Bleeping Home Depot's recorded 'hours of operation' messages
 

Good Lord, when will I learn, you DO NOT listen to the recorded message that comes on initially when you call the various stores for the hours of operation. I'm in a bizarre situation of working over vast stretches of the Bay Area. I go to about 8 Home Depots on a semi-regular basis, and about 4 or 5 others now and then. I guess that could be called market penetration. Only one Lowes in my range, maybe one other somewhere else. I go to smaller, locally owned stores when possible but the late hours of HD are handy.

Therein lies my beef. Lately, some - about half - of the branches are open til 10, M-Sa and 8 on Sunday. The others til 9, and 7 on Sunday. One branch just south of SF is open til 11 and 10, respectively. Complicating matters, some of them go to shorter hours during winter months, or have in the past anyway.

Oh well, you can just call and ask them right? The key phrase there is "ask them" because the recordings have been wrong way too often. At least 5 times I've shown up at 9:05 only to be disallowed entry. I object, mention the recording, and they say, "oh yeah, we're trying to get that changed (!?). First time I experienced this was a few years back. For the longest time, I'd press zero as soon as the recording picked up and asked the operator. Then it began to seem as though they had gotten it together.

Last night, I was lying on my side, working on a leaky main cutoff valve, the one on the house, not the meter valve of course, about 8:45 pm, I'd had a full day but this lady is a good client and it was leaking pretty bad, so I called the nearest HD, listened to the recording - 10 pm it said. So I go down, easier just to do it then, owner was home, would pay me on the spot. I must have gotten there about 8:59, I didn't notice anything, then at 9:05 I hear an announcement, "we will be closing in 5 minutes," I'm "WTF? Closing at 9:10?" A guy walks by, I think he was the manager, I asked him, he said "yes, 9 pm," I tell him about the recording, he says "yes, we're trying to get that changed."

I about lost it, erupted, saying this happens way too often; I had $h!t taken apart at someone's house, I needed about 15 minutes to gather all parts, and WITF can't you people get something so simple together??

Then he got pissed, I calmed down, we talked some more, I did manage to get the parts and land on my feet but holy crap, who needs the aggravation?

I feel your pain. The proper response would have been: "My apologies, I'll keep the store open long enough for you to purchase what you need and I'll change the message before I leave tonight."

Stuff like that shows how lazy the managers are. It would take one e-mail or a few minutes on the phone to change it, but they never do it.

The manager did get a little pissed that I was fulminating so while he was trying to tell me I would be allowed to complete my purchase. What he doesn't get is that with plumbing, you often need to really carefully sus out the parts you need, find what will work, etc. That was true in this case as they were out of the part I wanted, a 1" sweat ball valve. I was able to get the same valve threaded and copper sweat/thread fittings but I couldn't find a couple of other small items and I didn't appreciate the pressure of knowing that they were tapping their foot, waiting for me to get out.

And, if I'd gotten there at 9:10, would have been SOL, having just made a 4 mile street traffic trip to HD. This lady lives way up in the hills. Probably should have just gotten the parts the next day, in the morning, more leisurely, etc. but then I'd have to track her down for payment, crap my work can be stupidly complicated, but times are tough everywhere.

The Lowes by my house has the same problem. I moved into a bank repo about a month after the Lowes opened. needless to say, I'm a very very familiar face to all the employees at Lowes. They were open til 10pm. Seeing that I have a day job I was remodeling the house every night after work and would close the place down on a regular basis. then one day, without notice they changed their hours to closing at 9pm. :mad:

Their newest thing is to be completely incompetent. I've walked out of their mad the last 4 times I've been in their because the new batch of employees have no clue what they are doing. example, I was in their last week looking for some 3" corrugated, slotted pipe to make a French drain. should be easy. They had rolls of 4" corrugated, slotted pipe in 100ft and 50ft lengths, and 4" corrugated pipe (no slots) in 100ft and 50ft lengths, 3" corrugated, (no slots) in 100ft and 50ft lengths, and a sign for 3" corrugated, slotted pipe in 100ft lengths. I ask the guy, "do you have 3" corrugated, slotted pipe in 50ft, I don't see a sign for it" reply "ummmm, well?? is their a sign for it?" I start to get mad, "ok how about the 100ft roll you do have a sign for?" reply "yeah its right here" and points to the 4"... "NO, 3"..." reply "yeah... oh... ummm... let me call someone" and he walks off. 15 min later I left the store. :mad::mad::mad:

Hard to say, I have heard 3 times that they had been trying to change the message. Somebody somewhere is being lazy not to mention stupidly inconsiderate, that much is certain.

