The Fence installers have arrived and have begun work. It appears that the previous installers didn’t drill the posts in properly because they didnt’t want to bother with the old post in it’s place.
These guys seem dedicated to doing the job right! I have a feeling that Home Depot sent someone who cares this time.
I’m waiting on the fence guys to show up. The parts are here. Just waiting on the installers.
After not hearing from Emily for most of the day, I made another call to her expeciting another voice mail message. This time, she picked up! She told me that her boss was supposed to have called me to let me know what was going on. I let her know that I’ve not recieved any such phone call.
She said that if the gate is in, the install can happen today. In my excitement about getting through, I forgot to make it clear that there’s more than just the gate as an issue here. The post next to the gate is very flimsy. I have zero confidence that, unless I spell it out for them over and over again explicitly, that it will get taken care of. I can totally see them replacing the small chain-link gate and leaving the other issues unresolved.
I mysteriously got a “tweet” from a twitter account that claims to be from Home Depot. Here are the contents:
I sent an email to that address asking for confirmation in case this was just someone playing around on Twitter.
I really want to post a happy ending up here and for everyone to be happy. I’m just very frustrated from being pushed around by Home Depot so much. For the amount of money I spent here, I shouldn’t be put through this nightmare.
I called Emily at Ultimate Installations again this morning at the number posted in my previous entry.
Still no word. I left a message making her aware that the progress of this is being reported at Bostedor.com and that I’m eager for a happy ending.
Ultimate Installations is a contractor that installs fences for Home Depot.
So, we hired Home Depot to install a 6 foot vinyl fence around our back yard and to also install a dog run within the back yard to keep the dogs out of the main yard. They sent a guy named Tom Jester out in the Spring to do the quote.
We walked around the yard measuring things and I even held the tape for him as he measured the length of the dog run. He neatly jotted it out on the quote and broke down the price of the two fences and they combined to cost just under $6,000.
We told him that there were other contractors quoting on the project and he said that it was best to go through Home Depot so that we don’t have to deal with the nightmares that people go through with contractors. He sold me on that idea and we closed the deal.
Months went by with no communication from Tom or anyone else at Home Depot. Finally, a week ago, I called the Jackson Home Depot to tell them that if we don’t get some communication about an install date within 48 hours, I am cancelling the whole thing and going through someone else. The lady said that she’d have to call the contractors and that she’d call me right back.
That Saturday, she left a message on my machine saying that we are scheduled for install on Monday. She said in a tone that implied that I should have already known that. Of course, nobody was available for me to call back to let them know that Monday was bad because my wife had a doctor appointment and they required that someone be home at all times during the install. This just went from frustrating to fury.
The guys showed up and did a great job on the vinyl fence. It looks great! Click here for some pics as I publish them. They completed it today and my wife questioned when the chain link fence would be put in for the dog run. They had no clue what she was talking about and told her that we’d need to ask Home Depot.
I was starting to get a bit upset that nobody knew what was happening so I called them right away. The lady that I spoke with a the Jackson, Michigan Home Depot fence installation department told me that there’s nothing on the quote that says anything about a chain link fence and was quick to blow me off. I told her that I helped the guy measure it out and he broke it down for us on the quote.
She said that Home Depot didn’t do the quote and that the contractor was responsible for that! She passed me onto her manager who didn’t provide any further help. His response was that it wasn’t in his system for a chain link fence so what we paid for was just the vinyl.
On the quote, it is broken down as such:
We already paid the combined price to Home Depot and now they’re denying knowing anything about the chain link fence.
Moments ago, I just got a call back from them and now they are passing me on to someone named Emily at 734-462-8711 X-1232. I recognized that extension right away. That’s the lady who called and left a message on Saturday that they would be doing the install that Monday!
I’ll post another entry to let you know how this ends but I am not happy and I will never do business with Home Depot again.
