Something wrong with Home Depot?

[bigbearbear]

Has anyone noticed something odd about Home Depot?

It all started when I was looking into using rubber mulch for part of my yard. After deciding on using it, I looked online to see which one of these big box stores should I go to pick them up so I checked both Lowes and Home Depot's web site. Home Depot's web site seems extremely buggy. I would browse for the product, it'll tell me its not available in that store or any other store within a 25 miles radius. Then when I click on the product itself, it will then tell me there are hundreds of those available at the closest store to me, which is Federal Way.

So today I'm shopping around looking for deals on lawn fertilizers and its the same issue. Most of the products are listed as not in stock, and not available for delivery, in other words you cannot order them online and no stores has it either. So why would they even list it? To mess with and waste your time?

In contrast, Lowes's web site seems well organized and up to date. It tells me how many of those are available in the couple of stores in my area (Auburn and Federal Way).

When I went to the Home Depot in Federal Way, their product availability seems a little off too. I was looking for a simple watering can for my wife so she can water her newly planted flower bed, and nope, they don't have it. I was also looking for LED light bulbs and there were only 3 packs of Philips branded ones available. The rest are some no-name "Eco" brand thinggy that I don't trust.

Anyone else seeing this downward spiral trend for their local Home Depot?

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[BBQ Guy]

Virtual vs physical inventory.
That's why inventory or cycle counts are done.

Home depot has been a mess since they stopped hiring old guys that knew their trade. Now it's kids who often have no idea what the diffence is between a 16p and 4p nail?

 

[The Heretic]

Websites are buggy and yes, physical inventory.

I went to Costco's site to look at their shelving to get a pic of the heavy duty shelving I use and post it in a thread. I know they have it in every store, but when you search for it, it does not come up.

But if you really want to see how truly bad websites and the software behind them can get, trying dealing with Oregon's UI benefits for a while, especially while the OED is trying to deal with the federal extensions/etc.

 

[Ruger Rich]

Websites are buggy and yes, physical inventory.

I went to Costco's site to look at their shelving to get a pic of the heavy duty shelving I use and post it in a thread. I know they have it in every store, but when you search for it, it does not come up.

But if you really want to see how truly bad websites and the software behind them can get, trying dealing with Oregon's UI benefits for a while, especially while the OED is trying to deal with the federal extensions/etc.

You are so correct about the Oregon Employment Dept. I have hours of sad and frustrating stories.

 

[The Heretic]

You are so correct about the Oregon Employment Dept. I have hours of sad and frustrating stories.

I personally have not had problems - yet - but I belong to the OED support group page and I hear a lot of problems. The unemployed there pay way too much attention to every little bug they find on the OED UI website pages - I mostly ignore them because I know they are just glitches in an arcane and obsolete system that won't be fixed for a decade, if ever.

The OED system is like (only much worse) the software I worked on (for 9 years) at Daimler.

After Daimler laid off half its IT staff last year, they stopped working on the modernization project and most of the "maintenance" work on their apps has gone to India, which means it will only get worse than it was and take longer for any changes. They were halfway thru the new project when they put it on hold, so all that code and all those $ spent to fix the system will now just sit there unused for maybe another 5-10 years at least, if it ever gets fixed.

By then, almost everyone who worked on it will have left Daimler (most are gone now, the rest are leaving as fast as they can). The two people who knew the most about the existing system are already gone, myself and one other - and will never go back. I am glad I am retired.

 

[Provincial]

Oregon State Government and Functional Computer System are incompatible concepts. It takes real work for an organization (and I use the term loosely) to screw things up so spectacularly! And to do this over and over and over and over...............

 

[SrMachoSolo]

Oregon State Government and Functional Computer System are incompatible concepts. It takes real work for an organization (and I use the term loosely) to screw things up so spectacularly! And to do this over and over and over and over...............

"Your tax dollars at work."

-Robert

 

[Flopsweat]

Oregon State Government and Functional Computer System are incompatible concepts. It takes real work for an organization (and I use the term loosely) to screw things up so spectacularly! And to do this over and over and over and over...............

It's a special breed of incompetence found only where tech and bureaucracy meet. It can't be replicated in a laboratory.

 

[bigbearbear]

It's a special breed of incompetence found only where tech and bureaucracy meet. It can't be replicated in a laboratory.

