Lowes vs Home Depot

[Caldor1999]

u gotta addemnt there Better then Home Depot witch tears down a Whole Mall For One Store

[Caldor1999]

Originally posted by 76BraldorZayKamesfanBBTB

Originally posted by Caldor1999
u gotta addemnt there Better then Home Depot witch tears down a Whole Mall For One Store

Yeah but I wish they would at least lease a few stores instead of tearing them down!

i now but they nevre really gobbled up malls to make one store most of the time they just bulder threre own

[gshowman18]

Originally posted by 76BraldorZayKamesfanBBTB
I hate them because thery take Ames tear them down FOR ANOTHER cookie-cutter piece of junk store that looks like this!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have you ever been to a Lowe's or a Home Depot?  How are they any different from a Builder's Square or a Hechinger's?  The only thing you complain about is going back to the past.  You can't come to the fact that this is a different world out there today.

[gshowman18]

Originally posted by 76BraldorZayKamesfanBBTB


Yes I have and both stores arn't that different besides the colors well Lowe's is more cleaner looking.

But what I'm getting is that when a store demolishes a previous one for a bigger store you know its a Lowe's thats being built like in Waterford will look the same as the Lowe's in Manchester or Plainville.

I KNOW THIS WORLD IS HEADING FOR FREESTANDING BIG BOX STORES AND LIFESTYLE CENTERS

instead of plazas and malls!

besides I would like variety in stores INSTEAD OF JUST TWO BIG ONES!!!!!!!

when it comes to home improvement

First, I don't live in New England.  I live in Marlton, New Jersey, so I don't know what the heck you're talking about.  Second, there are still plazas & malls that are doing very well.  The only things that big boxes & lifestyle centers are replacing are dead malls.  Finally, there's plenty of other hardware stores such as True Value, Ace, & local hardware stores.  Why don't you go to them?

[jmn3]

Retail is always changing.  Years ago, you had major department stores.  Whine all you want about Lowe's and Home Depot and Wal-Mart building huge stores, but Macy's, Hudson's, Kaufmann's, Gimbel's, Sibley's, AM&A's, etc.... all had stores much larger than the largest big box stores today.  As years went on, the stores moved out of downtown to suburban plazas and then to the malls.  Malls thrived for thirty years and now we've moved on to the big-box lifestyle centers.  It's just the next thing in retail.  Just like the rest of life, it's important to remember the past and there's nothing wrong with reminiscing...but you have to be able to accept change and move on.

[tokensafari]

Bravo! *claps all around* Kudos to you for saying that. I have been saying that since i started on these boards. I agree, you have to accept the changes that come with this industry. If you don't then you wont last, and you will be left behind. You have to roll with the punches, so to speak. And for the record, i prefer Home Depot rather than Lowes!

[Caldor1999]

i have to say  Lowes  is bette rthen homedepot there comricles are not stupit and they dont tear down a whole mall to make one store like home depot dose

[storehistoryguy]

I also hate Lowe's too. Taking over everything! (cursing)

Take that!:insane:

[storehistoryguy]

Originally posted by 76BraldorZayKamesfanBBTB

Originally posted by storehistoryguy
I also hate Lowe's too. Taking over everything! (cursing)

Take that!:insane:

Heh thats great!!!!!!!

I know. Seriously I can't stand them anymore. They eat up the trusted old small hardware stores that was started by some family 80 years ago and there runned by the third generation now. I like them. they also knocked down my Five Points shopping center in Montgomeryville with the Bradlees and the Job Lot and Builder Square and House of Bargains and Thrift Drug and the fantastic Weis Market I loved and the design of the building was so 70's and beautiful when there was a sunset over it and now its gone for one of there cookie cutter stores. Another place, Warminster Drive-In. Some many memories, watching so many movies in my parent's old Country Squire and even later when it was known as MY Country Squire. Taken down for a Lowe's, a Target, a Genuardi's and some small restuarants and a bank. Lowe's, the Wal-Mart of home improvement.

[Caldor1999]

Originally posted by storehistoryguy

Originally posted by 76BraldorZayKamesfanBBTB

Originally posted by storehistoryguy
I also hate Lowe's too. Taking over everything! (cursing)

Take that!:insane:

Heh thats great!!!!!!!

