I’ve been looking around for a bad customer service story for awhile, and Home Depot has provided one.

Back in January, we ordered 14 boxes of wall tile to tile the peeling walls of our garage from Home Depot online.

Tile arrived, but when we examined the packages, about half the tiles were broken, possibly from being thrown onto our front patio for delivery. No one from the delivery service (NDS)  rang the bell and said they had 14 boxes of tile to be delivered, and where would be like it?

Then the wrangling began on the return for the next two months. Home Depot Customer Service actually claimed at one point that they had nothing to do with Home Depot. Meanwhile, our installation is delayed and we’ve got a $790 charge at Home Depot for broken tile.

Finally, an enterprising customer service representative agreed that they whole matter should have been quickly resolved, and took out one of the small Home Depot flatbed trucks and with a female driver, came to our house and loaded the broken tile. Once the store had the tile, they reversed the charge.

Kudos to the employee (Frank) who showed the initiative to take a truck and pick up the tile, but a real brick to the rest of Home Depot customer service for being unresponsive.

As a result, we’ve ordered the tile from Floor and Decor, who has been very accommodative, and we’ll pick it up ourselves.

The morale of this tale is to empower your employees to make decisions in the best interests of the customer.

We hope that Home Depot reviews the recorded conversations of this travesty and fires most of the customer service reps who were involved.