Home Depot to close 15 US stores, cites poor performance

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Source: The Raw Story

ATLANTA (AP) -- The Home Depot is closing 15 of its namesake stores, affecting 1,300 employees. It is the first time the home improvement retailer has ever closed a flagship store for performance reasons.

The Atlanta-based company said Thursday that the underperforming U.S. stores being closed represent less than 1 percent of its existing stores. They will be shuttered within the next two months.

A company spokesman says some of the employees will be relocated, while others could lose their jobs.

Spokesman Ron DeFeo says Home Depot has only closed one of its flagship stores previously because of structural damage.

Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Home_Depot_to_close_15_US_0501.html

[snooper2]

1. Well you shitty ass company...

Maybe if you employed people who had a fucking clue what they were doing Lowes wouldn't be kicking your ass...

I drive an extra 6 miles past Home Depot just to get to Lowes...and have spent thousands there over the past year...

[DainBramaged]

5. I shop at my local hardware store

for what it's worth, the distance and time plus gas doesn't represent enough of a savings to shop at Home Sleezepo.

[shanti]

2. they'll be another Home Base

remember that store? we had one less than a mile from the home depot that closed several years ago, home depot taking up the slack. now there's a new lowe's that's about the same distance away. i was in there last weekend and it was almost empty of people. it, and its accompanying mini mall popped up near new home developments and now that the developments are floundering, so is the store.

[anokaflash]

3. HDepot Press Release

http://ir.homedepot.com/releasedetail.cfm?releaseid=307713

The Home Depot will close 15 underperforming U.S. stores that do not meet the

Company's targeted returns. The store locations are as follows:

-- #2015 East Fort Wayne, Indiana
-- #2032 Marion, Indiana
-- #2310 Frankfort, Kentucky
-- #379 Opelousas, Louisiana
-- #2819 Cottage Grove, Minnesota
-- #6901 East Brunswick, New Jersey
-- #6904 Saddle Brook, New Jersey
-- #6171 Rome, New York
-- #3702 Bismarck, North Dakota
-- #3874 Findlay, Ohio
-- #3865 Lima, Ohio
-- #4552 Brattleboro, Vermont
-- #4932 Beaver Dam, Wisconsin
-- #4933 Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
-- #4913 NW Milwaukee, Wisconsin

[yellowcanine]

4. Huh if they knew the meaning of the word "service" maybe they would not have to close stores for

poor performance. They get worse and worse all the time. Hard to find anyone to help you and when you do find them they don't know squat about what is in the store let alone how to use it. Shit stacked all over the place so you can hardly move through the aisles. Stock shelves all in a disorder. Disgraceful. Here in the DC area we used to have Hechingers and they started going down hill and finally went out of business - partly because Home Depot moved in and offered way better service. I nearly got creamed by a big roll of insulation that got pushed off the top shelf by a worker with a forklift at Hechingers. Never went back. Now Home Depot is losing out to Lowes for the the same sloppy service.

[atreides1]

9. Totally different experience for me

We've gone to two Home Depots in Virginia, and never had any problems with finding what we were looking for. The aisles were clear except when they were putting up stock, the employees we dealt with knew where we could find what we were looking for.

We live in Springfield Virginia, near the borders of Mordor(D.C.).

[lanlady]

16. that Home Depot in Springfield is one of the best

It's clean and well organized and well maintained. The one we have in Woodbridge was headed downhill until Lowes opened a super center across the street -- that prompted the HD to get its act together. Still, the customer service at Lowes is a cut above HD.

[yellowcanine]

18. I have noticed that locations do vary widely in level of service. The one in College Park MD is one

of the crappier ones.

[Tesha]

26. We have three Home Depots within a short distance of us.

The shopping experience is different at each of them.

Our nearest Home Depot is dirty and disorganized. Don't you
dare just pick an item out of the bin and buy it because the
odds are high it's not the item you want but was rather just
tossed back into a random bin after someone picked it up
and looked at it.

The stock is often very dirty (dusty and gritty).

The staff is distinctly hit-or-miss. I once asked for "hardware
cloth" (you know, heavy galvanized steel mesh) and *NO ONE* in
the store knew what I was looking for. I might have thought it
was my error, but a local *REAL* hardware store had a big display
of the stuff, all labled (you guessed it) "hardware cloth". I
recently asked where the aluminum extrusions are and the worker
drone lead me over to a nice display of chromed-steel escutcheons
that you put around plumbing pipes where they emerge from the
wall. "No, I asked for extrusions, not escutcheons."

By comaparison, another Home Depot farther away is pretty
clean, pretty well organized, and the odds of getting a
correct answer to your question is probably more like 75%
rather than 25%.

So I guess it's a failure of local management that makes our
local store so awful.

But now there are two Lowes stores within reasonable distance
and a third somewhat farther away so we've been trying to
do more of our shopping at Lowes and less at Home Despot.

Tesha

[high density]

28. I agree, the stores I've seen in Maine are total dumps

And the people working inside them are numskulls. I suppose turnover is so rapid that they don't bother training anybody. I go to Lowes simply because the store is more pleasant, though I'm not sure if their help is any better.

[Blue_Tires]

35. true about the Home Depot service and lack of expertise

Ironically, we used to have a Hechingers down here when i was a kid which was excellent -- my dad always went there to get what he needed, and was kinda upset when it closed (circa 1990)

[johnnie]

6. "Spokesman Ron DeFeo..."

He goes from slaughtering his entire family in Amityville, NY to being spokesman for Home Depot? Not a bad gig I guess.

[NJCher]

34. LOL!

I had the same thought--could it possibly be one and the same?



