Marc sent a message to Craig Menear – Chairman, CEO and President of The Home Depot email address that said:
I am a long time customer of Home Depot, but today I was saddened to find out the hard way that Home Depot appears to have a company oriented return policy, whereas Lowe's has a customer oriented return policy.
A little over two years ago I was starting the extensive renovation of a home that I purchased in Oklahoma. I purchased the home and planned to renovate the home with a very small inheritance. Being my first time buying/renovating a property, I over-eagerly bought some things too far ahead of time, therefore, many purchases ended up being put immediately into storage.
Several months into renovations, it became apparent that the house needed much more extensive renovations than had originally been anticipated. I was all ready to basically re-frame the entire house, when the whole structure literally collapsed. At that point, nothing was salvageable, so the house was razed and I have recently put the property up for sale.
Because of the collapse, I ended up with a lot of products from both the Home Depot and Lowes that I ended up simply not needing. Some of the items that I ended up not needing were a very large wooden fence order, consisting of many, many, fence panels, fence posts etc.. These fencing items had literally been out in the elements, on the property for about two years. Recently, I called Lowe's to see if they would accept a return on the items. Well, not only were they eager to refund my money, they also sent out their own Lowes truck to pick up the fencing and bring it back to a local Lowes store, for FREE! Lowes gave me back the entire $3500 value of the fencing and didnt raise an eyebrow over the age of the purchase. They simply saw that I had never used it, never installed it, and picked it up and gave me my money back.
Seeing as how Lowe's is Home Depots major competitor, I fully expected Home Depot to have a similarly customer friendly return policy. That being said, yesterday I cleaned out my storage unit and found over $700 in unused, brand new, still in the box products that I had purchased from Home Depot, all ordered through Home Depot.com.
I printed out all of the associated Home Depot order confirmations/receipts and packed up all of the Home Depot items and attempted to return them today at a Home Depot store in Owasso OK. Sadly, I was told that I can not return any of the items since I have had them for more than 90 days.
If Lowe's can gladly return my money on a two year old purchase worth $3500, surely Home Depot can do the same for $716.81 (before tax) worth of product.
Here are the order numbers to my purchases.
I attempted to return 14 out of the 15 varnish removers that I purchased.
I attempted to return 26 out of the 28 Multipurpose Adhesive that I purchased and 2 out of the 4 Kitchen And Bath Adhesives that I purchased.
I attempted to return 2 out of the 5 doorknobs that I purchased.
I attempted to return 1 out of the 1 demolition grout that I purchased.
Is there any way that I can still receive a refund accommodation from the Home Depot on par with what I recently received from Lowe's? It would be very unfortunate for me and my family if we had to completely rule the Home Depot out of any/all future home/building/gardening needs.
If there is something you can do for me, please contact me
Thank You,
Marc
