Dear Home Depot,

I was at WalMart last weekend to pick up a few cleaning supplies for my new house. I was behind one woman, waiting to pay for my bottles and scrubbies, and moved forward after she finished her credit card transaction. She stopped abruptly and turned to lecture the cashier over his customer service policies. Apparently he hadn’t greeted her, had answered another employee’s question while waiting on her and made her feel rather unimportant. I raised my eyebrows in surprise over her strong reaction to the matter and nudged my window cleaner closer to the register and walked forward. I said hello to the young man working, ignored the woman who was still mid-monologue and waited until she went away.

“Some people,” I told him after he thanked me for my interference, “are overly critical. It’s sad, really.” So we chatted until I paid and took my bag with me to the car and I thought with some pity and annoyance of the woman who felt it necessary to try to make other people unhappy. Did her two minutes at the register really matter enough to make such a big fuss?

It’s with some resignation that I admit I must share some qualities with the unfortunate woman since I am writing to share a complaint. I’ve become so annoyed that I feel somehow compelled to take time out of my evening to articulate my unhappiness and the reasons behind it.

I’d met with two contractors before calling Home Depot about putting up a fence. My offer on a beautiful home had been accepted and closing was scheduled for late August. My former house had a fence and dog door for Chienne, a medium-sized hound with bridled fur and floppy ears, and I needed my new structure to share those features. Yet I was concerned about hiring either of the two men I met – one seemed overpriced and almost smarmy and the other was an hour late for the appointment and seemed grandiose in his plans.

Minnie arrived and we chatted pleasantly as she measured the lot behind my house-to-be. She wrote out an estimate, clearly explained the options and charges and I felt comfortable knowing I could ask questions or voice concerns with her and happily signed a contract for Contactor to install the materials they bought from your corporation. The call from the project manager, Mickie, arrived about a week sooner than I expected and I was thrilled to find they’d be able to handle the job a mere week after I moved in. I arranged to go in late to work since Minnie mentioned I should be present when they started to handle any questions that might come up, but I grew concerned when nobody had arrived at 9AM on Friday, August 29.

When I called, Mickie assured me the crew would arrive shortly. I was relieved when a group of three men found the house around 10 that morning. They were lovely, responding easily to my requests about post placement and making relatively quick progress. I was surprised and dismayed when their leader came to the door at 2:00 and said they’d be leaving for the weekend. But I didn’t protest, agreeing they could put the materials in the corner of the yard and return on Tuesday though Mickie had originally said they’d finish that day. I told myself not to be picky, but found myself looking outside sadly that weekend, wishing the fence had been finished as I’d expected.

On Tuesday, I again arranged to go in late to work. I called Mickie at 10:30 and was told he thought the crew finished on Friday and didn’t have plans to send anyone back. He made a call and got back to me very soon to say a crew would arrive that afternoon to finish. I grew worried about 1, thinking if they normally stopped for the day at 2, my fence would never get finished as I’d lost my spot on the schedule. I called Mickie every hour afterward, feeling both apologetic and annoyed since I was missing more work than I could afford to do. So I made phone calls and sent email while keeping watch out the back door for the crew to arrive.

At 4:15, I saw them arrive and quickly begin to arrange cross pieces and attach the fence slats. It seemed to be going well, so I busied myself with work and went outside when the same man from Friday came to let me know they were done. I told them it was beautiful and it was – they did a fast and fabulous job and were gone before 6:30.

Minnie said they would do a stick-built design to follow the contour of the yard as closely as possible, so I was unhappy with one section by the street that left a gap between ground and fence. But I knew they must have been eager to wrap things up, and given that it was only one spot and Chienne was too big to escape through the gap, I decided I was satisfied and thanked them before going back inside.

