I don’t go looking for these cheats. They find me. Home Depot makes it IMPOSSIBLE to take their advertised deal.
In this case I wanted to use the deal Home Depot advertises nearly everywhere if you buy on your Home Depot card totals over $299. In this case Home Depot gave me two different balances to pay to avoid interest payments. One was written in bold, which I paid, and one was hidden away in fine print, so they could charge me interest. Judge for yourself.
So if you read the “statement” there are several amounts I could pay, $25, is the minimum and $847.75 is the total. If you read carefully you might have noticed that I could pay $113.09 by 6/12 “to avoid paying deferred interest charges” and to pay $564.75 by 1/24/13 to avoid interest. I paid $115.00 and thought that was it.
But there was another option I did not see. In its smallest fonts there is a place that says “pay $238.00 by June 21, 2012.” Yes that is conflicting with other information to pay a different amount on the same date “to avoid … interest”. But I paid the amount I saw, and I accrued interest.
I wrote this letter:
Also, this morning I got a letter from them in email, to go to my account for a reply. But of course it had nothing to do with my complaint, but rather about changing passwords. While signed on I sent the text of the letter I sent to them above:
“Today I spoke with Julie, Latoia, and Nicole before finally speaking to Pam, the Unit Manager a few minutes ago. I write this to document the facts at the suggestion of offices of consumer protection before bringing a formal case against you for deceptive business practices.
I have attempted to follow your various rules to govern my purchases with Home Depot for your special financing offers. I find them impossible to explain simply, so I will only refer you to my Statement with the payment due date of June 21, 2012. There is no statement date on the page, as you see (attached) but it does say “Pay $564.75 by 1/24/13”, or “$113.09 by 6/21/12” (and I paid $115) but what I did not see was written above that, in smaller font: “pay $238 by June 21, 2012…” a different amount by the same date.
Because of this deception and/or subterfuge, and some other problems that took a long time to discover and would take even longer to explain, I was charged $10.77 in interest charges despite several calls and my best efforts to follow your rules.
Please respond to this reasonable request for an explanation of contradictory instructions on your bills and your charges for following the wrong instructions which were printed in larger font than the correct instructions.
Pam’s final answer was the Home Depot will not answer this complaint. I do not intend to stop here, but rather think you owe an apology to me an all your customers who have tried to follow your obfuscations. I have a web site www.againstgoliath.com that will be posting this blatant example of devious business practice by Home Depot.”
I also found this other posting about Home Depot’s Deceptions:
http://www.stripersonline.com/t/832007/home-depot-deception-lies-and-screw-ups
http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/u7igh/home_depot_deception/
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2011/11/therasense-encouraging-intentional-deception.html