I know. Seriously I can't stand them anymore. They eat up the trusted old small hardware stores that was started by some family 80 years ago and there runned by the third generation now. I like them. they also knocked down my Five Points shopping center in Montgomeryville with the Bradlees and the Job Lot and Builder Square and House of Bargains and Thrift Drug and the fantastic Weis Market I loved and the design of the building was so 70's and beautiful when there was a sunset over it and now its gone for one of there cookie cutter stores. Another place, Warminster Drive-In. Some many memories, watching so many movies in my parent's old Country Squire and even later when it was known as MY Country Squire. Taken down for a Lowe's, a Target, a Genuardi's and some small restuarants and a bank. Lowe's, the Wal-Mart of home improvement.

no trust me Home Depot is the Wal-Mart of home improvement.


they have torn down more stores then lowes has the took over many caldor bradlees ames and jamesway locations even montgomery ward and service merchandfise even former sears and jc penny stores they have even torn down a whole mall to make one store they did that to the Moheagan lake mall witch had a James way Wald Baums and a old Sears to make one store with a wal mart in it  and they also have toen down the Fair Felind mall qwitch had Bradlees and Caldor for one store so if any home improvement storei s evile it would deftley be home depot lowes is not that bad compaired to them

[storehistoryguy]

The Home Depot knocked down my Clover in 2001 in Warrington Pa.

[Caldor1999]

Originally posted by storehistoryguy
The Home Depot knocked down my Clover in 2001 in Warrington Pa.

see there alot worse then lowes they tear down a entire mall to make one stores lowes at leats ancores in a mall

[store215]

I don't have a problem with Lowe's. Their stores are much brighter and cleaner with employees that actually know something. Home Depot is the "Wal-Mart" of hardware stores. I think of Lowe's as the "Target" of hardware stores:D

[beachgal26]

As a homeowner, I have to admit that I have alot of use for both of these stores, but Lowe's will normally win as their stores make it much easier to find what you need and have a better variety.  However, Home Depot employees normally seem to be much more knowledgeable about showing you how to do things or which is the best product to buy.

BTW- I loved and still miss Hechingers.  They were the best!!!

;) ;)

[Kmart4life]

I prefer Home Depot over Lowes because at Lowes they never have enough help or cashiers  ;D

[Retail Fan+ (Justin Hill)]

Lowe's has Pella Windows and Valspar Paints
Home Depot has Anderson Windows and Behr Paints

[busman_49]

I must be in the minority that likes Home Depot.  It seems I have better luck finding what I need there than at Lowe's.  Case in point: Home Depot sells electrical spade connectors that I frequently use in packages of 10 (or more if I need a bigger package, which I never buy).  The last couple of times I was in Lowe's, they had an assortment of connectors (that is, 4 of the ones I need and 50 others that I will likely never use).  I'll take Home Depot.

[TheFugitive]

Shopping at Lowes makes me more fluent in Spanish.

Shopping at Home Depot makes me more fluent in obscenities.

[TheFugitive]

The obscenities came during five days of cold showers that it took for the
HQ in Atlanta to make good on the warranty on my water heater.

[Retail Fan+ (Justin Hill)]

Lowe's tore down an old Shopko store on Bailey Hill Road in Eugene, Oregon for a new store.

[TheFugitive]

Gotta get in this bit of Lowe's bashing.

I have a friend, a diminutive lady who is divorced.  She can't move a lot of heavy stuff
by herself.  She has a contractor coming this week to redo her bathroom.  She had bought
a new sink from Lowe's a couple of months ago and then decided it was too big for her needs.
She wanted to return it, get a different one, plus a new toilet and some tile.

My brother and I rented a truck to help her out.  We hauled the old sink back to Lowe's.  There was one cashier at the service desk and one customer ahead of us.  For some reason that became a very complex transaction and took more than twenty minutes to complete.

When they got to her return they told her that by openings a Lowe's charge she could get 10% off on her first purchase.  This is a substantial purchase so of course she agreed.  So my brother and I had to stand there and wait another twenty minutes while they did the return and then ran her application for a charge.

