Last week, I wrote about how Home Depot lost our business. The contractor doubled the installation estimate by padding with inflated and unnecessary up charges. I also wrote about how Lowe's explained that almost all of the up charges Home Depot added were included in their base installation price.
We visited Lowe's on Saturday evening and were contacted by their installer on Tuesday. He came out to measure and reiterated all that the in-store salesman had said and explained a few other details based on what he saw when he measured. He explained that there would be a minor amount of extra work that would involve a small charge.
I have to note, that he wasn't the least bit concerned about the "difficult access" for which Home Depot was going to tack on $100.
Two days later, Don from Lowe's called us with the estimate and to make the final arrangements before signing the contracts. The only hold up was the J-channel which was from a manufacturer that wasn't on their vendor list. I tried to get some from our condo manager, but the unit they were framing out wouldn't have siding delivered for at least 3 weeks. So, we went to Lowe's and matched it with a vendor they dealt with. The grand total was just over $15, which was considerably better than Home Depot's $65.
So let's compare the bottom lines. At Home Depot, we were getting a door that was NOT Energy Star rated and at Lowe's we were getting an Energy Star rated door, for which we could take a tax deduction of roughly $100. Home Depot's bottom line for the door and installation was $1437 and Lowe's was $1050.
Considering we are getting a better door AND a tax deduction, that's a huge difference. Weigh in the fact that Lowe's offered us better customer service in terms of being professional, friendly, and explaining everything in detail, it is not likely we will go the Home Depot route for any work. It's not that Home Depot's service was poor. It just a case that Lowe's went the extra mile.
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