I have to tell you this funny story. You see, my current job is that of technical consultant to our sales team whose focus is on selling cloud software to US government customers. During one of these sales process, one of our customer's engineers thought he knew better about security technology than us, a 40 billion dollar publicly traded company and he wrote a really stupid email about how insecure our service is and broadcasted it across 5 different counties!

I couldn't stop laughing about it when the sales rep showed me the email. We had to carefully craft an email and silently send it to that idiot's boss to show that we're not offended and how he must've misunderstood how basic network communications work.

I also recommended that we send him a link to McDonald's recruitment web site: https://careers.mcdonalds.com/us
And yes, I'll like fries with that.
My sales team didn't send this last bit unfortunately, it would've been really funny but probably will cost us the deal. lol

Sometimes, they're not just stupid, they even broadcast about it!!

 

[Flopsweat]

I have to tell you this funny story. You see, my current job is that of technical consultant to our sales team whose focus is on selling cloud software to US government customers. During one of these sales process, one of our customer's engineers thought he knew better about security technology than us, a 40 billion dollar publicly traded company and he wrote a really stupid email about how insecure our service is and broadcasted it across 5 different counties!

I couldn't stop laughing about it when the sales rep showed me the email. We had to carefully craft an email and silently send it to that idiot's boss to show that we're not offended and how he must've misunderstood how basic network communications work.

I also recommended that we send him a link to McDonald's recruitment web site: https://careers.mcdonalds.com/us
And yes, I'll like fries with that.
My sales team didn't send this last bit unfortunately, it would've been really funny but probably will cost us the deal. lol

Sometimes, they're not just stupid, they even broadcast about it!!

At a large software company where I worked we had a catastrophic failure of a power conditioner in one of the more important labs. The IT guys who were sent to investigate weren't exactly the crewcut and necktie crowd.

One of the Assistant to the Not Senior Director types decided he just had to email the whole building and two teams about how the lab went dark (it was just on emergency power) and these two long-haired shady looking guys in jeans showed up in the lab and started poking around in the power equipment and wiring and then told everyone it would be an hour before the lights would come back on. He demanded to know what was going on and so on and so forth.

The IT manager who sent them replied all with basically those were my guys, IT doesn't have a dress code, and they diagnosed a catastrophic failure of the whateveritwas in less than five minutes thank you very much. Parts are on the way and we'll have the lab back to full power in about 40 minutes.

Mr. Imsoimortant replies all with why can't you schedule these things for off hours.

IT guy replies all with the predictable catastrophic failures are inherently unschedulable, have a nice day.

I was in one of the labs all that day and spoke with the IT guy who wrote the response. He told me the guy was even worse in person.

 

[JRuby]

I personally have not had problems - yet - but I belong to the OED support group page and I hear a lot of problems. The unemployed there pay way too much attention to every little bug they find on the OED UI website pages - I mostly ignore them because I know they are just glitches in an arcane and obsolete system that won't be fixed for a decade, if ever.

The OED system is like (only much worse) the software I worked on (for 9 years) at Daimler.

After Daimler laid off half its IT staff last year, they stopped working on the modernization project and most of the "maintenance" work on their apps has gone to India, which means it will only get worse than it was and take longer for any changes. They were halfway thru the new project when they put it on hold, so all that code and all those $ spent to fix the system will now just sit there unused for maybe another 5-10 years at least, if it ever gets fixed.

By then, almost everyone who worked on it will have left Daimler (most are gone now, the rest are leaving as fast as they can). The two people who knew the most about the existing system are already gone, myself and one other - and will never go back. I am glad I am retired.

It was my understanding that India was impacted like the US was at Daimler which makes even less sense to me. I dont understand Daimler's logic but i am not required to.

 

[The Heretic]

It was my understanding that India was impacted like the US was at Daimler which makes even less sense to me. I dont understand Daimler's logic but i am not required to.

As you probably know, most of the devs at Daimler (at least the ones at MP) were/are from India, so they were certainly impacted.

I am only going by what I heard and keep hearing from an excellent source who over the years convinced me that they know what is going on at many levels, at least a LOT more than I knew. The source did not mention how impacted overseas India was, just that maintenance of legacy s/w was/is being moved there.

 

[ilikegunspdx]

Has anyone noticed something odd about Home Depot?

