Deck Party Aside: Home Depot

So when Scott applied for his Home Depot card, his first purchase got 10% off, so we decided to get as much stuff on that charge with that discount as possible. We bought a lot of the hardware for the deck and also some tools we needed to build it. One of these tools was a miter saw:

Yay! It's been super useful!

But how we got to super useful is a funny little thing...

We originally bought the saw a few weeks ago, before we even ordered the Trex. We pulled it off the shelf, where is was packaged and advertised as "new", not as "used". So, we assumed it was new and we didn't open it until we were ready to use it.

So the morning we actually started building the deck and needed it, we opened it and it was very obviously used: filthy, coated in sawdust, scratched up, and missing several parts. So, my mom and I made one of many many trips back to Home Depot to exchange it.

So we got there and went to the service desk, and they were super nice about it and looked to see if there were another we could exchange for. There was, so they sent an employee over to take a look at it and make sure it was new. It wasn't. It had also been opened and returned, but we thoroughly checked and made sure all the parts were there and everything was in amazing shape, so we decided to take it even though it wasn't "new". We figured we'd ask if they would discount it since it had been opened. They said yes and gave us $35 off, which made it an amazing deal!

So we got it home and opened it up and we were about to put it together when we noticed...some parts were missing! We were a little puzzled until Home Depot called us (which was very nice of them) to tell us that when we were going through the box to make sure all the parts were there we forgot to put some of them back in the box...so back to Home Depot we went. We got those parts and then we were able to set up the saw and get to work. Kinda funny.

When we ordered the deck stuff we also ordered our new back door and the LVL header for it. The door was delivered just fine...but no LVL. It was pretty late on a Friday night when it was finally delivered so we went to Home Depot in the morning to see if we could find it. We looked, the employees looked, and it was nowhere to be found...yeah. They think the deliver guy picked it up but didn't deliver it and lost it somewhere along the way. Maybe he delivered it to someone else with their order. Either way, we couldn't put the door in without the header, so we had to wait until Monday, when the pro desk said they would find us an LVL, pick it up from the lumber yard themselves, and deliver it to our house in person. And they did, which was awesome...

The LVL was the wrong size.

Fortunately we were able to make it work, so no harm done I suppose.

It was just really annoying. We've always loved Home Depot; we still do. But when things keep getting messed up (I forgot to mention that when the decking was delivered there were some parts that were wrong. That was another trip to Home Depot to get the right parts...) we quickly become disenchanted with them.

But they're still better than Lowe's.