How I Complained to Home Depot Corporate Headquarters

I just contacted Home Depot corporate with a terrible complaint. Here is what happened and how I handled the situation. I hope other shoppers will follow my lead and voice their opinions to the store, the management team, and the executives at Home Depot.

On or around May 22, 2016, I ordered carpet from Home Depot in Longview Washington for my renovated rental house.  Mike, the sales associate stated if I ordered something in stock I could get it installed in approximately two weeks.  In just a few days someone came out to measure for the carpet.  We were given an install date of June 15th.  We coordinated with Home Depot that we would pick up the carpet to save the additional $75.00 fee if the installer had to pick up the carpet. The name of the installer for Home Depot was Romanoff.

Around the 13th of June I received a call from Romanoff that they were not installing our carpet on the 15th and they wanted to reschedule the install for July 7.  I said that was not acceptable because I had people moving into the rental on July 1.  My husband and I went to the Home Depot in Longview and met with Sarah in the flooring department. I told her I had been rescheduled for July 7 which was not going to work.  Sarah was very helpful and took meticulous notes on our order.

We told her we were going to just pick up the carpet and find another installer.  She informed us that the carpet had already been picked up by the installer even though we made prior arrangements to pick up the carpet ourselves She called Romanoff and told them that the install date of July 7 was not going to work.  Romanoff rescheduled our install for June 30.  This was an extremely tight schedule but at least our renters could still move in.

On June 26th we received an email from Romanoff that they would be at our rental in Longview on June 30 between the hours of 8 and 10 am.  On June 30 I took a day off from work to meet the installer.  The installer did not arrive between the hours of 8 and 10.  At 10:30 I received a call from Romanoff who informed me the installer was running late and he just left Vancouver.  She said he would be at my rental in approximately 40 minutes which was drive time since he had left approximately 10 minutes prior to calling me.

I waited till 12:30 pm and the installer was still not at the house.  I called Romanoff several times but no one would answer the phone.  I left a message but did not get a call back.  My husband called and was put on hold for 30 minutes.  Finally, a male associate answered the phone.  My husband asked what was going on and that we got a call informing us that the installer was on his way.  The male on the phone stated “You should have never been F-ing told that”.

My husband asked if I should wait around for the installer since at that point it was 3:00 pm.  He said not to wait because the installer was not showing up.  He stated he was going to get to the bottom of this and would call my husband back in 10 minutes.  He never did call us back at all.

Meanwhile I called Home Depot and spoke with a customer service person and told her about what was going on.  She said she could give me the phone number of Romanoff install.  I said I already had the number and I wanted a manager to call me and to call Romanoff.  I did not receive a call from Home Depot so I went there in person.  I met Brian who is the sales associate for cabinets.  I said I needed to cancel the carpet and I wanted to speak to a manager.  Todd, the manager of Home Depot came to the flooring department to meet me.

I told him the whole story of what transpired with this carpet purchase.  Todd was empathetic but stated he could do nothing to help me because it was not an “in store” issue and he had no power over the install company.  I thought that was an odd statement since I purchased the carped “in store” and Romanoff always introduced themselves as “Home Depot” installers.  In fact, Home Depot had already billed me two days after I had ordered the carpet “in store”.   No one took responsibility and I ultimately cancelled the carpet order.  I was meeting my renters in less than an hour to hand over the keys and I had no flooring in the house.

I went to Sloan’s Flooring located in Longview and told them my story.  Tina the sales associate called her installers who said they would install the carpet right away.  I picked out carpet and they installed it that night so my renters could move in.  This cost me approximately $1,000 more than what I would have paid had Home Depot and Romanoff had made any effort to follow through with their commitment to me as a consumer.

I have never seen such incompetence and irresponsibility ever for a large box store.  The pure negligence alone is beyond belief.  Romanoff has never contacted us to even apologize and Home Depot obviously continues to sell carpet with empty promises.  We will never order flooring from Home Depot again and we will tell everyone who will listen our purchasing experience and how poorly we were treated by both Romanoff and Home Depot.

I would not recommend that anyone do business with the Longview Home Depot they clearly have no conscience and do not care about their customers.  Incidentally we spent approximately $9,000 at Home Depot on our renovation prior to ever ordering flooring.  This did not matter as they have no loyalty to their customers.