I created this page to vent my frustration with Home Depot, American Carpet and to relate my experience with the entire process of getting carpet installed.

I have been remodeling my basement. I started three years ago and I am finally ready to have carpet installed. This is the last step and we were looking forward to a swift installation. The first step of course is to pick out carpet so off we went to Home Depot, kids in tow, on Saturday, March 4, 2006. We spent about an hour looking at carpet before we met Tom. He was very helpful and introduced us to a carpet selection that was just what we wanted, much cheaper than what we had been looking at and on sale for 10 percent off including installation. It was also available in 12 and 15 foot widths which was important since the basement had a partition that was 12 feet 6 inches wide.

Well we sat down with Tom and spent a couple of hours as he struggled with the Home Depot computer. It seemed like the web front end was very slow and it finally locked up. He rebooted the computer a couple of times and finally decided that he would enter all the information manually and give us a call when all was ready. Even though we had spent the better part of out Saturday we had picked out a carpet that we liked and the ball was in motion. We were told that we would be contacted and some one from Home Depot would come out and measure the basement so that we could Ok seam locations and get a price. This was an important step and we were told that the computer would provide us with a couple of seam location choices since we had an odd width. Well we got a call a couple of days later and arranged for a measure on the morning of March 10. I decided that it was important enough that I should be there so I took off work. The rep. from Home Depot arrived on schedule and quickly measured the basement. He entered everything into a tablet pc running a cad program and was finished in about 15 minutes. He took notice of the 12 ft 6 in width and also said that we would get a few seam location choices using both 12 and 15 ft width carpet. We waited a week with no word from Home Depot so on Friday the following week we called and were told that everything was ready and we could come in and approve seam locations. We were also given a price that we thought was quite reasonable.

Saturday March 18 we all went back to Home Depot expecting to pay for the carpet. We looked at the seam placement and were surprised to find that there was only one choice. It was prepared using the 12 ft carpet and had a seam running the whole length of two walls. The seam location is hard to describe but it made no sense to me and when I asked Tom about it it made no sense to him either. In fact he was so confused that he asked for help from Chris who was also puzzled. Everybody agreed that there were better choices but they would require the layout to be recomputed using the 15 ft carpet. This would of course, cost more, and it could not be done while we waited. So after two hours we left.

We got a call Monday night at 10:30 Pm. from Tom. We were a little surprised at the time of the call but he told us that the seams had been recomputed and we would be much happier with them. He was also gave us the new cost and we were both surprised that the cost was very similar to the original quote.

That Saturday we went back to Home Depot for the third time and spent another couple of hours. The seam placement was good but it turned out that the price Tom quoted us was incorrect. We were given a new price that was much more than we expected but it included the 10 percent discount. The problem was that the 10 percent discount was not even close to 10 percent of the price. I mentioned this to the manager that was now helping us, not Tom. He didn't seem to under stand that 10 percent is an easy number to compute but whipped out his cell phone and started punching up numbers. "Wow", he said," you are right". "I wonder how that happened". He made some remarks about Tom and started entering the information back into the computer using the same web style interface that had troubled Tom. He entered the information, cleared it out and then entered it again and then again. It seemed that the problem was that the 10 percent discount did not show up anywhere and it was very difficult to determine if it was being computed. After a while he determined the price and we agreed. The carpet could be ordered and we would be contacted when the carpet came in so we could set up a date for installation. I mentioned my concern that the basement floor was concrete and I was not able to nail into it during construction. I was worried about the carpet tack strips being nailed to the floor. I was told that they were prepared for this and would use adhesive.

We got a call a couple of days later and the installation was set up for April 10. I would not be able to take off work but my wife would be home. We expected that everything would go smoothly and we were excited. The morning of April 10 the Home Depot contractors from American Carpet arrived and went right to work in the basement. I called my wife to check on the progress. She said that they had been hammering all morning. This bothered me since I was pretty sure that nails weren't going to work and I asked if she would check with them. She came back to the phone and informed that they didn't speak English but they were all very busy hammering. I hung up the phone but I was concerned. My wife called at about 3:30, they were done and it looked beautiful, I couldn't wait to get home and see it. I left work on time and went right home, It did look beautiful. And then I started to look a little more carefully. The covering on the bottom of the stairs looked a little rough. It wasn't curved but more like an octagon on both sides.

I called Home Depot the next day and talked to Kim. She said that she have some one come out and inspect the installation. American Carpet sent two people out a few days later and I again took off work to meet with them. They inspected the installation and called back to American Carpet. There was a lot of talking in Spanish and I could pick up a little and most of what I could understand was that the installation would need to be redone. They were polite and left me a number to call which I did. I called American Carpet and spent a while on hold while I listened to a recording about the "70 certified professional carpet installers that are ready to install your carpet" over and over. When I finally got connected I asked what was required to be a "certified" carpet installer for American Carpet. It turns out that it is a short written test and the statement that you have installed carpet before. There is no demonstration of actual ability or experience required to work for American Carpet as a contractor for Home Depot. I was also assured that after this job the "Certified Professionals" that installed my carpet no longer worked for American Carpet but this was little consolation to me. I was also assured that they would have there best man on site and he would correct the problem. He would remove the old tack strips, clean up all the debris, apply new concrete to re level the floor and then use a structural adhesive to apply new tack strips. After this he would stretch the carpet. They would also re carpet the stairs and I would only be inconvenienced for one day. I asked how it would be possible to re concrete the floor and glue the tack strips and then carpet the same day. I was assured that they were sending their best guy and he had special fast drying concrete and structural adhesive. It would be no problem. That was April 18, the carpet guy arrived April 21 and wanted to know what he was supposed to do. He looked at the job and said that he could glue the tack strips down but that he would need to come back in a couple of days after it cured. He removed all the old tack strips and glued down new strips. He returned a couple of days later and re stretched the carpet. He did a good job and with the exception of quietly breaking one of my floor tiles in the entrance way I am happy to have the carpet done. Now I am waiting for the stairs to get fixed. It is now May 18. I got a call two days ago from Kim at Home Depot. She was returning my second call about the stairs. She sounded very upset, it seems that the carpet for the stairs has not yet been ordered.

On March 4 we went to Home Depot and picked out carpet it is now May 18 and we are still waiting.