Home Depot and wet bags of pellets rant.

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checkthisout

Feeling the Heat
Dec 23, 2010
370
NW
So....I called the store closest to me and they said they had 80 pallets in stock. "Great!" I'll be down in a jiffy. Fire up the pick up truck and head on down only to find they had Negative 80 pallets whatever the hell that means.

So I grumble, have the customer service rep call the next closest store and have 42 pallets. I tell her to send someone and put eyes on them before I make the drive. They confirm they have them so I head on down and purchase two tons, one for immediate pickup, the next one on will-call that I will pick up on my way to work.

They load me up. While trying to push the pallet further into the bed the forklift puts rips open all the bags on the bottom of the pallet with the forks spilling pellets everywhere inside the bed of my pickup. He promises me that five bags will be waiting on top of the next ton I am going to pickup. No big deal. Ok? He then goes to push the pallet forward and careless smashes into the front rail of my pickup bed.....grrr...it's an old truck so I don't care much....I am a little annoyed.

I proceed to the haul of pellets home. I unwrap them to find the top bags to be nothing but wet sawdust......grrrrrrr........I look at the wrapping and see the smallest hole in the the plastic right in the dead center where the water puddles. I pull off the top bags and set them aside for return only to find that all the suceeding bags have a basketball size wad of sawdust in them. There are maybe 10 bags on the pallet that are good. I load all the bags back in truck and head back to the store. For some reason the store manager got involved. I proceed to tell him that I am returning the first ton because it's waterlogged. He says "You don't want to just go ahead and get a different ton?" I say no and tell that I simply can't get home only to find another ton unuseable and that I also want a refund on the second ton.

But....I say....if you want to deliver two tons without charging me for the delivery fee, I will purchase two more tons and you can deliver them all at the same time. He says "No, we don't want to get involved in doing anything like that" and walks off.

So I went to Lowes and paid way too much for a pallet of Prest-O-Logs brand pellets that were stored undercover. :)
 
Take your business elsewhere and I would let HD Corporate in Atlanta, GA know about your experience! I'm pretty sure they won't be too happy with that store.
 
Bank said:
Take your business elsewhere and I would let HD Corporate in Atlanta, GA know about your experience! I'm pretty sure they won't be too happy with that store.

I agree and they may send you a gift card too.
 
I hope you follow up with a call to HD headquarters. That recklessness is seldom isolated to how they handle just one product. If enough people call, they may do a staff shake up. You will be better served by a staff that doesn't tolerate that behavior. Willingness to take back a defective product is only but one part of customer care. How are the pellets you got from Lowes working out for you?
 
save$ said:
I hope you follow up with a call to HD headquarters. That recklessness is seldom isolated to how they handle just one product. If enough people call, they may do a staff shake up. You will be better served by a staff that doesn't tolerate that behavior. Willingness to take back a defective product is only but one part of customer care. How are the pellets you got from Lowes working out for you?

Thanks for the support.

The pellets I bought at Lowes are on par with the the worse pellets I have ever purchased. LOL

I bought a ton of Eagle Valley pellets for $159.00 last year and they match those in quality but cost $240.00 a ton. Gobs of ash and tons of soot. Oh well.

The Blazers have been the best pellets so far and the couple bags I got from Home Depot this year (I bought four bags initially to get us through a sudden cold weekend) were even better than last years!

I am depressed at the way I was treated by HD because I really want Blazer pellets. Normally I wouldn't put up with being treated that way but I was in a good mood and didn't feel like getting into it with anyone.

I think you guys are right. I should compose a letter and write to home depot and CC blazer to see if HD will do anything. I'll make sure and enclose the literally hundreds of transaction numbers I have from them during the past ten years totalling well north of $100,000.00.
 
Where in the NW are you? If you can get some Bear Mountain pellets you should try a few bags. They are the best. Yes you will probably pay a little more but they put the Blazers to shame IMO.

