Home Depot ripoff - dishonest billing Newark Delaware

I had a Home Depot Credit card for a little over 2 years and just recently paid off and closed the account because of their dishonest billing practices and poor customer service personnel.

In May of 2002 I was shopping in my local store where they were having one of their 'spend over $300 and get no interest/no payments until January 2003' deals. The items that I was planning on purchasing that day totaled $280...so I ended up buying a few more items to take advantage of the offer.

A few weeks later I exchanged one of the items that I had purchased upon my initial visit and also bought one more item on my card. I asked the woman at the returns desk if it still counted towards the 'no interest/no payment' offer and after checking with her manager she told me that it would.

The next month (June 2002) I received a statement with my balance and zero payment, and zero interest on it and thought nothing more of it. The following month (July 2002) I received another bill which I tossed aside to open later. I didn't think that I had to make a payment yet and therefore did not think anything of it.

At the end of July I left to spend 2 weeks in Italy and upon returning I received a call on my cell from Home Depot stating that I was past due on my payment and that I would have to remit payment immediately. I explained to the gentleman that I did not yet have payments due and he then explained to me that I was given the wrong information by the lady at the store. He said that since I was a good customer and had always made payments on time that he could remove the 30-day late payment from my account. I thanked him and I then paid off the balance for the item that I had charged on my second visit when I returned the merchandise.

After that I began receiving monthly statements on my initial balance (the one that was supposed to have zero payments/zero interest) and called to report this error (which was also never fixed and so I ended up paying off the balance so that I would not have to deal with this issue anymore). While on the phone I also inquired about the 'late payment' ordeal and make sure that it had been removed. It had not. I then had to explain to the girl what had happened and she said that she would make sure that this was removed. Several months later, when checking my credit report, I found the 30-day late payment on that account.

When I called back to Home Depot to report this and go through the story again the customer service representative was rude and told me that there was nothing she could do. I asked to speak to her manager and was told that 'she was busy right now'. I was then asked to call back later and when I refused to do so (mainly because I did not want to have to go through the story again) the girl became visibly irritated and told me that there was nothing that they could do at this point. I then asked her if this incident was worth losing a customer over and her remark was 'well, if that is how you feel'. I then closed my account and have never been back to the store.

I own two homes, one rental property and the house that I live in, and between the both of them I usually spend over $1500/year in Home Depot. I just cannot believe that a store would make it that difficult to have one thing removed from your file. I have since disputed the 30-day late payment with the credit bureau, but have not had much luck in having it removed.

Elizabeth
Mableton, Georgia
U.S.A.