Home Despots -- NEVER again!

Looks like you had two uninformed people, the Home Depot woman and the "boy", a bad combination. I would be pissed off, but at both of them.

i

[snip tale of woe]

That's the wrong lesson to take out of this experience. The *right* lesson is that the next time you need specialty electrical supplies, go to an electrical supply house. Not to one of the home centers.

snipped-for-privacy@milmac.com (Doug Miller) fired this volley in news:hte2bo$acq$ snipped-for-privacy@news.eternal-september.org:

That's nice -- an hour one-way to the nearest wholesale electrical supply, 15 minutes to HD or Lowes.

There was a time-critical element here: Not that it would have taken longer to go to Graybar, after all's said and done.

And no... you don't get mad at the errand-boy, Iggy. He's an errand-boy, not an electrician. He had the specs IN WRITING. All the broad at HD had to do was fill the order -- after all, the manager said SHE was a qualified electrician!

Lloyd

That does change things, indeed.

i

Why? Did Lloyd say he hired the boy to be informed, or just to be good enough to drive a truck? If he told the kid "give them this here paper and everything will be OK" then it's not the kid's fault in any way shape or form.

Doug sez:

"That's the wrong lesson to take out of this experience. The *right* lesson is that the next time you need specialty electrical supplies, go to an electrical supply house. Not to one of the home centers."

Right on, Doug, right on !

Bob Swinney

Where are you, that it's an hour each way to the nearest electrical supply house?

And 6+ hours of waiting and arguing before you finally got the right thing.

Which was, after all, exactly my point...

It was just your turn in the barrel. If not this, then something else. Be glad no blood was spilled and nothing caught on fire.

Sorry, I can't go to Lowe's, they're on my 1 year black list - again.

Never ask any questions of big box store personnel, or answer any of their questions. State what you require and that is all.

The two Home Depots near me have fairly decent electricians on staff. The down economy of Michigan might have something to do with it.

The reason I know they are decent is my brother who is a master electrican worked with them back when he was in the union and he vouched for each of them.

I called Home Depot today about a specific mower, they told me they didn't have any except the display model so they can't help me. So I go to the local lawn and garden place and guess what, every model they have is on display ready to fill with oil and gas.

So they load the assembled machine (they oiled, fueled and showed me it ran first) on my trailer and then told the guy in back to get another box of that model and put it together for the show room floor.

IF Home Depot had one in a box, it would have been 20 dollars less, not having to put it together when I got home was worth it.

Getting back to the subject of wire, Home Depot often is less expensive than the local electric house. I don't know if it is a loss leader or what but my brother has got some killer deals on wire their when the market was jumping up and down or Home Depot changed suppliers and cleared stock. Home Depot does some strange things at time.

Wes

Wire is not a specialty electrical supply, it is an ordinary commodity.

Lowe's opened up a hardware store here, a city in America, about a year ago. Everything in the store, from the front door to the exit, is marked equally large in both English and Spanish.

I promptly left, and will never return.

F*&% Lowe's.

Jon

Here they just hire morons:

1) I needed 9 feet of 14/3 cable to replace a power cord. You have to find an "associate' who has to find another "associate" who is qualified to operate the code-locked wire carousel. After establishing why I needed the said wire and twiddling the said carousel we determined that they run out of the said cable. "It is on order, don't know when it will be in". Walking away I found a 9-foot 14/3 power cable on the shelf 10 feet away complete with a plug...

2) Just after they opened I bought a 15Amp Ridgid circular saw which had a horribly wobbly footplate that could not be put right easily. I returned it the next day only to get into the argument with one of the muppets who insisted that I brought the wrong receipt. They give you two receipts but the "duplicate" does not have the bar code on it. Of course no-one tells you when you pay for the item. After a frank exchange of views on the quality of training of the "associates" she made the exchange.

The reason that I still shop there is that RONA *really* sucks...

I needed a computer a few years ago. Fastest deal was to buy one from Best Buy. I walked in, looked for a few minutes, and then a sales person walks up and asks me if he can help. I pointed to a computer tower and said I want one of those, then he starts asking me what kind of computing I plan to do, and that if I buy the packaged computer, monitor, keyboard and monitor I will get a better deal, questioning me on RAM and HD size, bla bla bla.... I told him if he wants to keep trying to ask questions, and recommending other items, to find me someone else to help, as I know what I want, I just need someone to find the boxed items on the shelf! He smiled and said, "yes sir!" and started pulling the items off the shelf I asked for. The deal went smoothly after that! Greg

Lowe's is no better.

I needed to have a piece of Plexiglas cut to 28.75" x 24.5". I had a slip of paper with those measurements on it which I gave to the ASSociate. The ASSociate ignored the scale built into the machine and marked the plastic, then proceeded to cut it to 28". I told him it was wrong, apparently he was unfamiliar with the concept of decimal fractions. He then started to get another piece of Plexiglas. I pointed out he could trim the 28" to 24.5" and cut the 28.75" in the other axis. Since he had no idea what I meant, I showed him how to put the sheet back in the machine, line it up with the built in scale and cut it to what I needed. I probably violated a dozen company policies by doing this.

I haven't been back to Lowe's...and not because that store closed about a year and a half after it opened.

David

When the big box stores started, they were supplying reasonable cost items to DIYers and small contractors with their primary advantage being a wider selection and longer hours. They have now shifted to supplying a combination of overpriced adequate items and lower priced garbage items to those who don't know any better. It's reached the point that you are often better off entering an online order to McMaster or the like and getting the correct high quality item delivered the next day for nearly the same price.

My dad has been waiting over six weeks for Lowes to deliver and build the shed he paid for. They just keep putting him off with one lame excuse after another. At least Home Depot had the balls to admit they didn't have a certified contractor to do the work when he talked to them.

Then why isn't she working as one?

We were working on a house at the same time a kitchen contractor working through HD was supposed to install the custom cabinets from HD. They ripped out the old stuff because HD said everything was in so do the demo. When the shipment got dropped they started opening them up to install and over a third of the cabinets were damaged. Of course the range and sink cabinets were damaged. So sorry no home cooking until the replacement shows up in 3 weeks. Karl