Never buy from Lowe's Ever.

[Scott DeWar]

The problem is real. I bought and paid for a small chest freezer here in Nashville, Tennessee, with a debit card, on sunday before Memorial day. It just got delivered 3 weeks ago. I had to uber twice to check on it. Delivery guys claim I gave the wrong phone number. BS. I looked it up on my fon, new number and not memorized yet, and got it exactly right. I missed so many meat sales and that did not make for a happy me.

By the way, @Vraille Darkfang, I use to live on Leeway drive near Brown station Road. As an Electrician I loathed going into Lowes for parts.

 

[Deset Gled]

I had problems getting kitchen work done through Home Depot. My takeaway is: The only thing you ever want to buy from a hardware store is hardware.

My Kobalt ratcheting screwdriver is my favorite tool for rapidly removing a lot of screws in electronics. I have a Husky wrench in my kit that's gotten regular light use for the last ~6 years. But my high quality hand tools are Wera.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Since it's a necro'd thread anyway...

I'm sorry for people's experiences, but mine are the opposite. I only go to Lowes. Never had any problems that weren't quickly resolved, and I've probably spent $50,000 there over the last decade on various things.

Now home depot, that's a store I won't go to. For moral reasons. The founder is a grade A movie villain, and I refuse to support anything he created or profited from.

 

[Ryujin]

The only issue that I've ever had with Lowe's is the same one I've had with Home Depot....

 

[drl2]

Now home depot, that's a store I won't go to. For moral reasons. The founder is a grade A movie villain, and I refuse to support anything he created or profited from.

I want to avoid HD for that very reason, but it's hard to do! Lowe's and HD are pretty much the only places left to go if I need appliances, hardware, etc. and don't want to buy sight-unseen (or with shipping costs and delays) online. The HD and Lowe's in my town are just about next door to one another so it's easy to check both when I'm shopping for something... and HD is far better than Lowe's in actually having what I'm looking for in stock, often at better prices.

I had to quickly replace a failing refrigerator a couple of years ago. Would have bought from Lowe's but they couldn't get it to me without a wait of nearly a month, while HD would get the same model to me for a few $ less in under a week, and going without refrigeration for most of July just wasn't an option. While I was in the process of ordering one of the employees bragged about how HD had recently signed some sort of exclusivity agreement with a number of shippers and/or manufacturers - essentially contractually locking Lowe's out of the market for people who need an appliance on short notice.

Which made me want to buy from HD even less, but still... July. Ice cubes.

In HD's defense, though, I will say that an old friend worked at Lowe's for years and switched to HD, and she claims that HD is a vast improvement from the employee's viewpoint.

 

[Deset Gled]

In HD's defense, though, I will say that an old friend worked at Lowe's for years and switched to HD, and she claims that HD is a vast improvement from the employee's viewpoint.

I was going to talk about HD's program to support Olympic athletes (basically, letting them work flex hours or part time for standard full time pay), but a quick search shows they actually ended the practice around 2009. Looks like a similar program has been picked up by Dick's sporting goods.

 

[Beleriphon]

Take this story and all your evidence and hand it over to the equivalent of the better business bureau. Then take it all and post it over a few places on

The BBB I useless, all it does is measure if a company responded in a timely fashion. If you complain and they respond same day that as a AAA rating. Doesn't matter what the actual outcome is to them at all.

 

[MNblockhead]

I shop at Home Depot a lot. Only had two mistakes on their parts over the years. One was in my favor (delivered double amount ordered of some trek decking material, they didn't want to bother picking it up so I sold it on Craig's List, which helped defray my deck costs), the second was getting some parts wrong but they were professional about correcting it, even giving me a discount on the total cost to make up for the hassle. Now, I suspect that my experience have something to do with the large amounts of money I've spent there in a short period of time and I'm usually dealing with the Pro desk.

For appliances, I only buy from Costco now, unless I really want a brand/model they don't care. The prices are very competitive and the service has been excellent. Most recently I ordered a refrigerator online and within a few days had a new one and the old one taken away.

For services, though, I tend to go with smaller family owned local places with excellent references.