Home Depot Installation Services

unknown

     Salesman led us to believe we could go to Home Depot and pick out the hardware.   After I signed a contract, and went to the Home Depot store, I found out that this is not the case, must choose from some black-and- white photos of a 1/2 dozen handle styles - turns out: all plastic. 

     The salesman told me how much it would better the asking price of our house at selling time.  We had different realtors come in June and July who said "The kitchen cabinetry looks cheap."

     I called to cancel within three days per contract, and the manager, Tom,  called me and said he'd give me $800 off, if I stuck with the program, (reflected in the final price). I agreed.  He came out to my home and said, "I'll personally stop by, even though I live in Prior Lake, to make sure you are happy".  That never happened. (Prior Lake is half way  between my house and Brooklyn Center/Park where Tom's office is). 

  When the cabinet refacer installer came out to begin the job, he complimented our new kitchen counter, purchased by the Home Depot physical store. He asked what it cost and I told him, he responded: "Good thing, we would've charged $1,000 more".

The installation went fine, I was happy he played no music while working, except he didn't wear anything under his shoes the last day, so there were, (still are some six months later), specs of black glue in our bathroom and hallway.

Except for all the glue spots on the floor, the installation went fine.

Because the edges of the cabinet seams look obvious that two sheets of plastic were glued together, I asked them to put a molding over them. The customer service guy, who also did the measuring, came out and said they didn't have such a product.

In retrospect, I should have checked Angies List, or gone to the brick-and-mortar store to pick out the materials, as I did for the countertop - (the folks at the physical store recommend subcontractors to install).

unknown

This project had both positives and negatives. However, let me start by saying that is something goes wrong with your windows, Home Depot does not step up and make it right. That is my takeaway from this entire ordeal.
I ordered the windows and didn't trust the in-home salesperson. He showed up and couldn't get the ordering/quoting system on his iPad to work. On my large living room window, I have internal bars (between the panes of glass) that give the entire window a cross-cross pattern. He would input the number of bars, but they would seemingly disappear with a touch of his finger. Finally, he resorted to paper and pencil to get me the quote I wanted.
Measurement person did not take very precise measurements, but based on the window installation going in without a hitch, I guess he got what he needed.
6/23 was actual installation day. The crew showed up and actually spent nearly 10 hours here (I think they thought it was going to be a 5-6 hour job). I was very thankful they didn't walk away and leave us just because time was up. They were professional and did a good job.
The issue happened the next morning. I was coming down the stairs looking at the living room when I noticed for the first time that the two smaller windows in the living room didn't have the right number of bars in them. They didn't match the window under them, and they didn't match the original window set across from it which was designed/looked the same way. I immediately contact my project manager.
The next 2 weeks were fine. What happened: he tried to track down what happened. I said I thought it was probably the sales guy because he couldn't seem to get the order right. He corrects me and said that they had found it was the window manufacturer themselves. They had to actually e-mail several times to clarify what was being ordered before making the window and in a review, what Home Depot told the manufacturer was correct.
I ask about next steps. My project manager proposes this: get new panes of glass made with the correct bars. Have them installed. He warns me that by doing this, the line-up of the bars may be off, so it may not work. If it doesn't work, they'll order new windows. I fine with this. He tells me it will take a little time. Again, I'm ok.
This was in early July. This was the LAST time I ever got a good communication out of this project manager. I have no idea if the glass was ordered, but it has now been over 2 months and still....nothing. (When I ordered the original windows, I was told 3 weeks until they'd be ready).
I e-mailed him about 5-6x just to get a status update. He bothered to answer me twice...once to tell me he would check into it. The second to tell me the glass would be here in about 2 weeks (that was 4 weeks ago). I would like my windows to match, I would like Home Depot to do what they told me they were going to do. I didn't get what I ordered and the large window (made up of 3 individual windows) itself cost approximately $3500. I would not recommend going with Home Depot, not because of the mistake that was made, but because they have dropped me like a hot potato and washed their hands of me even though what they installed wasn't right. (And if anyone from Home Depot ever reads this....I'm still waiting....)

unknown

Much better follow through than last time we did this. They had a very slick online step by step tracking of your project. Made it very easy to check on where they were in the process.

