Like most of their compatriots, this big box store is lacking most severely when it comes to customer service and the basics of running a retail operation. My last few visits have been a disastrous waste of time, but after tonight I am just done with them altogether.
Not long ago, I was looking for something fairly simple, a decent sized tarp. I didn't care what color or what mil thickness, heck even the dimensions weren't particularly important. Just a tarp. Any tarp. My wife and I searched the entire store to no avail. There was not a single tarp to be had. Literally checked every aisle, some several times. The only employees we encountered were too busy stocking shelves to acknowledge a customer who obviously needed help finding something. Icing on the cake was some adolescent brat who was shopping with her father and a very obnoxious puppy dog. The bastard just barked like stupid at everyone it saw, and the snot nosed kid just put on her best shit eating grin the entire time. So to sum up, no tarp, just a waste of time and being barked at by some asshole with a non-service dog that the employees allowed inside. Strike One!
On my penultimate visit, I was looking for some rust remover, in particular Evaporust™, but could not find it to save my life. I finally ended up asking for help from some deer-in-the-headlights employee who just stared blankly at me until I repeated my request. He then directed me to the lawn care aisle. You can't make this shit up folks. Never did find any Evaporust™ because they do not carry it at all. Strike two!
Finally, I tried this evening to find some 3" long, 1/4" x 20 tpi hex bolts. Pretty basic stuff, yes? So I venture to their fastener department and, after wasting 20 minutes to figure out where they've hidden these, I mercifully find them. At this point I realize there are no bags and no pens and no means to actually purchase loose fasteners. The entire fastener section has no bags for labeling and pricing screws, nuts, bolts or what have you. Not one, not anywhere. So at that point my only option was to hold them in my hand while I finished shopping and memorize what I hoped was the right SKU number I would need at the register. It's worth pointing out, there are no instructions anywhere to indicate if you need the SKU-looking number, or the other bin number they seem to have put on everything, or both, or neither. In any case, realizing I also had to deal with 100% self check outs at this store and would probably have to beg someone to ring up these bolts for me, it took all of two seconds for me to decide "fuck it," and leave empty handed. Strike three!
I did try to call when I got home and speak to a manager, and express my displeasure about not being able to do something as simple as purchasing fasteners at their store. I was put in touch with Anthony, the "Service Desk Supervisor" who assured me there were bags there last time he checked, which he conceded was 6 hours prior. He then tried to explain that you don't need bags or SKU numbers and that there should be numbers cast into the heads of the fasteners to identify them. There were no such numbers, but there are symbols to indicate what grade of bolt (but not length, pitch, size and certainly not price). He also made it a point to tell me there were also bags in other aisles, like the plumbing section. Why the fuck should anyone have to wander the store looking for bags? What comes next, begging you to take my money? Oh wait, we already covered that (see above). Furthermore, why is someone who obviously never bought a fastener in his life, serving in any managerial capacity in the first place, much less lecturing customers instead of, I dunno, perhaps apologizing for the shit customer service experience and trying to make it right?
I asked for the district manager's contact info, but Anthony refused and directed me to a national customer experience hotline, more or less telling me that maybe those people would give a shit, because he obviously didn't. I'll be calling tomorrow to share my experience with the store's GM personally, along with the district manager afterward. As I often find myself saying, it's not hard to get this shit right. In the meantime, I am still in utter disbelief that it's this impossible to buy a fucking bolt at a Home Depot. read more