DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Everything Else... Home Ownership

Bad situation, I don't know what HD will do for you but they aren't really obligated to do anything. And if you aren't a contractor who spends a whole lot of money at HD, you don't really have much leverage.

That's why it's best to subcontract these jobs for labor and materials, might be a bit more expensive but it makes the subcontractor responsible for the quality of the material... and if material shows up not right, it's on them.

Unfortunately, you will probably end up eating the cost of that labor, but you might get a pleasant surprise and they may split it or pick it up. Don't hold your breath, though.

In the end, the card they will likely play is that you are responsible for checking materials being delivered before accepting delivery. It sucks, but it's how it is.

Best wishes to ya, I hope it all works out.

They might, but probably not. Like DC said, you don't buy enough materials from them to be able to hold that over their head like a contractor who might buy $100,000 worth of materials from them. Giving you a roll of stretch wrap was probably your concession.

That's great.

I have found that most businesses will help out if there is a problem with a product they carry.

Years ago I had replaced my water heater, with a newer and high end product, with the idea that I would never run out of hot water, and that I would not have to replace the tank again for many years. I had Lowes install it.

About 13 months later, it was leaking like a sieve. It was out of their full warranty coverage. After tons of conversation with Lowes, they agreed to install a new one for free. That was it though. Well, I don't give up easily, and so I contacted the manufacturer. I got a little help, but was still going to have to pay for over half the tank. I still didn't think I should have to do that, so I found the President of the company's name, and his office #. (which was probably near his office, but not directly his office) After more ...... conversation .... they agreed to cover the entire cost of replacing the unit, parts and labor. (so I got Lowes off the hook for the labor, as well) I called Lowes, and they couldn't believe it, until they got the PO authorization from the manufacturer for the tank and install.

The squeaky wheel often gets the grease, but most people don't know how to squeak effectively, or are afraid even make any noise at all.

I am glad you were able to get what is right from HD.

That is good news. I felt they might do something for you just for fear of bad PR if you were the type to go on social media and blast them. That was the only leverage you had. But in the end, a few hundred bucks to ensure that didn't happen is a small price for them to pay.

On that vein, we had an issue with Verizon where they were double billing us one month. It was two separate bills for the same month. One was paid and the other wasn't and I was getting text messages like crazy. I was working with anyone and everyone and nobody could figure out what was happening or how to make it go away. Finally Friday hits so I just pay it too while continuing to track it down and make that payment a credit. Sunday hits and the phones get disconnected for lack of payment. I was livid and sat down and found a ton of executive emails and copied them all on an email with all of my documentation about my payments and engineers tracking down this billing glitch. Remember this is a Sunday on executive land.

Within a half hour I get a phone call from one of the executives apologizing like crazy for the ordeal and thanking us for being a being a long the ideal customer with over ten years of full on time payments and wanted the opportunity to make it right. He said everything should be turned back already clearly with waiving the reactivation fees, the paperwork to return not one of the payments but actually both of them for the trouble will be completed first thing in the morning as well as waiving the normal bill for the next 3 months as well.

At 8:15 the next morning the money was already back in my account.


Now I get to do all the same again, but with Southwest.com I doubt I'll hear anything back from them. I'm currently in the process of driving back to Orlando with a rental car from Denver.

AHHH the advantages of living in a small town. Most people who do work for us we already know. Stores including Home Depot already know us. We have very few problems with supplies or the workers. I'm sorry your having problems bro

In 7-ish months I'll hit 65yo. I wouldn't try anything remotely that challenging now.

Heck. I pulled out the Husqvarna blower today and blew leaves(fairly wooded lot) for 2hrs.

After that I cut the grass, both back and front for another hr. Feel like a Mack truck flattened me.

Oye vey.

Ironically, along those 'leaf' lines, I've been doing my parents leaves for 3 years, this will be year 4.

Same as you, they live in a very wooded area. Dad could mow, but doing the leaves? Too much for him.

This past week we moved them out of their house of nearly 53 years, into a condo at a retirement home place. Fortunately, my 3 siblings were able to help with the move.

2 live out of state, sis lives here.

I was hoping they'd have the house sold before the leaves started falling.........but, no.

So, every 2-3 days I'm over there, by myself, doing the leaves. If I keep up with them, it's not so bad. Go a week without doing them this time of year? Hours of work, with my mower, then dads mower to pick up, then raking the flower beds, climbing on the roof to get the leaves off.

Thankfully, this will be my last year doing it.

I'm only 52, and I will still do just about any job that doesn't require me to buy a bunch of tools I would only need that one time.

But even now, I still look at what it would take for me to do the job versus paying someone to do it, and sometimes pay them.

Recently had the lawn guys put a bunch of stone in one of the beds rather than mulch every year. I did one bed myself last year, but without a trailer to get bulk rock, loading bags at a time from Lowes was back breaking. These guys pulled in, and went to town, had the whole thing done in like 45 mins (took me 3 weekends), weed fabric and all. 3 yards of stone at $320/yrd, I priced out bulk when I did the other bed and it was $280, so for $120 someone else could do it.

That's great. It sounds like you got a ton of stuff done.

All I did this week was pay off my mortgage.

That's worth celebrating!

Good job!

Grats, the feeling of being debt free is amazing, isn't it?

That was a humble-brag of epic proportions. Congrats!

I have gone to my old mortgage company's site and looked at the "This loan is paid off" message about a dozen times since I authorized the final payment. It almost doesn't feel real.

Wow! That's huge!