Like I said, you'd think I would have learned by now not to trust the message. I said that at the end of my conversation with the manager, "Never trust the message, always hit the button for the operator" and I could see in him a sort of painful realization that this was a stupid problem all right.

The Message
 

Who records the message? Is it done on an invididual store basis or is there some centralized corporate beaurocracy to negotiate?

- Peter.

Sorry for your troubles, but I'm having a tough time figuring out why it took at least 5 times of getting screwed, for you to figure that out.

Fool me once...yada yada.

Now you know why Chrysler was in such deep trouble before Obama and Marchione took over.

Having worked breifly at a Lowes I can see it from the otherside. 90% of the people out their are morons, and annoying. I gave up trying to explain to people how to do something right, they didn't want right they wanted cheaper than cheap.:rolleyes:

But I'll give you a tip, if you ever want to talk to the manager at a Lowes and cut through all the red tape do this. When the operator picks up simply say I need to talk to the MOD. They think you work their and put you right through.:D

This is but one saga in the inevitable decline of customer service and the need to provide any shred of customer satisfaction.

HD is the absolute bottom of the barrel. I really don't understand how they stay in business. The stores are an absolute disaster and the employees are non-existent.

My latest beef is with MS. Decided to pay $50. to have some very technical questions answered with regard to Outlook. I pay my $50. and what to I get..............some moron girl in India that knows less about the software than I do.

I'm doing a chargeback on the credit card. They can go screw themselves.

It's everywhere............however...........you're on your own.

Every store's message has the same ultra happy, sing songy lady's voice doing the message. It's like keeping their corporate happy face up is more important than getting it right.

I'm getting sick of the lady's voice. That's what I hate about advertising, that forced, phony, excited happiness in the voice.

Well uhhhh . . . I've been asking myself the same question. I don't need to call that often and I did always click for the operater for quite a while and then I started listening to the recorded message first, and then clicking for the operator to see if it checked out. For a long period, it always checked out. And sometimes you have to wait a long time for the operator.

For the next several years, I'm going to do both. It's too stressful. This lady lives up in a toney section of the Oakland hills, the drive to by far the closest HD is about 4 miles through some of the roughest parts of Oakland, narrow streets, gangstas driving like maniacs, if I'd gotten there at 9:03, I think I might have started throwing stuff.

HD has achieved near total market penetration in these parts so if you don't like it, not much other choice. The only store that comes close is Orchard Supply Hardware, open til 9, 8 on Sunday, at least every branch is the same, no guessing. There are about half or so as many of those as HDs, and inventory is usually always quite a bit smaller, no real lumber to speak of. Only one Lowes is remotely in my travel path and it's not near to any of my regular clients.

There is one great Ace Hardware store sorta near to some of my clients that stays open to 9, M-F.

But it's sorta my fault, as I've allowed HD to seduce me with these long hours. W/o them, I'd work more normal hours and do the 8 to 4 or 5 thing that most of the tradesman supply shops keep.

I find it best when I have had a problem like that to ring the state manager the next day & give him a serve. It has resulted in obtaining several things for free to make up for my inconvenience. Normally when you elevate a problem, eventually you get to talk to some one who figures that they have people who are meant to deal with these things & they want to know from them why they havent solved your problem.

That's a good idea. Losing one's temper is really one's own fault, but I don't need any extra help with pushing me that direction. I felt like crap today and that might have been part of it.

For several years, the HD receipts have a "leave feedback for a chance to win a $5000 gift card!!" or some such crap on the bottom the receipt. Make the receipt twice as long. I've done it once or twice, I will do it on this one and then go further just for good measure.

HD has everything run by corporate, I have been told that corporate even runs their heating and cooling systems.

This is why I hardly ever darken the door of big box stores except for the oddball item or lights. I buy everything from professional warehouses. Homeowners can't buy from the places I buy from, you have to be a contactor and the service reflects it. The people at the counter know what they are talking about, they offer interest free credit, etc. They also don't suffer fools so the odd homeowner that calls or walks in gets turned right around.

These big box stores also lack boom trucks, which sucks getting 14 square of shingles to the roof isn't fun without one.

Good points, I hate it at HD when I need to ask some simple ass question about where something is and every associate is being hogged by some home owner who is looking for a tutorial on this or that from the beginning.

You doing roofing these days? I put comp. shingles on one side (the sun side) of a small garage yesterday, getting those squares up top is what you call hard work. I had a helper, I had to. Won't have to go to the gym for a while.

