Home Depot Rewards-Beware!

As the owner of an electrical business, I have been dealing with Home Depot for years and was impressed by the Home Depot Rewards Program. With a Home Depot Rewards Credit Card, you are awarded points for every purchase you make. These points are redeemable for various products.

After a year of purchases, which were in the thousands of dollars range, I decided to redeem. I found something I was particularly interested in which were prepaid gasoline cards. With the amount I had compiled, I was entitled to 12-$100 cards so I redeemed them. Unfortunately, the cards were only for BP Gas stations. In Texas there are no BP Gas stations and when I redeemed there was no warning of this. So I contacted Home Depot in the hopes that I could exchange them for a more viable product.

It took two days of phone calls to even be referred to the right department which was the Resolutions Department. These folks informed me that the cards could not be returned in exchange for something else. Policy was that once you redeem, there are no returns. No mention of this on the site when you redeem, of course.

I was dumb-founded. I had spent over $50,000 on materials at this company in one year. No telling how much I have spent there over the 20 year period that I have owned my business.

I decided to go further with this, based more on principal than anything else. I spent at least another two days calling and asking for supervisors, etc., but to no avail. Finally, I decided to contact the headquarters. Not an easy task, but I was determined to voice my opinion, if nothing else. I tried to find a direct number, failed. An e-mail address, failed.

There was a listing for a store in the town headquarters is located so I called them. Finally, I was referred to someone in the head office, a very kindly man who insisted he would take my case into consideration and was oh, so hyped about customer satisfaction.

I never heard from him again.

My response: After doing business with Home Depot for all these years and spending the amount of money I have, I find it deplorable that not only could I not exchange the cards but the dollar was passed incessantly and I was ignored by an executive who seemed concerned about customer satisfaction.

I now only go to Home Depot if I have no choice and have an account with another electrical supplier who treats me with respect and values me as a customer.

My advice to you: The Rewards Program is not that great. You have to spend a lot of money before you can redeem anything of value. Make sure the product you redeem is something you won’t wish to return because you will be out of luck, no matter how much business you do with them.

Comment On This

I am not familiar with the Rewards Program that you mention, but am certainly up to date with their rebate programs.I recently remodeled my home, during the period between 2004 to 2005 I spent around $50.000 at Home Depot, Cabinets interior and exterior doors,paint,sheetrock,carpet,concrete,lumber,you name it and I am sure that I purchased it.A number of these purchases came with rebates anywhere from $50.00 to $400.00 non of which I was ever able to collect on,even though I had and still have reciepts for all my purchases from start to finish.I must tell you that the poor customer service is not limited to you and I often wonder if there is such a thing as good customer service,anymore but you would think that some thought might be given to someone that is spending large sums of money in their stores,that they might want them to come back at a later date when the need to either update or replace the things that they have just purchased,which will probably be sooner than later seeing how everything is crap and has a max of 3 years lifespan,I wish that people would get together and fight this practice of higher than ever prices and the lowest quality in most products across the board and as far as customer service I think that until we say no to these practices they will only continue to get worst.As far as home Depot goes as convienient as it is for me to shop there I will never go into any of their stores again,because they are dishonest and the consumer is the one that gets stuck dealing with the fallout