Empire is so much better than Home Depot

So, we ordered a new carpet for the nasty den on the 7th - I recall writing about it. Guess what? Still not here. The man called the installer on Friday and was like "wtf? we were told the carpet would be in Jersey by Tuesday, it is now Friday, and no carpet." The c-rag was rude to him and said we have to call Home Depot. Call Home Depot, and they say the carpet supplier has no carpet. So...Home Depot? You outsource your carpet sales to a carpet supplier that has no carpet? And no one thought to call us? "Well, normally we ask if there was an alternative color you would like, but since they have no carpet, there was no point." My husband was pretty pissed by now - he asked when did they expect it to be here. Next Wednesday...it will have been five weeks since our inital trip to HD, and we STILL had to wait for the installer to fit us into their schedule. Fuck THAT. We demanded our money back, which we got.

The same morning, he called Empire. At this point, we needed carpet immediately because we had begun to completely neglect/abuse the den carpet because we thought we were getting a new one! They set us up for an estimate the NEXT morning, between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. Our sales guy rolls in at 10:00 a.m., was as nice as can be (he was completely cool with Seamus molesting him), measured, then told us the total, for Empire to remove our carpet (we were responsible for that with HD), the carpet pad (6.5 lb carpet pad as opposed to 4 lb carpet pad), the same quality carpet, furniture removal, and Monday installation, was $730.00. And we only needed to depost $25.00.

Our total, for the shitty service and NO carpet was $1,098.00 with Home Depot. And did I mention they made us pay 90% before they even installed? So we were horribly inconvenienced, but they were just fine because they had $900.00 of my dollars. Fucking hell.

Unfortunately the carpet is not being installed today because of a blizzard that has rolled in, but I imagine they will do it tomorrow or Wednesday. The moral of my story is DON'T BOTHER with Home Depot or Lowe's - they lure you in with the $139.00 installation! deal, but it is ridiculously expensive, and because they outsource the carpet, the person who actually provides the service treats you like shit because they are protected by the wall of Home Depot.
So far, I am 2000% more impressed with Empire - I will let you know if the carpet looks good/bad/so-so and if it gets installed within the next 48 hours.