Thursday, January 04, 2007

Home Depot CEO Walks Off With 210 Million

I'm sure Bob Nardelli is laughing all the way to the bank. The Home Depot CEO was given the boot after six years of keeping Home Depot stores in their messy state. As a nice going-away present, the board gave Nardelli some parting money to the tune of 210 million bucks.

Why should I care?

Last year, Home Depot took up a large chunk of my time. A simple refund in the form of a store credit turned into weeks of store visits, which lead to this Epinion: No More Home Depot for Us! The final straw was a rude encounter with a manager who refused to give us the sale price on a product that was deceptively advertised as being on sale.

In the area where I live, Home Depot was the nearest home improvement store for several years. It was the default store that we ran to when we needed supplies to finish our basement. We learned to navigate the messy aisles in the same way we navigated around our home: by stepping over piles and squeezing around aisle displays to reach products.

As a result of our weeks of returning to the store to haggle for our refund, we were able to chat with employees and learned that the morale among employees was low. They pointed fingers at the CEO, who apparently came in cracking a whip and expecting performance with low reward. Someone forgot to tell Nardelli that the real problem is customer service and the inability to find a product in the store. Make your customers happy and they'll keep returning.

Nardelli's dismissal has come too late for our family.

We now shop at Lowes and Menards.

2 comments:

Karen Putz said...

Thank you for the compliment!

Tawnya Shields said...

I totally agree with your opinion of Home depot. I have had nothing but bad customer service also. They are the rudest people I have ever seen. After our Lowes moved in the area they gained a loyal customer. Too bad for Home Depot
since I started remodeling my home. :o)