Last week, Channel 5’s Susan Wornick reported on the hundreds of homeowners who have lodged complaints against Home Depot. She alleged that hundreds of home inprovement projects ordered from Home Depot were poorly installed and had numerous defects. In the news interview, a former Home Depot subcontractor stated that he was told to say he was a Home Depot contractor. When, in reality he was an independent contractor. He went on to say that the project manager couldn’t manage the jobs assigned to him.

In former posts, I spoke about the fact that contractors have the worst reputation in the country of any industry. This news only cements the reputation of contractors providing poor service to homeowners. Who can you trust?

Large retail stores and lumber yards are quickly getting into the installed sales business. This dilemma presents a huge challenge for homeowners all across the country since retail stores don’t have the expertise and experience to work in the remodeling business. The remodeling business will do over 250 billion dollars in business this year. Since this is an attractive growth opportunity for home improvement retailers, I imagine we will see more complaints as retailers try to get a piece of the ‘remodeling business’ pie.

I predict that homeowners will be complaining in droves about the poor service and craftmanship from home improvements ordered through retail stores. I once heard from a wise old man that you can’t be everything to everybody. Maybe the retail giants should do what they do best, sell retail.