We headed back to the bathroom fixtures department.  She had been to the store earlier to pick out the stuff she wanted, but the manager refused to hold them for her until we got the truck.  There was one clerk on duty at the desk, and one lady there ahead of us, who apparently had 379 perplexing questions about bathroom fixtures to ask.  After ten minutes of waiting my friend decided to go over and get her tile first and come back.

We got to the tile desk and no one was on duty.  We hit the "ask for help" button and waited another ten minutes for someone to come.   She had picked out one type of tile for her walls and another for her floors.  The clerk checked the computer and told her that the tile she wanted for the floors (of which they had plenty earlier in the day) was gone.  Some other customer came and bought every last piece of it while we were out getting the truck.  He checked other stores and no one Lowe's store had enough of this tile to complete the job, so today she is running around to 3 of them to buy it.  She went to purchase the wall tile, the guy did a quick calculation and told her we needed four boxes.  So we loaded those on a flat bed and went back to the bathroom fixtures.

That clerk was now free.  We got the toilet, which was boxed out on the floor.  The new sink was apparently back in the warehouse on a top shelf.  They would have to go and get it with a fork lift.  They told us to go to the front and pay for everything and they would bring it up.

We got to the front and found only one cashier on duty, with the self-checkouts closed.  None of the other customers had a very big purchase, but they were all taking an unreasonable amount of time.  Finally they opened a second register.  That cashier, who appeared to be in her 70's, worked very slowly, taking ten minutes to complete a three-item transaction for the guy just in front of us.  She took even more time to ring us out.  At the end my friend went to pay with her new charge.  The register screen brought up two options, a 5% discount, or six months no interest.

"The girl at the service desk said I got 10% off with my first purchase" she told the cashier.  The cashier immediately got that deer-in-the-headlights look.  She obviously knew nothing about the 10% promotion (even though there was a sign promoting it affixed to her register).  She started pushing buttons to try and find a 10% discount option, and accidentally voided the sale.  She re-rang everything, but still could not find a 10% discount option.

She called the service desk, and was told "you can't do that, you'll have to send them over here".  The only ways to get back to the service desk would have been to exit the store and re-enter through the main entrance (which I guess would have technically been shoplifting), or dismantling the barricades in one of the closed register lanes to get back into the store.  I chose Option B.  

We got to the service desk and found one cashier on duty with 3 people in line.  She called for help.  A stocky, bearded guy came to the other register.  The first cashier pointed at us and said we needed to do a 10% discount new charge sale.  The guy looked flummoxed and said, "Huh?"  She explained again, and he answered "I don't know how to do that".

So he left, and we stood and waited patiently for the one cashier in the entire building who knew how to properly ring this promotion.  My friend was not happy because they did not have her floor tile so she was not going to get that 10% off when she bought it at another Lowe's.  We went to the exit, and realized that those guys who were getting the fork lift had STILL not arrived with her sink.  This stupidity at the registers had been going on for at least 45 minutes.

Finally they rolled to the front and we were able to leave.  We had been in the store for over three hours.  I had sold this idea to my brother as a thirty-minute truck run.

Then this morning my friend called to tell me that the guy who calculated how many boxes of tile she would need for her walls was WRONG, and she did not have enough.  So she is going to have to get more from a different Lowe's when she goes to get the floor tile that was sold out from under us.

I have never seen such inept, ill-trained customer service in any retail store (and I managed a Hills location in the 'hood!).  We were swept-up in a vortex of incompetence and understaffing.

[Retail Fan+ (Justin Hill)]

Lowe's carries Pella Windows
Home Depot carries Andersen Windows

Lowe's carried Nickelodeon Paint
Home Depot carried Disney Paint

[shore72]

My sole experience working retail was a Lowes. This was back before they were a "big box", at least locally. Our store was in a former Acme, built around 1960. I guess Lowes moved in in the early 80's. When I was a kid shopping there with my Dad they still had the original Acme "fish logo" door pulls. By the spring of '92 I was 20 years old with no real marketable skills, had dropped out of college, the economy was stuck in neutral, and I was willing to take on any job. I was hired to be an assistant appliance delivery man. I remember thinking, heck, how heavy could half a refrigerator be?  :D My first lesson in working for corporate America was wasting a day watching safety videos, including a pair of Hyster lift truck tapes that were at least moderately interesting. Part of the waste was that they were essentially the same video, just one a few years newer than the other. Proof that nobody paid attention!