Cher

[JimmyJubes]

7. Home Cheapo

They treat their employees like shit and their customers like criminals. I never shop at stores that check your receipt as you walk out the door. Police can't even do that unless they have reasonable cause.

[Critters2]

8. Welcome to DU!!

And I agree on all points!

[high density]

29. If there's a receipt line, I usually walk right around it

I refuse to spend money in a store and then wait to exit the property. They can check my receipt as I'm walking to my car if it is that important to them. This has only been a problem for me in Sam's Club, but I don't shop there anymore anyway.

[jmowreader]

33. Then you better not shop at Lowe's

I bought an item from Lowe's in Lumberton, NC, and checked out at the contractor's register. After the woman rung me up and took my payment, she walked over to the door so she could sign my receipt.

Let's say this again: the cashier who created the receipt had to sign it to say I had paid for my stuff. I correctly pointed out that this may have been the dumbest thing I ever saw in any retail establishment. "Yeah, I know, but I'll get written up if I don't sign every receipt at the door."

[BRLIB]

10. CEO is Robert Nardelli a Bush Ranger I believe.

[jmowreader]

17. CEO is Frank Blake, a Nardelli protege

Nardelli completely fucked that company up. For his efforts, they gave him an over-$200 million severance package. If you want to see one each pissed-off motherfucker, go to any Home Depot, find some old guy who's got a 10-year badge and ask him what he thinks of Bob Nardelli.

Nardelli's problem was he was a manufacturer. He grew up at GE Power Systems. They make huge capital equipment, which is built to order. What "knows exactly what his entire staff will be doing when they get to work in the morning for the next six months" has to do with retail I have absolutely no idea, but someone decided this was The Guy to save Home Depot from itself. He came in and invented Six Sigma For Retail. (If the dickhead was going to use a manual that had absolutely no apparent relation to retail to Streamline the Company's Operations, you'd have at least thought he would have used something from the 7-series Army field manuals on infantry operations--except for the parts about shooting people, they're far more appropriate.)

We started cracking a very nasty joke about the people Nardelli came up with to run the company: they wire you to a polygraph and ask you if you've ever been in a Home Depot in your life, and if you can say no without jiggling the box they hire you in a second.

Anyway, they finally decided to ask Bob to take a modest pay cut until he started showing results worth his overinflated salary. He said no; they said go the fuck home.

They put Frank Blake in charge of the company. He decided to bring the founders back in as consultants.

[yardwork]

30. Nardelli was the Bush Ranger, right? Big Bush supporter?

Isn't Home Depot's base in Atlanta? Big hub of Bush supporters there.

[jmowreader]

32. Probably lots of Clinton and Obama supporters there too. Atlanta's not a small town.

But you're exactly right--Nardelli, in addition to all his OTHER faults, was a Bush Ranger.

[JNelson6563]

11. We call it Home Despot

or "the Despot" for short. We call Wal-Mart "the great whore".

We love giving special names to special companies at my house. :-)

Julie

[distantearlywarning]

15. We do that too.

And we call it Home Despot too. :-)

I always joke that I'm the Home Despot (take out the trash! paint the fence! mow the yard! No, not over there, over here!) I need an orange t-shirt or apron that looks just like the Home Depot uniforms but says "Home Despot" on it to wear when I'm supervising projects around the house.

[InkAddict]

20. We called it that too...

The image of your very own orange-vested DIY tyrant whipping up your best efforts to fix your very own "The Money Pit" (home) by visiting theirs -- too funny.

Did you ever dine at Che Guever-a-vans too??? a.k.a. Chez Robere' Evan' a.k.a. Bob Evans.

[distantearlywarning]

31. No, but occasionally we find ourselves at...

Toxic Smell. :-)

[Manifestor_of_Light]

36. Me Too!!!

I've been married to a Home Despot! The bad kind. :rofl:


We don't have Bob Evans in Texas. I ate at one in Missouri and was not impressed with my food. I complained to the server about my stringy meat, and she said they got everything pre-packaged, so she couldn't do anything about it. Grrrr!

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

23. I call it Home de Pot

because my local one does look like a hangout for marijuana-infused teens, young adults and wayward senior citizens.

[dysfunctional press]

25. around here, the choices are either Home Despot, BLowes, or MyNards.

nt

[Auggie]

12. Customer service is part of the marketing mix. Low prices alone

don't always cut it.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[nwliberalkiwi]

14. Republican Supporters

I skip Home Depot they are big Repuke supporters.

[Jed Dilligan]

19. Good, hopefully they crumble into their bloated footprints

and allow life to re-emerge over their desecrated graves.

[uncle ray]

21. "The company reiterated its intention to open 55 new stores in the 2009 fiscal year."

i wonder how many they originally planned to open?

my girlfriend works "in" a home depot store, for a subcontractor, so not exactly "for" home depot, they got the announcement a few hours after i read it here, the bigger news than the 15 closing is the 50 new stores they announced that will not now be built.

her position in the store is set to be eliminated in a few months, more cost cutting measures. you can probably expect worse customer service too.

[TheWatcher]

22. God, The Economy is so AWESOME!

[Vinca]

24. Both Home Depot and Staples put stores in the small, Vermont town

I frequent to shop and every time you go in them, they're nearly empty of customers, but there are lots of employees. Supposedly, Home Depot took the spot for the sole purpose of keeping Lowe's out of the market area. The big box companies operate on one theory: greed.

[Lost4words]

27. Guess you Home depot guys shoud have stayed out of polotics!

once I understood how RED HD was I never went into their stores again. Give me a Big Blue Lowes!