I'm not sure I'll ever see that here. Thirty years puts me at just about 80 years old when I finally pay it off, so I'm gonna need to make a BUNCH of extra payments to ever have a shot at it.

I had made some extra payments over time, but the money I got from my stepmother's estate did the rest.

Something good came from something bad. I am sure she would be smiling like crazy today if she could see my mortgage paid off.

Congratulations! The "extra" just keeps paying you. No regrets about the scraping wee did to pay extra. It was worth it and gave us some "extra" to do more.

Bask in the glow, man!

Congrats! It's a great feeling! I had mine paid off but took out a HELOC last year to invest in rental properties... I've had to get comfortable having 'good debit'...

We bought a really nice house in a mature neighborhood. Classy little 2-story brick English cottage. It needed upgrades, which limited how much the sellers could ask. Great bones, nice setting on the corner of two sleepy streets. Got it for a ridiculously inexpensive price. Classy-looking little joint.


From Payment Number One, we always paid more than the monthly- and we'd always pay the extra to reduce the amount owed on principle.

30 year fixed. At a time when banks and S&L's were pushing variable-rates like crazy.
Some months, we could only afford to dump 10-20 bucks of the principle toward the future. Some weeks, we were able to dump another hundred or more.

We paid the house off in 20 years + one month.
It was the most incredible feeling I experienced that year. It was almost as if the actual physical weight of that house was taken off my shoulders.


Congratulations, Y.
It's a fun club that just gave you your membership card.

I bought my house on my 44th birthday. I literally got the call the day before that everything was approved, and signed on my birthday.

I took out a 30 year FHA, and refinanced it once to a lower rate. That's a racket. A borrower is better off just paying ahead. Once you get into year 5 or 6, all you've paid is interest. (for the most part, anyway) Refinance and the whole interest racket starts all over, ands might be even worse if they .. ahem ....... generously offer to include the closing costs, so you don't have to come out of pocket with any money to close.

I paid ahead as much as I could, and made a bit of an impact, but I still owned a horrific amount of my original loan amount. I refi'd at about 7 years into my original 30, and went with a 25 year ..... but despite a lower payment, I bet I still paid more than I would have if I'd just stayed with my original loan.

I was just sitting down to do the bills for the month, and realized that I have extra money .... because ... no house payment. I am still going to throw $150/month into a dedicated account for taxes and insurance. (along with a little extra for my "house repair" fund)

Congrats on the house. It's a freedom to be had by everybody. Also good on the tax/insurance account. Many people don't consider that since that was paid by the escrow account attached to your former mortgage. Check with your county and state to look in to paying quarterly, or even monthly if possible. With no mortgage payment, scratching together the estimated prorated portion of tax should be little problem.

Like anybody else, I found it easier and felt better about writing a check that had "00" zeros v "000".

That's good stuff, Clem. We started in much the same way, then it quickly became contagious. Wasn't a really nice house though -- needed a lot of work. House was too small, neighbors too close, but we stuck it out. Paid it off in 6.5 years, stayed there another 6 with no mortgage, saved and paid cash for the next house, literally set ourselves up for life.

You have the small town part right. I moved to a suburb of Dayton last year and it is difficult to decide who to hire for any type of work like HVAC, plumbing, electric etc. Plus I had found while looking for homes to purchase last year the workmanship is horrible, especially when done by the homeowner. In my old hometown, I knew all the contractors who worked on my home. The home we bought was only twenty years old and the sloppy paint and other maintenance not in line with the quality of the home. WE had electricians here for two days ( nearly $,3000) due to dangerous wiring issues from an addition and other electrical "maintenance".

Also my cars for purchase and service. One of the owner's of the local new car dealership (he ran the service dept) sat right behind me at our HS basketball & football games. I could trust him for advice when my car needed work.

I miss that trust I had from people to be honest and do a good job.

It's all of this right here, and the fact that I'm cheap and enjoy learning things, is why I do everything myself (I may also be a bit of a control freak).
I KNOW things are done right, and I save a good penny doing it. The only downside is there is only so many hours in a day and only so many days in a week and there is a lot to do.

I couldn't have said it better. The people that do work for us KNOW us. And that's people from all over n.w. Ohio, by the way, not JUST this town. I go to church with some of them, I sit beside some of them at local games, at restaurants, etc. My wife has said, in fact, she hates going out with just the 2 of us to restaurants, wineries, games, etc "because you go talking to everyone and I don't know them." She's not antisocial, she's just shy.

Me? I'm shy as well, but I realize that talking to customers, or to people that have worked for us, etc etc - is BUILDING a better relationship with them.

On a side note, I use facebook for work at times. It's a great feeling to see the support from even total strangers like "Hey, I've never used you, but my friend/cousin etc has, said you do a great job at a great price".

I could give example after example after example of me getting work due to "I know someone that you worked for", or example after example of people/businesses that did work for us and if there was a problem, bam, they were there to fix it asap.

So was there a body count? We have rented out a condo my wife owned, not this bad, but endless headaches, so we sold it to get .!out of the rental meat grinder. Not laughing at your story at all, but I kept hearing Hee-Haw running through my head as I was reminded of those problems: "If it weren'T for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Gloom, despair, and agony on me!"

Sounds like you had some better luck at the other end of the tunnel with all the repairs. Hope it is all good for quite some time.

Isn't there a way to do something such that this will follow them when their next landlord does a checkup on them?

I think I would look into suing the management for their failing to perform their duties.

If the mgmt company was doing regular inspections and providing reports, and the damage caused was over time, and not done after the last inspection, then it's just a matter of if the juice is worth the squeeze.