Business & Strategy
Home Depot: Excellent customer service
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11 May 2006
The AC transformer for my sprinkler system controller quit sometime over the winter, so I called up Home Depot to make sure they carry replacements before I drove over and wandered the cavernous store looking for them. The web site didn’t show them, but for some reason hardware stores won’t show their entire inventories online.
Someone at the front desk answered the phone on the first ring, I asked for the irrigation department, was put on hold for about two seconds, and quickly someone in irrigation answered. Not only did he tell me that they carry the part, but without me even asking, he walked over to the aisle and looked up the price—$12. He said that there’s a bunch of sprinkler stuff on clearance right now and walked over to the clearance section, found a transformer for $6 and told me that it’s on aisle 14 in the second set of shelves, two shelves from the bottom on the right.
That’s the sort of service I only expected from the local hardware store (which didn’t carry the part).