Bottom Of The Barrel

Why Home Depot is getting it's ass kicked?

Home Depot stock has been completely flat, hovering around the $35 to $40 range, since it posted a high of $51 back in 2002. They recently removed their Chairman and CEO Bob Nardelli, Executive Vice President and General Counsel Frank Fernandez and Executive Vice President, Human Resources Dennis Donovan in a management shake up. Nardelli had held that position for the past 6 years and probably was shown the door because of the flat stock, which any stock owner will tell you is not good business. That all sounds bad but here's my recent experience:

When into my local Home Depot, which I used to go to all the time until a Lowes was built 2 miles from my house, recently to look for some bathroom accessories because I hadn’t been able to find exactly what I was looking for at other stores. As soon as I entered I remembered why I liked Lowes so much better, Depot's in general are uninviting and have that warehouse look and feel. Very cold and honestly they feel almost dirty. I walked around and actually found a faw things I liked but did notice that most of the boxes I pulled of the shelves where very dusty. Does their merchandise actually sit on the shelf that long or is it just that dirty in the store? not sure. Anyway, I go to the self-check out because I like this innovation and I don't mind scanning and bagging my own purchase. That went well and I grabbed my two bags of goodies and I started to head out of the store. Just as I hit the doorway, the alarms go off meaning I had a purchase with a sensor and it had to be deactivated. I actually kept walking because the girl working there saw me checkout and pay and even said goodbye to me on the way by. Well she ran after me and asked me to return to the store so she could fix the issue. At this point I was getting annoyed because, for me the paying customer, there is no issue. I paid for the items I left with, what's the issue? Anyway, when we returned to the regular checkout, she and another associate took my bags and first looked at them and didn't know which item was the culprit so they just scanned all the items in both bags until the $22 towel bar made the register beep indicating it was de-activated. This didn't take very long but I found it to be so unnecessary and this is the reason their stock is flat. The store's are gloomy, the service is sub-par and clearly their IT infrastructure is poor at best since their self check-out isn't clever enough to inform the consumer they have a security tag on a product they are purchasing. The Depot thinks it's a better business model to wait till the customer sets off the alarm so that they can be made to feel like common criminals while shopping at their stores.

Well, needless to say, I avoid the Depot [have been for years] and will continue to as much as humanly possible and say thank you a thousand times over for Lowes picking my home town to build one of their stores in. You have made my life easier and taken just a little stress away all at the same time.

Labels: Going out of business

posted by TheWino @ 11:24 AM