Home Depot and its mis-management,who would have known?? Home Depot will be closing (15) fifteen of its stores all because they are reeling from the perfect storm of higher gas prices, higher food and health care costs.Not only because of these factors, but what has surfaced to the shore is the poor mangement of customer complaints.In febraury, it announced its first ever year-over-year sales decline. Home Depot's earnings from continuing operations are expected to decline between 19 and 24% for earnings.Home Depot will cut capital spending by 1billion over the next three years.This money will be freed up to improve existing stores and possibly for share repurchases.
Now lets get to the core of the problem. As was mentioned earlier, Home Depot had poor customer service and they knew this. Home Depot has been hoping that its year long turn around efforts, which have included layoffs in some areas to put more workers on the sales floor to focus on its reputation for poor customer service.
There were so many complaints and poor customer service that it seemed to be all that customers received when they entered and left the store and to our surprise it was no fault of the associates. Management allowed the whole morale of the store to drop and they seemed not to care. In the end, this also lead to the decrease in sales, adding to that the increase in the cost of living.
This what an assoiciate and customer experienced!
I went to Home Depot the other day and I wanted to buy a metal wagon. You know the kind that people pull their kids in but much better. The sales ladies in Garden dept. were very helpful and got me one and told me the price. When I went to the register the price was $80.00 instead of the $64.00 they told me. I asked to speak to a manager and they got me an assistant manager jackass! He said to bad that's the price. You want it or not! I told him about the original price and he could neither confirm nor deny that that really was the price. I told him to take it and put it back on the shelf. When he left, an associate told me that he would have given it to me for the $64.00.
I believe that if this Company fail and ignore this matter , they will suffer the consequences in time to come leading to greater stores closing and even filing for bankruptcy.
5 comments:
Hi Roxanne,
I totally agree with you that Home Depot needs to have better customer service. Without customers there is no business. Loosing two or three customers may not be detrimental at the moment but in the long run it will affect sales. Take for example; a customer may have a bad experience as what you mentioned in your blog. This customer may tell a friend or a family member and it leads to numerous people and as a result nobody will be willing to shop there. If this happens inventory begins to stack and then costs will be more than profits.
I had no idea that Home Depot was in trouble. Another possible cause for why they’re shutting down stores is the decrease in home purchases and with that there’s also a decrease in home improvement. Prices are also outrageous lately especially at home depot, a strategy that they should try would be to lower prices. What do you think about that? (I can’t believe the prices they told you were so far off!!!)
Wow, like what Violeta said, I had no idea that Home Depot was experiencing problems. Now that you brought this point across, I can see how Home Depot lacks in their customer service. I used to go to a Home Depot in Brooklyn and it was almost impossible to find someone to help you! The store is so huge and you can never seem to find anyone wearing an orange apron. I remember they had commercials which focused on their outstanding customer service a couple of years ago? Well, we all see that they are not consistent with what they advertise. Customer service is extremely important to any business. With bad word of mouth from unsatisfied customers to their friends, forget about saving your image because it is ruined.
For the last decade, Home Depot has had tremendous complaints about its customer service. I am aware of 15 employees with manager and assistant mangers positions at Home Depot who have all moved to Lowes within the last 6 years because of unfavorable store environments. Home Depot and Lowes are attempting to stay steady during this housing slump and declined financial markets. Too many customer complaints can deter customer attraction and firm reputation therefore decreasing shareholder wealth. The declining stock prices of Home Depot and Lowes reflects macro environment factors like the housing crisis.
Home Depot has a stock price of $28.56 with a 2.46% decline from last week (volume 14,746,294). Lowes has a stock price of $24.93 with a 1.89% decline from last week (volume 9,649,934).
How do we explain Lowes lower stock price even though their customer service and employee environment is preferred over Home Depot?
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