Comment by doodlebugging | Hacker News Reader

Comment by doodlebugging | Hacker News Reader

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As a long-time Home Depot customer who works on everything DIY (cars/gardens/home improvements/etc) I have found over the past few years that Home Depot search will consistently get me to the product that I am looking to buy or close enough that it is easy to comb through the results to refine the search.

This is in stark contrast with Lowe's where I would describe the difference as being akin to searching via Google (Home Depot) or by Cuil (Lowe's).

For those unfamiliar with Cuil:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sites/cuil-theory

If you know her please send some high praise from me. I am one of the people who has long experience with making things and knows several ways to describe common tools, materials, parts, etc but who hates to have to cycle through each of them hoping that the inventory management engine recognizes the product and lists it near the top when it delivers search results.

As a customer, I could tell that results from Home Depot searches delivered quality results by a simple search for a 2x4 of a specific length.

Excellent work!

After building 3 houses, some of them doing all electrical, windows, doors, trim, flooring, paint and endless projects - I too have been impressed with the search results.

Lowe's, on the other hand blows HD away with speed. HD could also work on their funky layout issues. On an up to date mobile chrome, sometimes it decides that I'm really on a desktop (no, I didn't hit desktop mode) and it renders what is nearly useless on a small screen.

>On an up to date mobile chrome, sometimes it decides that I'm really on a desktop (no, I didn't hit desktop mode) and it renders what is nearly useless on a small screen.

Thanks for reminding me of this. I'm still using a Windows phone. It will be obsoleted soon though, and I had blamed most of the poor rendering of HD site on a phone on the phone itself since I commonly get the "unsupported browser - please upgrade" messages from lots of sites.

Like Best Buy, their mobile version is not good and borders on unusable. I had always blamed that on my own decision to use an obsolete phone as long as possible instead of on poor mobile website performance. I tend to locate the part that I need on my desktop, send a link or screenshot to my phone. That way I know which aisle/bin to find it once I make it to the store and don't have to waste time exploring all the things that I want but don't need.

Lowe's does throw up search results a bit faster but to me, the time wasted trying to find the right combination of terms to use in searching is not worth the small price difference between the two stores. I buy from Lowe's when I am looking for a specific brand that is not carried at Home Depot.

I also prefer Home Depot search, but having something labeled as "in store", driving there, and finding that it doesn't exist (appliances are especially bad) is infuriating. I'm basically right between two Home Depot and one Lowes. With Home Depot, I almost always have to go to both, and usually end up saying "f*ck it" and then go to Lowes and pay a couple dollars more. I now just go straight to Lowes because my time is worth more than a few dollars in savings. My wife also refuses to go to Home Depot for anything, from her own experiences, saying they never have anything in stock.

Yes! This is always a big problem with both stores locally. The inventory they show online may not be close to the actual inventory at the store.

We recently had problems buying a couple of appliances from Lowe's due to discrepancies in their online versus actual inventory. If Home Depot had carried a similar model we would've gladly bought there but their inventory was slim.

I tried to buy a dishwasher from Home Depot. The app listed around 15 models in the store, ready to pick up. I went to the person at the appliance section, pointed to the one I wanted, and they said "We actually don't have any in stock, except for some manager specials". I asked him if the app was wrong, and he very weasily avoided the question, multiple times, so I think the staff is aware. I ended up leaving after they said they didn't have a list of the manager specials, they would have to look them up.

This is our experience with Lowe's almost to a T. We checked refrigerator inventory online and found 3 in stock. Tried to buy one online. No luck as the purchase would not complete. We went to the store to have the appliance person verify that they had them in stock ready to buy. The appliance department person confirmed that they had 3 but told us that none were available for immediate purchase and delivery. They claimed that all were either on hold or already purchased awaiting delivery, therefore we would need to order one.

Once we arrived back home, we tried to buy online again and it failed so we called the customer service desk to relate the tale about trying to buy one online, trying to buy one in the store, etc and the person checked inventory for us. She discovered that they had 6 of the model in stock and we could definitely buy one and have it delivered the next day. We completed the purchase over the phone and scheduled delivery for the next day.

That part went off without a hitch since I just had the delivery people roll it into the kitchen and I set it all up and swapped everything over.

Aggravating.

I needed some 40 lbs sacks of rocks to finish up a project. Just a few more. There is store between my home and where I worked at the time. I checked online, it said over 500 in stock. This would be over 20,000 lbs of rocks sitting around in bags. They had exactly zero in stock in the store.

The website said "over 500", the store had zero. This is the equivalent of thinking you're a millionaire but finding out you can't even purchase a McDonald's dollar menu item.

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