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Archive for the ‘Quality of life’ Category

To be fair, Michael from Home Depot’s customer care department contacted me within minutes of my blog posting explaining my recent adventure. Another customer care rep, Stephanie from the corporate office, has been working to try and resolve the situation but her efforts to connect me with the regional Home Depot people here in the Saratoga area have not yet been successful. I appreciate her efforts but I wanted to share some of the comments I received to my initial posting:

Peter wrote: “When I renovated my home in Rockville years ago, I bought the appliances and most stuff from Lowe’s. However, since Lowe’s was farther away, I opted to hire a contractor recommended by Home Depot (after buying some more things from them). Home Depot is the worst. The Lowe’s contractor finally straightened out what the Home Depot contractor did wrong/failed to do. One of the best examples? I asked the Home Depot supplied electrician to connect a dimmer switch to the chandelier in my dining room. They did, and it didn’t dim the chandelier, but rather caused the lights to go off and on in a bizarre pattern, with some bulbs popping like in a bad movie, smoke to issue from the chandelier, and the circuit breaker to blow. Guess they didn’t teach the Home Depot ‘partner’ what ‘ground’ and ‘hot’ mean in electrician school… apparently, I was lucky not to have lost the whole house to an inferno...”

Lynn wrote: “I have been on a mission for quite some time to let everyone know NOT to hire people whom Home Depot employs(or suggests)as subcontractors. I have yet to see one job completed by any of these subs that has come up to the standards of most LICENSED, INSURED contractors.The best thing you can do in the future is NOT hire anyone from a home store like that until you have properly checked out their credentials and/or referrals, as you would do with anyone working in a trade. It sounds to me like your plumbers might not be properly insured, as they should have had NO problem in correcting THEIR mistake. As for Home Cheapo…keep on them too, especially to report the plumbers as ‘Sub’ standard in their quality of work .”

Jeff wrote: “Been there done that with Home Depot. We use Lowe’s now (in our experience, much better customer service). Like you, we bought an expensive product from Home Depot and they farmed out the installation. When things did not go right (which, of course, they didn’t), Home Depot would not take any responsibility. And neither would the contractor. It was not a fun situation. We have not had a similar scenario with Lowe’s”

The adventure continues….

Addendum added on 9/17/09:

Home Depot has connected me with their insurance company and I’ve been asked to provide estimates for the project so that we can resolve this matter. I can’t say they I envy the customer service reps
their jobs but at least dealing with them has been a positive experience.

On July 27th, I purchased a water heater at the Home Depot in Saratoga who subcontracted with a Glens Falls plumbing company, Goldentouch Plumbin & Heating to do the installation. Due to negligence on the part of the installers, which they readily admit, our laundry room was flooded soaking the wallboard on several walls and some of the carpeting in the adjoining family room.

Goldentouch arranged for a restoration company to come in and do some emergency work using industrial dehumidifiers and removing the damaged wallboard. But the plumber balked at paying for phase two of the project: replacing and repainting the wallboard which had been removed, reattaching the wall and door moldings, cleaning the mud off the laundry room floor which had been tracked in the by the restoration team and cleaning the carpet which was dirty from muddy shoes and soggy boxes of books that had been stored in a laundry closet. Instead, Goldentouch opted to replace the wallboard themselves but refused to take any responsibility for the rest of the cleanup.



I complained to Home Depot who contacted Goldentouch about the problem. Goldentouch accused me of trying to take advantage of them. I explained that I just wanted to have my laundry and family rooms restored to the conditions that they had been in prior to the installation of the water heater. Goldentouch’s attitude was that they were the victims and I was the victimizer. They inferred that it was suspicious that I didn’t want to simply make a claim with my insurance company. I explained that it didn’t make sense for my homeowner’s insurance policy to pay for their mistake. I was told that Goldentouch planned to turn the situation over to their attorney.

I returned to Home Depot to recap the latest developments. The customer service rep informed me that it wasn’t a Home Depot problem and that I would need to resolve the issue myself with Goldentouch. I disagreed and suggested that it was, indeed, Home Depot’s problem since they had sold me the water heater and hired the installer. I was told that the district manager would then contact me about the problem. That was a week ago. I’ve heard from no one since.

At this point, I can’t give high marks for customer service to either Home Depot or Goldentouch Plumbing & Heating in Glens Falls.

A couple of weeks ago, New York Times writer Stuart Elliot had a column about the significance of the side-by-side bathtubs in Cialis ads. Here’s an insight from a person who does research in the field of semiotics:

“…those bathtubs…represent female sex organs.”

Hmmm.

Is there a Georgia O’Keefe reference here?

You can read the rest of the reader’s perspective here:

http://tinyurl.com/StuartElliot

Just when I’m getting ready to get into a summer frame of mind, it’s all over.

So, this afternoon while the sun was shining, the sky was blue and the temperature hovered near 80, I took some time off to spend an hour at one of my favorite spots in Saratoga Springs, Victoria Pool in Spa State Park and as I listened to Toby Keith warming up in the distance for tonight’s show at Saratoga Performing Arts Center said farewell to Summer 2009.

And I don’t feel guilty!