Good luck
 
Roadstar said:
Where in the NW are you? If you can get some Bear Mountain pellets you should try a few bags. They are the best. Yes you will probably pay a little more but they put the Blazers to shame IMO.

Good luck

In what way?

I only see Bear Mountains on craigslist listed by someone. What is better about them?


Get this. I had my first "clinker" this morning with the Prest-o-logs pellets. The burn pot gummed almost completely shut. I didn't even get that with the Eagle Valley cheapies.
 
Checkthisout said:
Roadstar said:
Where in the NW are you? If you can get some Bear Mountain pellets you should try a few bags. They are the best. Yes you will probably pay a little more but they put the Blazers to shame IMO.

Good luck

In what way?

I only see Bear Mountains on craigslist listed by someone in Tacoma. What is better about them?


Get this. I had my first "clinker" this morning with the Prest-o-logs pellets. The burn pot gummed almost completely shut. I didn't even get that with the Eagle Valley cheapies.

IMO Bear Mountain burn a lot hotter than Blazers. Both are relatively clean burning but you will get more heat from Bear Mountain. I get my pellets from A A Stoves in Tacoma off of highway 512.
 
Did you sask Lowes if they would match the HD price?
 
Roadstar said:
Checkthisout said:
Roadstar said:
Where in the NW are you? If you can get some Bear Mountain pellets you should try a few bags. They are the best. Yes you will probably pay a little more but they put the Blazers to shame IMO.

Good luck

In what way?

I only see Bear Mountains on craigslist listed by someone in Tacoma. What is better about them?


Get this. I had my first "clinker" this morning with the Prest-o-logs pellets. The burn pot gummed almost completely shut. I didn't even get that with the Eagle Valley cheapies.

IMO Bear Mountain burn a lot hotter than Blazers. Both are relatively clean burning but you will get more heat from Bear Mountain. I get my pellets from A A Stoves in Tacoma off of highway 512.



The Blazers are the hottest burning that I have come across compared to these prest-o-logs/lignetics, eagle valley and blazers.

The first two are pine pellets from east of the mountains and the blazers are Doug Fir. I wonder what the Bear Mountains are made out of?
 
Checkthisout said:
Roadstar said:
Checkthisout said:
Roadstar said:
Where in the NW are you? If you can get some Bear Mountain pellets you should try a few bags. They are the best. Yes you will probably pay a little more but they put the Blazers to shame IMO.

Good luck

In what way?

I only see Bear Mountains on craigslist listed by someone in Tacoma. What is better about them?


Get this. I had my first "clinker" this morning with the Prest-o-logs pellets. The burn pot gummed almost completely shut. I didn't even get that with the Eagle Valley cheapies.

IMO Bear Mountain burn a lot hotter than Blazers. Both are relatively clean burning but you will get more heat from Bear Mountain. I get my pellets from A A Stoves in Tacoma off of highway 512.

I am 50 miles to the North of you.

The Blazers are the hottest burning that I have come across compared to these prest-o-logs/lignetics, eagle valley and blazers.

The first two are pine pellets from east of the mountains and the blazers are Doug Fir. I wonder what the Bear Mountains are made out of?

Bear Mountains are also Doug Fir. Sure would like to get my hands on some. Everyone I chat with says they burn very hot and you can turn your stove down a notch. Get the same heat as other brands. Someday maybe?
 
j-takeman said:
Checkthisout said:
Roadstar said:
Checkthisout said:
Roadstar said:
Where in the NW are you? If you can get some Bear Mountain pellets you should try a few bags. They are the best. Yes you will probably pay a little more but they put the Blazers to shame IMO.

Good luck

In what way?

I only see Bear Mountains on craigslist listed by someone in Tacoma. What is better about them?


Get this. I had my first "clinker" this morning with the Prest-o-logs pellets. The burn pot gummed almost completely shut. I didn't even get that with the Eagle Valley cheapies.