X2 on all of the above. I can make a call from a jobsite to someone I know personally and have everything delivered for free and not have to pay for it for 30 days with no interest. If you don't already have one get a utility bed truck and keep it stocked with parts so you don't have to constantly go on parts runs. The initial cost is somewhat large but pays off bigtime in the short term. The only things you can get at the deep homo that are cheaper than a supply house are the fast moving loss leaders- 12-2 romex, 1/2' plywood, 8 foot 2x4's etc. In my field of electrical I have noticed that while you can get the romex cheaper than my supply house, but just about everything else is 50% to 500% more! Just last weekend I needed 1600 feet of # 2 copper to hook up a well service, and just for the hell of it I called deep homo because I wanted to get it done before Monday. Their price was about 1.50 a foot= $2400, and my supply house was 1.03 a foot=$1648!! Needless to say, I waited until Monday and had the wire delivered on reels to the jobsite. It's just a better way to run a business.

Those phone messages are either being done one of two ways...

#1.) Corporate: Some peon in the home office is SUPPOSE to update and correct existing messages. Said peon is either on vacation or lost the access code and is too embarrassed to ask someone for it...

#2.) In-Store: Some peon in the store itself lost the access code to get into the VM-Box to change the message, or doesn't know how to access and download an MP3 or .wav file to insert into said KSU memory slot/card of the system itself.

Either way, just bang on the <0> key to get results.

Then, as Hattie said, ask for the MOD and get to a big dog...

BTW: Does MOD stand for Manager On Duty? :confused:

Well, not to be a smart as5 or anything, but your first mistake was going to homer's trash bin in the first place. $10 says you will be replacing what you just installed before the year is out, and on top of that they got to aggravate you as well.
Shut it down, figure it out, get real parts the next day at a real plumbing supply house. Your customer will be happier in the long run if you fix it correctly, instead of half-as5ing it with a pile of crap from home cheapo.

I much prefer going to real lumber yards, plumbing supply houses, etc. I wish I'd apprenticed as a plumber years ago but oh well, I didn't. I can do about 3/4ths of what a plumber can do but I don't do enough of the work to merit the utility truck complete with parts. I save parts I didn't use on this job or that and I rarely need exactly that part again, or at least can't find it when I do need it. Having a large selection of supply lines or angle stops might be a good idea. But then there's the issue of storage in my rig. For example, I can't remember when I last needed a one inch ball valve. If you had 8 different valves on hand, that would be about $120 in inventory, not a huge amount, but then you have to keep some kind of track of what the current price is, as that's what you'll pay to replace it. And you have to keep it from getting beat up, dinged up.

I have a buddy who's a real plumber and I've collaborated with him on jobs that needed an inspection and a licensed plumber. He's got 3 trucks, does a sort of lease/cooperation thing with 2 of them to other plumbers. Guy makes bank.

Yup! Their attitudes towards customers is definitely having an effect. We're getting more and more lawn care business as a result of them (HD/Lowe's) not knowing their @$$e$ from their elbows when it comes to fertilizer, lawn seed and pesticides. As is their SOP, prices start out low when they first open the stores and gradually creep upwards over the years. Unbeknownst to most of their customers as they've been "trained." On a wholesale/commercial basis, we're really not that far apart price-wise. Sure, there may be a $1 or $3/bag savings and there will always be a contractor that is a price-only shopper. That's not who we're looking for and we're more than happy to let the big boxes deal with them. But for customer service and knowledge they can't compete, if I may say so myself. :)

We're essentially contractor-only but unlike most, if a homeowner finds their way in we're happy to separate them from their money at bust-out retail for an additional 40% GPM over wholesale price. And more and more homeowners are willing to pay that for quality and expertise. Homeowners do take more time to deal with and their purchases never equal the LCO's. But they (generally) turn into repeat customers who (eventually) learn what you teach them, the extra profit margin usually covers the extra time it takes and they fill in the time between the wholesale customers (contractors always get preference when they come through the door, even if we're with a retail customer at the time).

Yep, plus I find their products inferior. For example bathroom faucets you get from Lowes have plastic drains, which can crack. The exact same faucet I get from the plumbing supply house has a metal drain.

Nah I don't do any work, the contractors do it. But I have to pay the roofers more if I want them to hump the shingles up. Its cheaper to boom them up.

I wish you guys were closer I would buy from you. We go to Derby Feed and this place in Stratford I forget the name. Lately Lowes is way, way high on grass seed.

