvino, (the original inspector) also from HD. After taking almost three months to improperly install a 6 day job, despite my many attempts to get this job corrected, the extensive failings of the installation were further confounded with the insult of a plethora of illogical excuses and feeble justifications by the HD store assistant manager and Mills Pride representative. A few such examples being:

1) Because our range would not fit into the supposedly standard 30 opening between the cabinets, I placed a framing square on each side of the cabinets, showing that the kitchen bar was not perpendicular to the wall. Despite seeing this evidence, they repeatedly insisted that the cabinet installation was correct, and the cabinets were merely following the wall.

2) I should be content with the fact that the install was less than precise (doors and drawers out of square to the frames of the cabinets, for example), because a very exact installation would not remain so over time.

3) The assistant manager went so far as to attempt to completely discount the installation complaints by proclaiming that my discontent was not with the installation, but with the installer.

This is a small sampling from well over an hour that made almost no effort to resolve any of the projects shortcomings. One of the few positive results of the meeting was that a few warped and damaged doors would be replaced by Mills Pride.

At this point, I decided to contact Home Depot corporate office, via email (Feb. 16). Of course, my initial email resulted in an automated response (signed Ben Hill). Feb. 17, I got another email, this time signed by a member of the HD Customer Care Department. This note assured me that someone from corporate would be in touch. After hearing no more for the next two weeks, I attempted to reply to the personalized email, getting only the aggravation of another standard Ben Hill response.

Over the next two months, Mike Corvino did reduce the impact of a number of installation failures, modifying them to make them less noticeable, squaring up some doors and drawers. Not all issues could be resolved since some items would require major removal and reinstallation. After such a long delay, the floors and ceilings were now finished and such an overhaul held considerable potential for damaging the surrounding finish work.

The primary delay over these two months was the repeated failures of Mills Pride to send correct, or undamaged doors. Time after time, we received the wrong style of door, the wrong finish, doors that had nothing at all to do with our job. One would think that after a customer has encountered a three-month
delay, every effort would be taken to expedite the half dozen doors needed to complete the job.

Finally, after five months, we came to the best possible resolution of the job failures, without tearing out half our kitchen to recover from the errors at the base of the installation. It was agreed that some monetary reimbursement would be the most cost and time efficient correction.

For another month, I called the store manager at least once each week. Each call would conclude with the manager saying, I will call you back in a couple of hours, or Someone from the home office will be giving you a call. At the end of the next week, I would call again, and receive another dubious justification for no contact.

After 6 months of endless phone calls, aggravation, stress, and time lost just to result in a job of lesser standard than I contracted, it is my opinion that my account should be refunded no less than the full amount of the charge for labor on the job. This is a minor concession for the job failings (still outstanding) and my lost time. Home Depots offering was consistently less, or for store credit. Since I never again open myself to such an experience, by doing further business with either firm, store credit is not a resolution, but further insult.

Gordon
Burnsville, North Carolina
U.S.A.

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