IMO Bear Mountain burn a lot hotter than Blazers. Both are relatively clean burning but you will get more heat from Bear Mountain. I get my pellets from A A Stoves in Tacoma off of highway 512.

I am 50 miles to the North of you.

The Blazers are the hottest burning that I have come across compared to these prest-o-logs/lignetics, eagle valley and blazers.

The first two are pine pellets from east of the mountains and the blazers are Doug Fir. I wonder what the Bear Mountains are made out of?

Bear Mountains are also Doug Fir. Sure would like to get my hands on some. Everyone I chat with says they burn very hot and you can turn your stove down a notch. Get the same heat as other brands. Someday maybe?

Last year the bags of Blazers had a cup or two of fines in them. This year there aren't any.

What's shipping costs for a bag or two from Washington state? :)
 
>>
I am 50 miles to the North of you.

The Blazers are the hottest burning that I have come across compared to these prest-o-logs/lignetics, eagle valley and blazers.

The first two are pine pellets from east of the mountains and the blazers are Doug Fir. I wonder what the Bear Mountains are made out of?
<<

I have heard others here say they really like the Blazers. The three bags or so that I tried from HD didn't have as high a flame as the Bear Mountains at the same setting. I really liked the price of the Blazers compared to Bear Mountain but they just didn't do it for me. If the Blazers are doing you good then I would stick with them.

Here's a page from BM's website:
http://www.bmfp.com/bm100dougfir.html

Take care
 
I'm really shocked that the store manager didn't take action. Situations like this are often easily solved with the statement: "I'd really like to find a solution here, with out involving/contacting corporate or the manufacturer of the product."

I've had a situation with horrible performance/results with a paint/stain -- not a small 1 gallon bucket, but a 5 gallon bucket - and they ended up taking it back even though we used it for a single coat - and they don't normally do not take back ANY paints/stains.
(our issue was that the color of the paint stain was no where near what it looked like in the display - we were going to reach out and rip in to Behr paint too.. but ended up not - because HD took it back and gave us back credit to get a different stain)

As much as big box stores may move tons of product and often don't budge on prices - they don't really want it going back to corporate nor their suppliers that there is an issue with how they are handling those product.

This is just in my experience. I would think that they would want to do anything to resolve your issue, it sounded as if you were still open to taking MORE product off their hands!!! Just for him to waive the delivery charge - This after you picked up and brought back a ton already in your own truck.
 
ducker said:
I'm really shocked that the store manager didn't take action. Situations like this are often easily solved with the statement: "I'd really like to find a solution here, with out involving/contacting corporate or the manufacturer of the product."

I've had a situation with horrible performance/results with a paint/stain -- not a small 1 gallon bucket, but a 5 gallon bucket - and they ended up taking it back even though we used it for a single coat - and they don't normally do not take back ANY paints/stains.
(our issue was that the color of the paint stain was no where near what it looked like in the display - we were going to reach out and rip in to Behr paint too.. but ended up not - because HD took it back and gave us back credit to get a different stain)

As much as big box stores may move tons of product and often don't budge on prices - they don't really want it going back to corporate nor their suppliers that there is an issue with how they are handling those product.

This is just in my experience. I would think that they would want to do anything to resolve your issue, it sounded as if you were still open to taking MORE product off their hands!!! Just for him to waive the delivery charge - This after you picked up and brought back a ton already in your own truck.

If he had said something like "well, we can't provide delivery services for free but we can knock off 30 bucks or so for your hassel" I would have taken that offer and been happy but instead he just decided to be a putz.

I was nice and non-condescending because I know how readily people will get beligerant with sales and service staff that had nothing to do with their issue and what not.

I couldn't help but snicker at the 2 customer service achievement pins on his apron.

Oh well. I'll live.
 
Should have told him that he wouldnt be getting another pin this year after you complain to HD Headquarters!
 
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