SgtBeavis ordered a clearance item from Home Depot last week. The site claimed that the item was on backorder, and let him place the order. Then they canceled it. Fortunately, the good sergeant reads Consumerist, and decided to write to the CEO of Home Depot to get the situation fixed. It worked: Home Depot overnighted the item to his house for free. He and his woodworking buddies were stunned,

.Last week I tried order a new “Work Sharp 3000” sharpener from Home Depot. This tool is normally $200 but they had it on clearance for $62.25. This tool is very highly rated in the woodworking world and is rarely on sale for less than $150.

The thing is, the tool was already sold out on Homedepot.com. However it was shown as being “on backorder”. So I went ahead and order anyways. I certainly don’t mind waiting a few weeks for such a huge discount.

Fast forward to two days ago, I found out that my order has been canceled. Looks like someone screwed up by saying it was on back order. This seemed to tick off quite a few people on the various woodworking forums I frequented.

So I looked on Consumerist.com and found the email address of Home Depot CEO, Frank Blake, and wrote a quick message explaining the issue and pointing out the various forums that had been discussing this sale. I make sure to remain very polite and state that I was a regular customer and I intended to remain a regular customer. I also didn’t ask for any specific compensation, but I was hoping for maybe a 20% off coupon. I gave this advice to the guys on the woodworking forum, one guy took my advice, others kinda laughed at me saying that there was no way the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company would give me the time of day. I have attached a copy of the email which also has a link to the thread on the Woodnet.net forums as well as screen shots of my order.

Today I got two calls from Home Depot. The CEO (or someone in his office) forwarded my email to Tish in customer services. She called the manufacturer and had this tool OVERNIGHTED to my house. Oh, and it’s FREE! I offered to pay the sale price but she was having none of it.

The one guy on those message boards that followed my advice got a $150 HD gift card. Pretty much the same value as the tool I’m getting.

You can see a photo of my new FREE Work Sharp 3000 on my Flickr page.

I also made sure to inform the guys at the Woodnet forums of my success. I hope you’ll show this off on Consumerist.com.

Amazing. Of course, you can harness the mystical power of the executive e-mail carpet bomb for yourself: here’s how.

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