They took care of getting all the permits and contracted out to put the windows in. From talking to neighbors who have had things done with home depot, it seems they have got much better in recent years on weeding out the bad subcontractors and following up when they do get a bad one.

I will again say that the Window industry tries to make it as confusing as possible to rate one window against another. Prices range from $900 a window that we paid (tear out and rebuild) up to $3000 a window. Why in the world would there be that much price differential? Why would anyone give an A on price for a $3000 window? Shopping for windows is such a pain that this time around we just went with Home Depot installation services as we had them put in half the windows in 2008..( search under all reviews over 3 years old to see our other review)
(and the other half in 2012 we don't like to take out loans)

They significantly improved their scheduling process since 2008. We got our windows about 2 weeks after initial appointment. The scheduler emailed us and called us at work to make sure everyone was on the same page.

(in 2008 she kept calling us at home while we were at work and we had to play phonetag for a week).

UPDATE 2013 :
We are currently having a whole bunch of Window installers in to give us estimates on very expensive front Bay Window.
Many of them are trying to sell us on how their exclusive high quality windows are so much better than the and quot;crappy Simonton windows that will have mechanical failures in 2 or 3 yearsand quot;
I smile to myself when they say this as we have 5 year old ones that we are very very satisfied with and have had no problems with.

Their service was OK. It was my understanding it would be done in one day. I had moved all of the furniture out. They only got half of the job done. That was really frustrating. They arrived late. The next day different people came. They were really friendly and did a great job. Their work was professional. If I were to do it again I would try to contact the second group individually rather than going through Home Depot.

Wonderful. I would definitely use the Home Depot Installation Services again.

First of all I will say the windows are great and the installation was professional and they cleaned up after themselves. Great job, Grade A+, everything else was a B- to C. Our experience in shopping for windows was confusing. There are no industry standards that we could find. Every contractor you talked to had their own preferred window that was better than all the other windows. Prices were outrageous and ranged anywhere from $800 a window with this company, all the way up to $2500 a window. Being on a budget we found that Simonton Windows seemed to have a good reputation, especially the vinyl 6500 series. We did have to stain the unfinished wood inside ourselves, but that is an easy do it yourself project. We also went for entire rebuilds, since inserts would lose space, we had heard that was a drawback and two of our windows were pretty small to begin with, also we had some sills that were rotted and needed to be replaced anyway. The salesman wasn't pushy, (very refreshing as many wanted deals made on the spot with high pressure sales) although he did say the words "to be perfectly honest" way too often...isn't he always honest? Secondly he was very disparaging of his coworkers in the Home Depot store. Evidently there is some rivalry between the Home Depot store salesman who sell all sorts of windows, and the At Home Services (Home Depot Subsidiary) that sell only Simonton windows. They often contradicted each other's advice or made disparaging remarks about the other. This made things confusing when we were trying to decide on windows. The other thing that bothered me was dealing with 3 different people before we got to the stage of actually having the windows installed, After the salesman was the "project manager" who remeasured the windows and we never saw again. Then finally the workmen who installed the windows. In between we had the scheduler who would always call us at home during the weekday to schedule us. We played phone tag with her for about a week both to schedule the salesman, the project manager, and the installation. She had our work # so I don't know why she kept insisting on calling us at home when we weren't there. In closing, I would like to say that this entire industry is overpriced. Angie's list members should be ashamed to be giving an A to the companies charging $2000 or more a window. Even Home Depot's price was not paying for the installers and the window. You are paying for the salesman, the "project manager" and the gal who does the phone calling to set up installation and appointments. I would do some cost cutting right away and make that one person. No need to hire 3 people to do the job of one.

We did not have the roofing work done with Home Depot. We went with a lower bid. Please read description above.

