I learned a very expensive lesson.
Ethan and I had to make a HUGE Home Depot order. I'm talking like, both of our monthly salaries gross pay kind of order. We had a million square feet of tile to buy, three toilets, a bathtub, some weird contraptions called shower diverters, fancy oil rubbed bronze fixtures...you name it, we needed one.
With the exception of some splurge items and the Ikea kitchen, Home Depot is basically outfitting the renovation.
I did a little poking around on Home Depot's website and learned about something called The Pro Desk. If you place a gigantic order, you are eligible for a discount.
Step One: Actually getting in touch with this mythical Pro Desk. I looked up my neighborhood Home Depot and saw that the Pro Desk was open weekends. I even called to double check. Awesome. We got up early and went in. Turns out, both the website and the employee I talked to were confused - the Pro Desk isn't actually open on the weekends The person in the store advised that I call before 8am on Monday. So I called. I got transferred around at least 7 times. Finally someone hung up on me and put me out of my misery. I went to work early so I could call from my desk and sit on hold every day for a week. Any time I had an hour at my desk without meetings, I called the Pro Desk. FINALLY I got in touch with someone at the Desk. I was so excited when the person answered, I got totally frazzled and almost accidentally hung up on him.
Step Two: Getting the quote. The guy I finally got in touch with told me that the easiest way to work with the Pro Desk is to come in during business hours. 1. I don't drive. 2. I'm a workaholic. The business hours option just wasn't going to work for me.
I explained this, and he said no problem. I could just email them and Excel spreadsheet with my order and they would get back to me with my discount. I already had my wishlist in Excel (of course I did), so this was perfect! I emailed it along and received an immediate response. They were working on my quote and would get back to me.
A few days went by with no response, so I gave the Pro Desk a call. Per usual, I got transferred around 800 times before someone finally hung up on me. I went to work early and called multiple days in a row. Defeated, I emailed them and got a quick response: they were going to get back to me that same day. Great!
Step Three: Dealing with the quote. My quote was disappointing. They were quoting me MORE than what I could just buy myself online. That was totally stupid - I had waited over two weeks for my quote at this point, and probably wasted ten hours sitting on the phone and getting transferred around and hung up on. I decided I was just going to buy everything on my own online. My credit card had extra points with Home Depot, so this was the obvious course of action. This was also my Big Mistake.
What Should Have Happened: About forty-eight hours later, I received an email from the Pro Desk telling me that my account had been activated and with my order size I was eligible for a 20% discount. Say what?
IF I had been patient, and waited forty-eight more hours, I could have saved a ton of money. I should have placed the order using the slightly more expensive Pro Desk quote, which actually would have been cheaper with the discount.
I called Home Depot again to see if I could somehow transfer my order to the Pro Desk, or do anything to get the discount. Of course this required about 10 hours on hold, which I suffered through, only to find out that nothing could be done. My only course of action was to wait for everything I ordered online to arrive, return it all to the store, and then re-order from the Pro Desk.
We weighed the pros (saving money) against the cons (getting a million square feet of tile, three toilets, a bathtub, etc. back to Home Depot) and decided to chalk this up as a very expensive lesson. Learn from my mistakes. Be patient and wait for your Pro Desk welcome email.
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