It all started when I was looking into using rubber mulch for part of my yard. After deciding on using it, I looked online to see which one of these big box stores should I go to pick them up so I checked both Lowes and Home Depot's web site. Home Depot's web site seems extremely buggy. I would browse for the product, it'll tell me its not available in that store or any other store within a 25 miles radius. Then when I click on the product itself, it will then tell me there are hundreds of those available at the closest store to me, which is Federal Way.

So today I'm shopping around looking for deals on lawn fertilizers and its the same issue. Most of the products are listed as not in stock, and not available for delivery, in other words you cannot order them online and no stores has it either. So why would they even list it? To mess with and waste your time?

In contrast, Lowes's web site seems well organized and up to date. It tells me how many of those are available in the couple of stores in my area (Auburn and Federal Way).

When I went to the Home Depot in Federal Way, their product availability seems a little off too. I was looking for a simple watering can for my wife so she can water her newly planted flower bed, and nope, they don't have it. I was also looking for LED light bulbs and there were only 3 packs of Philips branded ones available. The rest are some no-name "Eco" brand thinggy that I don't trust.

Anyone else seeing this downward spiral trend for their local Home Depot?

My take is their website is horrible and has been for as long as I can remember. Worst part is mobile version of website is castrated. If ur on ur phone it helps some to immediately click on "pc site" in the bottom left corner. It's still bad but not catastrophically bad like the mobile version is.

2nd issue I've seen repeatedly is theft. If website says 1-3 in stock that usually means zero because a lot of whatever it is has been stolen but it still shows up in their inventory. For this reason I find it helps to search for a location that shows a large quantity in stock. That doesn't mean it will be there but it's much more likely to be there. Just my 2 cents, YMMV.

 

[Member 5605]

Has anyone noticed something odd about Home Depot?

It all started when I was looking into using rubber mulch for part of my yard. After deciding on using it, I looked online to see which one of these big box stores should I go to pick them up so I checked both Lowes and Home Depot's web site. Home Depot's web site seems extremely buggy. I would browse for the product, it'll tell me its not available in that store or any other store within a 25 miles radius. Then when I click on the product itself, it will then tell me there are hundreds of those available at the closest store to me, which is Federal Way.

So today I'm shopping around looking for deals on lawn fertilizers and its the same issue. Most of the products are listed as not in stock, and not available for delivery, in other words you cannot order them online and no stores has it either. So why would they even list it? To mess with and waste your time?

In contrast, Lowes's web site seems well organized and up to date. It tells me how many of those are available in the couple of stores in my area (Auburn and Federal Way).

When I went to the Home Depot in Federal Way, their product availability seems a little off too. I was looking for a simple watering can for my wife so she can water her newly planted flower bed, and nope, they don't have it. I was also looking for LED light bulbs and there were only 3 packs of Philips branded ones available. The rest are some no-name "Eco" brand thinggy that I don't trust.

Anyone else seeing this downward spiral trend for their local Home Depot?

One question: are you using a proxy?

Cause using a proxy will skew your results just like you stated.

 

[Ironbar]

I work for a large independent building supply company.

No customer of mine has ever told me they enjoy going to Home Depot.

 

[ZigZagZeke]

Home Depot - "You can't do it, and we don't have it. Nobody uses those anymore."

 

[Alexx1401]

Have for decades shopped at both Home Depot and Lowe's. I can't seem to tell any real difference in either. Most of the time if I have a problem its help that has no idea what they are doing but, this seems to follow both stores. They always of course have some help that are great but, there seems to be a lot of turnover so often you get someone who has no clue. If I can just find what I need on my own either seems to work fine. I just try to avoid having to ask for help with anything.

 

[ar addict]

We buy a lot of propane parts from Leran. Who is owned by home depot. We also have a contractors account with home depot. If we try to log into the Leran account, it changes us to the home depot account. That account won't sell us many of the Leran products. What parts it does take our order for, they send the wrong ones.
So now we just call our Leran rep place order and get what we want. Since home depot bought Leran out technology has stepped back in time 20 years.

 

[OldTengu]

After having left them as an employee, I don't shop there unless it's for work, and even then I won't use my money, only the company card.
Side note:
Got these from a former employee of mine there.
Gave me a chuckle.

 

[Flopsweat]

After having left them as an employee, I don't shop there unless it's for work, and even then I won't use my money, only the company card.
Side note:
Got these from a former employee of mine there.
Gave me a chuckle.
View attachment 1175053View attachment 1175054

It always strikes me how they take imaginary "facts" as a given.