On 4/30/19 I order a Troy-Bilt lawn tractor from the Home Depot website and was given a delivery window between 5/13 & 5/21. The days came & went but no tractor so I called them. I was told it was being shipped via Estes & the associate called the terminal. He was told by someone at Estes that they had it but didn't have some required content label so they didn't know what to do with it. Never once did the Home Depot associate think to ask Estes if that was the case why they called them rather than just letting it sit there for weeks. I was then informed the supervisor at Estes was on vacation so they couldn't provide a delivery date until he got back.
So I waited until the day of this elusive supervisors return & called Home Depot again. I was told it would deliver the next day, it did not. I was however texted a tracking number from Estes & was able to use it to get in touch with the terminal directly. This time the person "assisting" me at Estes gave the excuse of "Oh, we thought someone was coming to pick that up." Don't you just love being lied to over & over? Of course, this person had no idea I worked in the trucking industry once upon a time & am therefore fully aware of trucking companies practices of sitting on what is know as an LTL shipment until they have a full truckload of them; they make more money that way. But, they did deliver it later that day.
So, it's the evening of 5/31 & I get home to find the lawn tractor sitting on my carport in a shipping crate, it had arrived in a "some assembly required" state, lovely. As I'm unable to get to that particular bit of unpleasantness right way it sits, useless on my carport a few days.
So, when I finally have time to wrestle the tractor out of the shipping crate & deal with the assembly I hook up the battery cables, no biggie; put on the steering wheel, check; attach the seat ... ut oh, nope, not happening, missing parts.
I call Home Depot again & talk to a nice lady who's very apologetic & promises to arrange to get me the missing parts & promises she will call me back the next day. I'm a patient person, many would say too patient perhaps but I wait several days, I give her a chance to come through for me. Alas, I never hear back from her or anyone else at Home Depot for that matter & still no parts have shown up either.
I called Home Depot again last night, 6/6/19 for anyone keeping track, & end up on the phone with an associate for nearly an hour. There were absolutely no notes in their system regarding any of the times I had contacted them or of the issues I was having. But, she swears up & down that she's going to get the problem resolved for me that very night. She gets in contact with someone further up the food chain than herself which took a ludicrous amount of time, they apparently don't talk to each other either. But, after nearly an hour of inane chit chat I'm told Greselda the "higher up" person is going to email me promptly at 9:00AM this morning, to both my personal & work emails just to make sure I get it first thing in the morning. The associate was quite pleased with herself for having "resolved the issue" for me. I didn't consider the matter resolved since I still had no idea when or how I was getting my missing parts but sure, whatever. There was always a chance she was telling me the truth so I opted not to rain on her parade eternal optimist that I am.
When I got home from work this evening, having gotten no emails from Home Depot to my work address I checked my personal email. I did have an email that was sent at 1:17PM but it was from the same lady I spoke with last night, not Greselda the Higher Up as I was told it would be. The email, generated from a "do not reply" address, contained only the phone number of the manufacturer & a contact persons name. Does anyone out there think that is taking responsibility and taking care of your customer? I sure don't. As far as I'm concerned they just dumped the problem back in my lap.
So, now it is 8:44PM on the Friday evening of 6/7/19, 5 weeks after ordering my lawn tractor from Home Depot & I still can't mow my now 2 feet tall grass. It's highly probable it will be Monday before I even have a chance of speaking with someone useful with the manufacturer. Which will be difficult as I will be at work myself all day Monday. Issue resolved? I think not.
Want to take a guess at my honest opinion of Home Depot? You'll have to guess because I'm sure anything I might say from this point on would be so heavily censored you'd never have even seen this post in the first place. read more