chuck yerkes wrote:
larrymoencurly wrote:

"gfulton" wrote in message
...

...

I live near a Lowe's and a Home Depot in NW Phoenix, and the Home
Depot has been a lot better than the Lowe's. This Lowe's made pricing
mistakes the first four times I shopped there, but I thought it was
because of grand opening confusion, but since then they've made a
pricing mistake about every 5-6 visits, and their employees still
don't seem to be knowledgeable at all. As for returns, I've made only
two. One was for a pack of Dremel cutoff wheels that I didn't even
open (they were the thick ones, which don't last any longer than the
thin ones), but when they opened them to count them they dropped a few
and broke or lost some and tried to charge me for them. I asked for a
supervisor, but the first employee lied to him and said I had used
some of the product. I told him to take a look at the security tape
to see that their employee had opened the hermetically sealed package.


Another time, I returned some paint that had probably been mixed for
someone else because it was yellow instead of the brown I specified
(the dab of paint on the lid was brown), but they told me that I
couldn't return a custom-mixed color. (???) In each case I finally
did get a full refund, but I've never had such bad service, except at
Best Buy and CompUSA.



So you continue to shop at large stores who are so driven to keep prices
low that they hire people at the lowest cost possible leaving them with
those that can't get a job ANYWHERE ELSE that gives them a bit more say
in their schedule, pays more than minimum wage* with poor benefits.

And then you complain that it's not a good store.

Well no ****.

I've tried several of the locally owned hardware stores (often
franchises, but locally owned which profits mainly staying in my
community) until I've found the folks who are knowledgable and helpful.

Those invisible tips that make up for paying 10% more include things like:
"Oh, well if you're doing THAT, then you don't want galvanized - it
won't look good in a couple years. Use these instead and blow the extra
$0.30 for brass."
Or "try this is the brush and it works a little better. I been painting
for 30 years until I retired into workin' here."

I've yet to get any better "service" at a mom and pop store. Instead
you get less selection, same or less knowledge and crummy returns
policy. There is a Home Depot two blocks from my house. I have
returned tons of stuff. Once I was there and the guy in front of me
returned half a deck worth of lumber, no questions asked. I have used
tools and have been able to return them simply because I didn't like how
they worked. At "mom and pop" hardware store returning a $2.00 unopened
bag of screws is a major ordeal. If you're working on a big project,
it's nice to be able to buy and extra couple boxes of screws, nails,
I've been able to return paint without any issues, whatever knowing you
can return it if you don't use it.

The only thing I will not usually do is buy paint at these places. I
had a very bad experience with a bad batch of paint. Although they did
send me a check for $700, I'm not eager to go through that again. As
for the other guy, I don't see what the problem is. Normally they mix
the paint right in front of you, open the can and paint a test strip so
you can see exactly what the color is before you leave the store (and
pay for the paint).

The HD near my house was built on a lot full of garbage. As part of the
deal, they cleaned up all the gabage, capped the dump and built a park
on half the land (to the tune of a couple million dollars) with the
store on the other half.