For the first couple weeks I was trained on working the loading dock, as that would be my job between deliveries. The other guy working back there was just a few years older and a great employee who really knew his stuff. I hope he went on to bigger and better things. I remember finding it strange at the time that he always walked/biked to work as I wasn't used to being around adults without a car.

In those days all the lumber was outside or in an open-faced building out back; in the dock area behind the store we kept mostly kitchen cabinets and water heaters. After 2 weeks I'd gotten the hang of where most stuff was; it really wasn't organized that well. Another issue was the inventory wasn't all that up to date and sometimes they'd sell something that we couldn't locate. This lead to me making a mistake, I guess you'd call it: this kindly old man came to the dock having just bought 20 #2 1x2's. (#2 is the standard grade, like you'd use in construction; #1 was the nicer stuff that you'd use for trim or furniture) He had a beautiful, all original '66 Chevrolet pickup that he'd probably bought new. I take him over to where we keep the 1x2's and find perhaps 10 that are warped so bad that they look like an 8' long 'S', and maybe 5 more that are broken in two. Well, that just won't do! I scratch my head and then, despite being the lowest man on the totem pole, perhaps in the whole organization, I made an executive decision: I had him drive across the yard to where the #1 lumber was kept & I loaded him 20 very nice boards. This might have gone well except that, at the gate, in a little booth, sat a portly little man who checked every receipt. He caught it and made the customer turn around. We had to unload the #1's, then drive back over the #2's where "portly" discovered what I already knew. Then the customer had to go inside and get a refund, then drive across the highway to what was then Moore's Lumber. Yep, my way was wrong, but how wrong was it, really? I've thought about it often. I never got called on the carpet about it.

I kept wondering when I would have to do a delivery (though I didn't mind just working the dock). One day I was standing there waiting for the next customer when I noticed one of our drivers (I'd never been introduced) loading a truck with drywall. I thought to myself, "Man, I'm glad I don't have to help delivery THAT stuff!" He then walks across the yard to get me. Gulp. Now, I'm a bean pole. 6'2, no muscle anywhere. I'd helped my Dad move a few 8' sheets of drywall around one day, one at a time, and it wasn't easy. This guy was built for it, though. We jump in the truck and I remember the house we went to had a really muddy yard & the comment was made that maybe we couldn't deliver today...momentary relief...but he snuck in there. These were 10' sheets and on his end he grabbed 4 at a time! I just simply could not do it. With 2 sheets I kept dropping them, which of course caused the corners to break. That meant the customer could get a partial credit if they wanted. The next delivery went worse as I managed to knock a thermostat off a wall. Well, the next day the store manager called me in his office and told me, politely, that things weren't working out and this was my last day. It all seemed like a waste. While I would have taken on most any job, I'm pretty sure if he'd mentioned they were looking for someone to move drywall I would have told him the truth, that I couldn't do it.

After that I wouldn't shop Lowes for at least 20 years. One odd thing is that if you go into a Lowes store today it still smells the same as that one did back then. (I think a lot of it is from pressed wood; all lumber yards are similar). The smell does take me back to that 3 weeks way back when. :) Sadly, the manager who hired/fired me (he seemed like a decent sort) died in a car crash a few years after I left.

[Kmart4life]

There are times when Lowes will have something Home Depot does not have and vice versa, but the problem I still encounter to this day here in Lakeland Florida is that every single Lowes lacks the customer service help compared to Home Depot. Prime example I purchased a grill from Lowes and waited damn near 30 minutes for the sales associate to come help me with getting it off the shelf and he never showed even after they paged him. I wound up climbing the latter and getting it myself. Yesterday I went to Home Depot and I thought I was in Ace Hardware with folks letting me know that if I need help they would be there. I still like Home Depot over Lowes.