After they left, I went out with Chienne to wander around the yard, feeling happy that she was allowed off her leash to frolic as she wished. I picked up some trash the crew left – a bottle of Vitamin Water, a few pieces of clear plastic and threw them away. On my way to the trashcan in the attached garage, I found several screws held together when a paper/sticker wrapper near the driveway and tossed them on my deck chair. Our neighbors walked by with a puppy and I invited them inside our new fence and felt my new life was rather idyllic while we talked and the dogs played together. I got back to the office the next day, put in more hours than normal to get caught up and arrived home to pull my car in the garage at dusk on Wednesday.

I frowned as I began to pull out on Thursday morning, hearing an odd thunking sound from the passenger side of the car. Thinking my older car had some odd problem, I pulled back in the garage and out of the rain, left it idling and opened the hood. I didn’t see anything obvious so I walked around the car and saw that the rear passenger tire was completely flat. Thinking it sucked that I’d already missed a day that week and was now going to be late again, I went inside to call AAA. A man arrived within 20 minutes and I watched him replace the flat tire with my spare.

“I just had a fence put in,” I told him and he said he’d seen it and that it looked nice. Then he showed me where a screw had punctured the tire and said the location was likely too close to the sidewall to be patched. He recommended a Goodyear place since I’d put that brand on the car about 2 years ago and I stopped that night after work, braving the rain yet again, to have a new tire put on. The bill was $138.66.

I came home, keeping as much distance as possible between the passenger side of my car and my new fence on that side of the driveway and grabbed my umbrella to look around. I then found another long screw with a pointy end and was angry – with the crew for leaving it and with myself for not checking harder after I found the first few.

I was busy with work and kept forgetting to call Contractor about my tire. I thought about forgetting it, but it bugged me. Everything was perfect in the beginning, but then the crew didn’t show up and finish as expected, that gap between the fence and ground was clearly visible from the street and they were sloppy about cleaning up afterward. So I called Minnie, who told me they only used nails so I must be mistaken about the screws, and Mickie called me back to talk.

Perhaps they don’t typically use screws and I’d made them suspicious – I don’t know. But I felt like Mickie thought I was lying – I didn’t know if it was a screw or nail, he said. Even if they did leave the nail, my tires weren’t worth what I paid for the new one. When I protested that I had new enough tires and didn’t want to put more money into an old car, he sighed and said he’d talk to his crew and the main office. Then I went to find the screws, realized I’d been right along, and got angrier.

I did talk to Goofy at the main office today since I’d missed his call yesterday. “I wish you wouldn’t have fixed the tire without talking to us,” he said. “We need to be involved right away. Now we can’t investigate properly.”

This immediately made me defensive – I hadn’t done anything wrong! I’m at a new job in a new house, dealing with a great deal of transition. I’m busy and tired and living alone. So when a screw flattens my tire, I fixed it. I don’t see how that changes the fact that the tire closest to the fence got flattened with a screw the day after the fence was installed. And that I found other long screws near and in the driveway on Tuesday and Thursday. At some point in your “investigation,” logic should play a role. I criticized Goofy’s tone, said that I was going to let Home Depot know my level of satisfaction was very low and told him I’d fax him the tire receipt as well as a photo of the screws I’d found. (I do, however, take responsibility for the tire. I meant to keep the flattened one and should have done so. I did call Goodyear and the trash pick-up had already occurred.)

The quality of customer service is determined when things go wrong, I think. And while I couldn’t have been happier with the initial part of the transaction, the end leaves me scowling at the fence every time I look out my back door or drive into my garage.

I want $138.66, not because the money is that important, but because people bug me when they mess up and only grudgingly take responsibility. And the reason I’ve spent so much time going on about a fence is that it added stress to an already busy time. I suppose I’d like someone to say he/she is sorry this was unpleasant for me. I realize my experience is likely outside the norm – and that Home Depot had little responsibility in the matter at all – but I still expected better.

I’ll send Goofy a copy of this letter as well as the receipt and photo tomorrow. If you’d like to speak in more detail (though I’m not sure how it’s possible after this amount of text), please feel free to be in touch.

Sincerely,

Katie

(And this is why I don't often write angry letters. Too much time and energy.)