Thanks for the tip, time to raise prices a bit. ;) That's my point. Most folks assume the big boxes are going to be cheaper because that's the impression they give out. Don't get me wrong, we're not cheapest on anything nor do we aspire to be. But often the difference isn't as much as assumed.

Just for curiosity sake, what quantities do you usually buy in? If it's by the bag or two, UPS shipping would kill any savings if, in fact, there were any. But if it's 500lbs.+ delivery via common carrier or even our trucks is a possibility.

Heck I could even use it as an excuse to visit my FIL in Derby and get my gas paid for. :D

We buy per project, so usualy only 2-3 bags at a time. Most of the yards we do in Milford are very small. Right now I own 4 lots and the largest one is 60x100.:D


When the economy gets better I plan on building in other towns with much larger yards, than we can talk about 500 pounds.:D

Don't forget me when you hit the big-time! :D

Well, with the heat and incredible crabgrass infestation this year, I may be back in the fall for a few bags....if I get the gumption to rototill half of my yard...:(

Don't till it, Brent. That'll just bring new and exciting weed varieties to the surface. Just cut it low and broadcast more seed over the top.

It was a banner year for crabgrass with the heat and drought. It seems to be feast or famine when it comes to warmth and moisture these past couple years.

I'm not a contractor and I don't play one on the internet, I'm just a customer who has to do most things myself out of necessity. We've had a HD nearby for 2 years. Previously, we had Walmart, asmall ACE hardware store and that was it beyond our local hardware and feed store. When HD opened, they hired away all of WalMart's best hardware dept. employees.:eek:
My 20 year old electric water heater gave up the ghost and so I went shopping. Having not bought one in that many years I was unsure of the new SEER numbers and how to read them and asked an employee in the new HD to explain the difference between two heaters I was looking at that were a hundred bucks or so different in price.
"Can you tell me what these numbers mean?"
NO
"no ?"
NO
"You work in this department and you don't know what these numbers mean?"
NO
"Ok, what's the difference in the way these two heaters are made that justifies the difference in price?"
I DON'T KNOW
"Could it be that the only difference is that one has a longer warranty?"
MAYBE, YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE
"Well goodness, thanks so much for your help"
WHICH ONE DO YOU WANT?
"Neither thanks, I think I'll go to ACE"
I had to wait a couple of days to take delivery but I got a better heater for 50 bucks less and the guys at the locally owned ACE knew what they were talking about. I wrote up the employee online and got a 10 dollar HD gift card, she lasted about another month and then vanished. A neighbor of mine works there in flooring sales and hates it. She confirms that they have relegated virtually all decisions to corporate level. There is no HR person locally so employees are completely at the mercy of buffoon managers who have no power other than harassing their help, and training is virtually non-existent. I avoid the place like the plague. I'm getting ready to replace my barn evaporative cooler and HD is an Arvin Mastercool dealer, but I'm going to drive to Phoenix even though they have the unit I need in stock. Screw 'em.

The big box stores can't keep any employees because they treat them as disposable expenses. All the part timers last 3-4 months thats it. They hire them, treat them like crap, than get rid of them when they have a slow month or they mess up. As you would expect with such a turnover training is pretty much non existant.

That's probably the very reason there seems to be a resurgence of the smaller, local-ish hardware stores. Ace and True Value are pretty large (actually they're cooperatives) but they're independently owned so the owners have a lot of stake in how they operate. The True Value in our town has increased their sales 8.5% every year after the 25% hit they took when the new HD opened up 7 years ago (we're friends with the two guys that own it). An Ace Hardware opened up 4 years ago on the same strip, 5 miles north. Two years a Shop Rite Hardware (not sure if that's a chain or co-op?) opened up on the same strip, halfway between the two. I don't know the owners of the Ace or Shop Rite, other than casually, but their parking lots always have several cars in them. Anecdotally they seem to be doing just fine considering the economy.

The T-V owners, after a number of discussions with other T-V owners, say the local hardware stores that fall victim to the big boxes opening up are generally on iffy financial footing to begin with and that's the last nail in the coffin. Those that are financially sound are able to withstand that initial 2-3 year hit to their bottom and able to consistently regain the lost business, often surpassing it.

Read it and weep...
 

My hardware/lumber yard is <9 miles from the farm, always opens at 7:30, closes at 5:30 (4:00 on Saturday), will deliver (same day...most time the same HOUR ) for a paltry $20 extra and there's not a person working in the place that hasn't been there at least 5 years and if I had to guess the average employee has been there closer to 25 years. They are well stocked, competent and the prices are comparable to any big box.

Life is good.