They gave me a 100% guarantee on the work and when a problem arose they came out and fixed it free of charge. Stewart Hanson was extremely prompt in returning all of my calls.

The estimator was on time and worked with the mess we had while painting was going on. Price was very good, a sale. Installers were very nice and professional. When I buy carpet, I will start at Home Depot.

We bought laminate flooring at Home Depot and hired them to do the installation. The quality of the laminate was good and the price was good. Installation was fairly good; there were some difficulties around corners and closet doors that the installers struggled with.

I sent an on-line request for an estimate. The request was answered by a sub-contractor who called and asked me if I knew how expensive the job would be. When I answered,''No. I need an estimate,'' he proceeded to say it would be at least $6,000; ''Was I prepared to pay that?'' he asked me. No. By the way, none of the fencing companies who came and gave estimates were anywhere near that high.

Siding was done so poorly it was blowing off the house and it required a complete tear off and reinstallation. Crew took 8 weeks to do the first job and neighbors complained about their profane language and behavior. When re-install was done, we discovered rotted wood on house and windows that was supposed to be replaced but was just covered over. Total ''project management'' was promised but was very inadequate to non-existent. Customer service was very poor - it took 10 months to get Home Depot to admit a reinstallation was required. Complete lack of communication on the part of Home Depot - very uncooperative. A 4-6 week job took 15 months. I should have done a Google search of ''Home Depot At Home Services'' before I started the project. Went with HD because I thought they could be trusted to do good work and stand behind it. Total breach of faith by HD - they have betrayed their ''brand''.

Home Depot uses Midwest fencing. Checking Angie's List reports on this company prompted me to cancel my fence estimate appointment.

Home Depot did a poor job of scheduling by setting up an appointment time they could not meet. Home Depot did not mention that they had a cancellation fee. Home Depot had hefty additional set fees that did not show up until the installer arrived. I would not use them again.

PETER BOSCO CAME OUT AFTER A CALL TO HOME DEPOT'S TOLL FREE NUMBER. HE SAID HE WORKED FOR HOME DEPOT BUT DIDN'T HAVE A BUSINESS CARD. WAS GOING TO SUB THE WORK OUT TO MIDWEST FENCE. HIS QUOTE FOR 226 FEET WAS ALMOST DOUBLE ALL OTHER QUOTES. PETER WOULD ONLY GIVE HIS CELL PHONE NUMBER. I SUSPECT THAT SOMETHING UNETHICAL IS GOING ON HERE. HE HAD ALL THE HOME DEPOT PAPER WORK, YET I SUSPECT HE WAS REALLY A SALESMAN FOR MIDWEST FENCE TRYING TO POSE AS A DIRECT EMPLOYEE OF HOME DEPOT. I RECOMMEND ANYONE CONSIDERING USING PETER BOSCO AND HOME DEPOT MAKE SURE THE PERSON IS REPRESENTING THEMSELVES CORRECTLY. NEEDLESS TO SAY WE WENT WITH ANOTHER COMPANY AND PAID ABOUT $8,500 FOR EXACTLY THE SAME FENCE.

SALESPERSON WAS VERY GOOD AT DEFINING WHAT NEEDED TO BE DONE; WAS A LITTLE HEAVY-HANDED IN HARD SELL. I HAD READ GOOD THINGS ABOUT THE HOME DEPOT SERVICES THROUGH CONSUMER REPORTS, SO FELT I COULD TRUST THE SALESPERSON. THE PROJECT MANAGER WAS NOT AS GOOD; DIDN'T RETURN PHONE CALLS, WOULDN'T TELL US WHEN WE COULD SCHEDULE THE INSTALL. HE FINALLY CALLED ME ON A THURSDAY AFTERNOON TO ASK IF THEY COULD COME THE NEXT MONDAY. IT LOOKS OKAY, BUT NOT QUITE WHAT THE SALESPERSON LED ME TO BELIEVE. I FEEL THAT THE PRICE WAS TOO HIGH. MY ADVICE: GET AT LEAST THREE QUOTES BEFORE MAKING A DECISION.