Shady Home Depot and the Military discount.

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Snattlerake

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rc508pir

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I prefer Lowes anyway. Military Discount still in place without changes.
I really cant stand Lowes. At least the one here in Lawton. Takes forever to checkout, Service is TERRIBLE, No one can give you the correct answer to a question the 1st 2nd or 3rd time. It is what it is though. If Home depot doesnt have somthing Lowes usually will and vice-versa

By the way, Starting Mar 9th. Lumber, Appliances and Wiring will no longer be considered for a Mil discount at Lowes. But fertilizer still is...

There is still no Max Cap annually like Home Depot.
 

ICanFixIt

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I was told at Lowes, today, that beginning on March 9th, they won't give the military/veterans discount on appliances, electrical wiring, lumber, and a lot of other stuff.
I really cant stand Lowes. At least the one here in Lawton. Takes forever to checkout, Service is TERRIBLE, No one can give you the correct answer to a question the 1st 2nd or 3rd time. It is what it is though. If Home depot doesnt have somthing Lowes usually will and vice-versa

By the way, Starting Mar 9th. Lumber, Appliances and Wiring will no longer be considered for a Mil discount at Lowes. But fertilizer still is...

There is still no Max Cap annually like Home Depot.
Lumber, Appliances and Wiring are the major items I want at Lowes. It is 50 miles from my house to Lowes and 8 miles from my house to the local lumber yard. Lowes can stuff it.
 

Timmy59

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Interior design and layout at Lowes is designed for chicks, Home Depot for guys.
You can identify as a chick for a better shopping experience if you'd like. lol. And if it suits ya you can identify as anything else as well. You may have to put up a stink but it should fly if ya get stinky enough.
 

BillM

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Ye be a preachin to the choir.

https://www.okshooters.com/threads/...ount-harder-to-use-for-our-protection.326694/
Last year, it was for every purchase large or small. Now you can't buy building materials, carpet, major appliances, and a $400 per anum limit to boot.

They figured out they were losing their ass and stopped it.
That is not true. There have been things not eligible for discount for all the years I've been using my military discount at HD. What did gripe me was that under the old system, you could not get a discount on online orders. At all, period! I ordered a Mr. Cool mini-split system, and could have really used a discount on it. Figure it this way: They don't have to give you a discount at all. Take the win when you have it, and quitcerbitchin!

Bill
 

BryanDP

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Home Depot can have some decent folks working in their local stores, but Home Depot in general is pretty awful. My experiences are not related to the military discount but are examples of how awful Home Depot corporate can be in dealing with customers.

In 2007 during the December ice storm that hit Tulsa one of the employees at a vendor my bar used stole a check we had used to pay our bill and had their own checks made on our account. They then took the checks around to Home Depot and Lowe's and bought up chain saws and generators, which presumably they then sold on Craigslist or out of the back of a pickup or something. After running up like $50K on our operating account that wasn't in there, the checks started bouncing. Luckily my super savvy book keeper wife always just put enough money in the operating account to cover checks so they got little of our actual cash and the bank covered what was stolen from us via chargeback to the stores but we still had to deal with the bounced checks.

Lowe's was easy. Their corporate office very politely and with compassion of what we were going through asked for a police report one time. When each of the subsequent 15-20 total checks came in they sent a notice which basically notified us of the issue and assured us that they were handling it. For all those checks we only had to speak to them once.

Home Depot, on the other hand, was horrible. They were on every occasion very rude and accusatory from the get-go and their tone never changed even when they learned that we were actually the co-victim and not the perpetrator of the bounced checks. We had to call them for every one of the 10-15 checks that the thieves bounced. They insisted that we fax them the police report for every separate check and even wanted us to fill out a police report for each individual check. Even the police said that was ridiculous and to just send them the same report every time. I don't even remember everything else they put us through but it was just horrible. For many, many years we never went to Home Depot for anything.

Years later in about 2018 one Sunday we needed a hot water heater. Lowe's wasn't strong in that area and didn't have anything in stock when we went so we ended up in Home Depot. (Time mends all wounds??) A very nice old man who probably had no idea the crap service he was selling turned us on to their "same day water heater" service, giving us a number to call. Fast forward to the Sunday afternoon visit from the salesman/plumber from Same Day, which unbeknownst to us was a separate company that was loosely associated with or owned by Home Depot and got their water heaters from Home Depot. I'm not one to usually fall for salesman tactics, but I must humbly admit that the guy got me good. I honestly don't even remember the details, but in the end I was sold and had completed a hot water heater installation that cost roughly twice what it should have, conveniently charged to my Home Depot credit card.

When the salesman plumber left, buyer's remorse set in almost immediately. I did some checking and realized how much I had overpaid. I complained to Home Depot about the predatory pricing tactics the guy used. They immediately distanced themselves from the "separate company" Same Day water heaters. I pressed them, got general managers and area managers involved and was just the proverbial "squeaky wheel" with both Same Day and Home Depot. Eventually some exasperated customer service agent mentioned that Same Day had a 90 day "best price guarantee." That is, that if I could get a quote from a licensed plumber for the exact same service they would match it and give us a $50 Home Depot gift card on top of that.

Despite my willingness to pay a minimum service call to have a plumber come out and give me an estimate for the work I'd had done I had a hard time finding anyone that would go up against Home Depot. As it turns out, most of them get work from Home Depot/Same Day. But I'm not anything if not tenacious and eventually I found a guy that not only didn't take work from Home Depot but hated them vehemently. He was happy to write out an honest, legitimate bid using the exact same Home Depot parts the Same Day guy did and wouldn't take any money for doing so. In the end his bid and the same day price match policy saved me just under 50% which was refunded by Same Day and got me a $50 gift card from Home Depot and another $50 one from Same Day.

Four years later and I'm pretty sure we haven't been back to Home Depot except to spend the $100 on a socket set I needed for the house and maybe once or twice to buy some teeny tiny cheap part that Lowe's might have been out of while building our food truck in 2019/2020. Big purchases go to Lowe's only and most of my small/unique hardware I get from Ace.

I realize this was probably TLDR, but suffice it to say that Home Depot sucks.
 

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