Home Depot After Hours

The customer service at Home Depot has drastically improved, no question about it, but I learned that going after hours is not the best time when you have questions. They used to have a slogan, “You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers,” but they should have prefaced that with “Before the hour of 6:00PM.” I’m not knocking HD, they are helpful and the people are usually really friendly.

The problem I ran into was when I needed to pick up some light fixtures for the bathroom. I needed two fan lights, the kind that kick in when you use your bathroom and make it more tolerable. I was told LaValley’s or HD. We had hockey games to attend, so I wasn’t able to do it during normal hours. I was going to have to go after hockey and supper at Boloco, which meant after hours. N said he’d accompany me, so we headed over and looked around. It was nice because the store was empty, but that can work against you when you need help, and I always need help.

First off, I need a 250ft. roll of wire, it’s called 12/2, heavy gage yellow stuff. I asked the girl at the counter and she was completely clueless. She called some guy to help, and he took me over to the wire area and showed me some 12/2, but it was twice the price I was told it would be. I told him so, and it was clear that he didn’t completely know what he was doing because furiously reading tags and labels. Typical HD syndrome. I sort of knew what I was looking for, so after a few minutes of searching, I spotted what I wanted. The difference was the stuff he gave me was outdoor wire. It’s gray and twice the price. I realized I needed indoor wire, which is yellow. I can’t completely fault the guy because he was dealing with insufficient information from me, but it just goes to show you if you’re clueless going into the place, you can come away with the wrong stuff. It ends up being a waste of time and money.

Our adventures didn’t end there. I still needed the fan light. I went to the light section and they had a few, but only a few. Their display shows probaly two dozen choices, but they only had about a half dozen in stock. N helped choose a style, which they didn’t have. I had to go back to the customer service woman and ask if they could order one, and you could see the disappointment on her face when she saw me coming. She basically told me I was better off just ordering it online. Thanks a lot.

In the end, I just ordered it on Amazon, because you can’t beat them for online ordering. That is, of course, as long as you get the free shipping.

Until the next time, thanks for reading, and thanks to BernardBoyGenius for the pic.