KNBC reports on Home Depot remodeling

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with hiring Home Depot contractors and subcontractors for remodeling work. But plenty of homeowners have indicated this. Their experiences and comments are documented in a five-part investigation by KNBC-TV Channel 4. After asking viewers to send in their complaints, reporter Joel Grover presented Home Depot with those cases, based on work done by national subcontractor U.S. Home Services, and asked them to respond. Here's what the series' website says:

Home Depot is the biggest name in home improvement, and that's why thousands of people hire them to do major remodeling projects. But an NBC4 undercover investigation explores the costly nightmares many customers say they experience when they contract with Home Depot to remodel their kitchens, get new roofs, and do other home remodeling. Insiders tell NBC4 about what they call questionable sales tactics. Plus, you won't believe what NBC4's hidden cameras caught on tape.

On Monday, Oct. 1, Home Depot responded to the report:

Home Services has completed approximately 440,000 projects in the greater L.A. area over the past three years, and KNBC submitted 177 complaints that roughly spanned this time period. We apologize for any issues customers encountered, regardless of the circumstances. We were able to reach 164 customers, and have worked diligently to address these concerns in an effort to stand behind our work, just as we will continue to do whenever a customer is not satisfied.

The benefit in checking out these allegations is so you can beware of what can go wrong with remodeling with any contractor. If you read that some companies may be overcharging, you’ll probably be extra diligent that it doesn’t happen to you.

So while there is an old truism that what can go wrong will go wrong, we can twist that to:

What can go wrong, you will be on guard against.

See a video of insiders speaking out.

Comments

[maria burks]

I have a horrible experience with a contractor who is so uncaring and heartless. We bought our cabinets at Home depot at Maugeritte, Mission Viejo, CA store. We met Jim who works at Home depot, and insisted we use his buddy Gary Cuccia. My gut feeling said go with Home Depot installation, but Jim swayed us to his buddy Gary. At the first meeting we had issues, We should have known it would be a nightmare. Jim stated he was great and if we went to Home Depot installation we would have issues, since many customers do. So we trusted him, but i think Gary was paying big bucks for referral. Any ways, the cabinets he installed and did a lousy jobs, you cannot see the bad job, but you look hard enough you will see, he did not complete the mouldings also, and he also installed new 400 amp electrical, since then we have been having electrical issues interior and exterior of the house. So we tried to get someone else to fix it and 3 other persons said are you sure you have 400 amp, and we said yes, he said well you dont cause you only have 200 amp. On top of that we found out later when we filed a complaint with the state licensing, he initiated a permit but never filed it. Gary had the nerve even to file a mechanics lien on my house. Well, he screwed with the wrong family, we paid him and he did not deliver.I even called Home Depot to see what they can do to help since one of the employees referred me to this no good contractor, Home Depot did not even care to help.