A couple weeks ago I decided to order some new tools for current and upcoming yard work. I decided that a set of devices that all use the same 40V rechargeable batteries was the way to go and, for reasons that escape me now, decided that I’d order them online from Home Depot. (I’ve not purchased anything from them in a very long time, but they had what I wanted.)

To make a long story a bit shorter, I really regret having done that. They’ve managed to screw up the order in multiple ways, waste hours of my time on the phone, and outright lied to me more than once.

You see, a day after placing my order, I went back online to have a look at it–I don’t even remember why. But it was then I discovered that over half the items were being sent to the wrong address. It made little sense to me how that happened. You see, during the checkout process, it defaulted to my old address–one I haven’t lived at for about 10 years now. I corrected it and didn’t think twice.

But none of the items had shipped, so I called them up (on a Sunday morning) and waited on hold for a very long time. Eventually I explained the situation and the person on the other end was a bit confused. The only address she could see for me was the correct address. I mean she confirmed that a good chunk of my order was destined for the wrong address, but couldn’t see any evidence of that address associated with my account.

At one point I was rather exasperated and asked why we couldn’t just change the address on the order and she explained that you only get “one hour” after placing an order to do that. Even though, a day later, it had not shipped. That sounded weird to me, but OK. What are my options?

She said she’d bump it to the “resolutions” department where they could correct it before it shipped. That sounded good to me.

Three and a half days after that, I checked back on the order. Nothing had shipped yet and the address was STILL wrong. And I’d heard nothing from the resolutions department. So I called back up, waited on hold forever, and spoke to a different person–I re-explained everything.

The new person asked if I’d been contacted by the “resolutions department” (I hadn’t) and then started talking about me talking to UPS to get the delivery address changed. I first had to explain how that wasn’t possible (since I’m not present at that old address and am not the shipper) and then had to explain the obvious: this isn’t a UPS problem! It’s a Home Depot problem that they’ve had days to fix!

Sensing that I wasn’t going to give up ground, she offered to contact UPS and adjust the address. After a while, she came back claiming that she’d been successful and that all three packages had been re-routed. (They hadn’t–I later checked.)

She lied.

Then we moved to the matter of the one part of the order that said should have been delivered on Monday, yet it was already Thursday and I’d seen no sign of it. She explained that it was coming from our local store and a 3rd party carrier was delivering it. She offered to get in touch with the local store and find out what happened.

After a bit of time on hold, she said she spoke with someone the local store and that there was a delivery attempt on Monday but nobody was home. I was suspicious, since we’ve been home A LOT lately (shocking, I know) but she said they’d re-attempt delivery, so I took her at her word.

Later that day I reviewed our security camera recordings and confirmed what I expected–no delivery attempt was made at all.

She lied (or was lied to and passed it on to me).

Here we are a full week from the first supposed delivery attempt and I have not a single piece of my order (two weeks after ordering). And UPS still showed the bulk of it as being destined for an address that’s 3 hours from here and I’ve not lived at for over 10 years.

Best of all, I cannot cancel my order either they say. We’ll see about that.

My next move is with my credit card company.

I am not giving another penny to Home Depot again. I’ve already spent the dollar value of my time trying to uncover the ways in which they’ve screwed up and have broken systems.

It’s been over a week since my first contact and I’ve still not hear from the resolutions department–if such a thing even exists.