Customer Complaint

The saga of my kitchen renovation, as told through my letter to the Home Depot National Customer Care Center.

Early this year, I took a home equity loan to renovate my kitchen. I shopped around and decided to purchase my new kitchen from Home Depot. I visited the kitchen designer and picked up cabinet catalogs. I measured my kitchen, drew out a design, and took it in for an estimate. The designer gave me a rough estimate, but told me the Home Depot experts would have to create professional measurements of my kitchen before any design could be finalized.

They came out and measured. I met again with the designer; we worked out a design and ordered the cabinets. The cabinets sat in my finished basement for a while, waiting for a slot in the installer's schedule. (I hired him independently - he is not a Home Depot installer.) One side of the kitchen went in just fine. The other side proved to be 12" shorter than the previous cabinet layout. This was a problem because I had installed new flooring after moving into the house. I told the designer that the new design would have to follow the same footprint as the existing cabinetry. It could take up MORE floor space, but not less. Now I had 12" of old floor clearly visible at the end of the cabinets.

My options were to live with a piece of old floor showing or add another base cabinet and order a new countertop. I chose the second solution. I feel the Home Depot is responsible for the cost of this new countertop. The original measurements upon which the countertop dimensions were based were clearly wrong.

I should not have had any old floor showing. The manager at the local store is basically telling me that it doesn't matter whether or not the original measurements were inaccurate, I signed the work order therefore I am responsible.

When a customer is working with a kitchen designer, they sign off on a design. They are not signing off that they have double-checked the measurements. I was told at the very beginning that my measurements were not professional enough and that Home Depot's experts would have to come out to the house to take accurate measurements before creating a design. If my measurements were deemed unprofessional, how can I be responsible to confirm the measurements provided by the Home Depot experts in order to avoid being liable for any mistakes they might make? It doesn't make sense.

I've spoken to John in your Customer Care office and he's attempting to resolve this issue. He's been very patient with me, a stressed out customer living in a house without a functioning kitchen at the holidays. (No counter, no sink. No sink, no water.) I just wanted to go ahead and email this to have on record. I feel the people at the local store have treated me very shabbily. I've spent thousands and thousands of dollars there over the past two years, since purchasing my fixer-upper home. They are unwilling to even split the cost of a new countertop, a $600 item, despite the fact that the problem is clearly due to their faulty measurements.

They are refusing to order a replacement countertop until I come in and sign something agreeing to pay for it in full. I consider that extremely inconsiderate, unreasonable and poor customer service.

To further brag on my most excellent boyfriend, he called me early this morning to say he'd been trying to figure out how to relieve my stress over this whole mess. He grabbed some wood from work, left-over from a government job. He's coming down on Friday to build me a make-shift wooden countertop, large enough to hold the new kitchen sink. This will provide me with a temporary water supply and the ability to wash dishes during the holidays. It means more work when the new counter finally arrives, disconnecting and installing the sink properly, but it will be a God-send during holiday entertaining.

I think Paul is beginning to rival Alex for sainthood, Kira!!!