Remember, Home Depot’s price match policy doesn’t apply to online listings, including its own website. At his local store, Michael paid more than twice the online Home Depot price for a coaxial cable, but Home Depot refused to refund him the difference. They even say as much in small print on each page of their website. With Home Depot, be sure to call and get a valid local price quote before heading off to purchase something you saw online.

I needed to buy a 50′ coaxial cable to hook up a TV in my bedroom. After looking over Home Depot’s website, I found what I needed at this link.

Since it was something I wanted to have tonight, I headed over to my local Home Depot store. I found the cable I was looking for right away, but the price was $17.35, more than $10 over the price I set out to pay.

Maybe foolishly, I decided to go ahead and buy it since I didn’t have a printout of the website to prove in any way that the price was indeed $6.99. I figured I would call customer service once I got home and they would sort it out for me. Ha! Wrong.

I called their customer service number and got Tracy. Tracy was nice, but said they do not price match between the store and the website. I asked for a supervisor. I got Michael. He also asserted that the store and the website are separate things, and they do not price match. It didn’t matter how much I explained that I would have never gone to Home Depot in the first place were it not for the price on their website. The only answer I got was “we have to stand by our price match policy.”

I let them know that their policy had lost them a customer, and that I would be telling everyone I know about the negative experience I had. No dice. They’re going to stand behind their policy.

I know this isn’t the biggest travesty ever sent to the Consumerist, but I hope you can get the message out there that the price on Home Depot’s website does not in any way reflect the price you’ll see in the store.

Near the footer on each page of their website Home Depot displays the following:

† Local store prices may vary from those displayed. Products shown as available are normally stocked but inventory levels cannot be guaranteed.

This fine print is in a light grey color and easy to miss, though—a small detail, but it matters when you’re trying to comparison shop. We were also surprised by the amount of the price difference for the same in-store product, which is why we decided to go ahead and post this. A 10-30% difference might be expected, but the in-store product is almost two and a half times more expensive!

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