
Joel of Albuquerque, NM on Sept. 1, 2007
My wife and I were in the market for a portable dishwasher. We have a Home Depot credit card and checked the stores only to find out they can only be ordered online. Through my employer, I had some gift cards from Home Depot intending to use them to purchase the dishwasher. After checking online, I found out that the dishwasher was only available online and could not be delivered to a local store, but had to be delivered to our home. When it came to the payment screen, unbelievably, there was no option to pay using gift cards.
So we used our Home Depot card assuming there would be some way that we would be able to use our gift cards to apply it towards the purchase at some point.
Upon receiving the dishwasher at home, we made our way to the Home Depot location at 200 Eubanks SE in Albuquerque, NM. We stopped at the Customer Service station and asked about using our gift cards for the recent purchase only to be advised that it was not possible. We inquired as to our options and were directed to the Appliance department. In Appliances, we spoke to a salesman named Dimitri and after explaining our situation, he stated he would call the store manager and ask him what we could do. After speaking on the phone for several minutes, he advised us there was nothing he could do for us.
I asked him what were our options and he said, why don't you go to the front of the store and ask customers in line if they will buy your gift cards for cash. I thought that was a very odd thing for a salesman to advise us, so I told my wife, let's go back to Customer Service and I'll speak to the store manager myself. When I asked for the store manager at Customer Service, I was directed to a man standing nearby and I approached him, introduced myself and told him I was the customer asking about what to do with my gift cards. He looked at me like he didn't know what I was talking about and he asked me to tell him my story. I figured that this is not the person Dimitri in Appliances had spoken to, but I explained my situation to him anyway. He excused himself and returned in a few minutes only to tell me there was nothing he could do for me. So I asked him what were my options and he said he didn't know.
I said, I do have the option of returning the dishwasher, to which he replied, you can't return it here. I asked him for his name and he said it was Darren Jones.
The following day, I called Home Depot's Customer Service phone number and spoke to a very sympathetic representative named Kristin who after hearing my story, also advised there was nothing she could do except file a complaint against the store for what I was told I could do. I searched the internet and found a phone number for Home Depot corporate offices and called and asked to speak to Frank Blake, CEO and I was transferred to someone who identified themselves as Ella and that she was speaking for Mr. Blake. After telling my story again to her, she too said there was nothing that could be done, but that she would be submitting my concerns about using gift cards for payments online. By the way, she was far less sympathetic than your Customer Service representative.
To make a long story short; if Home Depot local stores do not carry an item and it is only available online and if gift cards cannot be used for payment for online purchases like other companies allow you to, and if I could not order the item and have it shipped directly to a store so that I could use my gift cards to pay for the item, what good are my gift cards for if I expressly got them to use for this purchase? Doesn't make any sense to me.