Battle of the Builders (Merchants)

*Disclaimer: The following views are purely the opinion of Mrs. Remodel based on her true-life experiences at the soon to be mentioned stores. Other people going to these emporiums on future occasions may experience better or worse situations. Readers are advised to consult their doctor, personal life coach, or TV DIY guru before embarking on regular visits to any DIY retail structure.

One word you have been hearing a lot of and will hear more of is Lowes. We love Lowes. It is our opinion that their prices and products are generally better than Home Depot although I have to say that sometimes, Home Depot’s customer service is better than Lowes but not always.

Case in point. There we were in Lowes, soon after taking over the house, looking for some cheap blinds we can put up because Mr. & Mrs. Previous owners had taken all but one of the window coverings with them.
A lady in a Lowes vest walks by and asks if she can help us. She directs us to these super little paper blinds that stick on the window frame and look like the real thing from outside.
When we tell her about our big remodeling project she whips out her card showing she is actually the store manager and writes us out a 10% new homeowners discount card. Thank you very much. Later on after we have spent about $10,000 she gives us another one. Thank you very much again.
We managed to get another coupon through the Post Office Moving pack and Lowes sends us another coupon ($10 off a purchase of $50) through the post (mail). Thank you multiple times.
So we are in Home Depot looking at stuff because we don’t want to cut our choices down and I ask someone at customer service if they also give new homeowners a 10% off coupon? No they do not. I tell them that their competitor does. Well, I’m told, if I would like to bring my Lowes coupon in they will honour it. Actually I would not like to. Perhaps someone would give that much business to a company that doesn’t want to give me a coupon itself but will honour Lowes’ coupon, which Lowes has paid to have printed and mailed out at its expense. But I am not that person.
Our coupons have long run out but we are still at Lowes several times a week getting the stuff we need.

We did buy our kitchen appliances from HD because they had a good deal in December and because we didn’t have to have them delivered straight away. At the time we chose to pay for the HD installment service but then changed our minds. With HD we would have to have the items delivered and installed at the same time. But when we discussed the kitchen with the installers, they needed to have the appliances there to ensure enough space was left but not installed. So having HD do the installation was not going to work.
So we toddle back to HD and explain this and ask for a refund for the installation costs we’d paid. Even though, installation is an optional cost that can be added on and has its own itemized cost and separate entry on the order, they could not just refund the installation costs. They had to, they said, refund the cost of the whole purchase and sell it to us again less the installation items! That sounds fine though more than a little ridiculous, except that the promotion under which we bought the appliances had ended, as had some small utility company discounts we also got on two of the items. Since they insisted that they couldn’t just take off the installation and we insisted that we were not buying them back at the higher price, it took two hours for the assistant (with additional help from others) to get the computer to come out with the prices we had previously paid.
All the assistants were very nice and patient and apologetic for the time it was taking but they were being paid for the two hours they were there. We were not.