Lowe's vs. Home Depot

I really flip-flop as to whether I like Lowe's better, or Home Depot. To the average consumer they are very comparable stores, of course.

At Home Depot, you can buy trim (baseboard and crown molding) by the foot. You can cut a piece the size you need, and only pay for that. At Lowe's, you have to buy a whole 8 foot or 12 foot (or whatever size it comes in) piece you need, no matter what. +1 Home Depot.

Lowe's is opened one hour later in the evening than Home Depot. +1 Lowe's.

Home Depot had this very cool thing last time I went to return an item. I did not have the receipt (I had it in my car a couple days before I got around to returning it, and the receipt blew out of my sunroof window one nice day when I was driving w/ all the windows open. Really!) so I wasn't sure how returning that item would go. But since I paid by credit card, they were able to swipe my card then scan the item, and voila! The transaction came up, they credited my card, simple. +1 Home Depot.

When you buy mulch, lawn soil or the like at Lowe's or Home Depot, you can just write down the product number and tell that to the cashier, and say "I want X bags of this." At Lowe's, you take your receipt, get your vehicle and drive up to the garden center. They actually have almost this drive-through kind of thing. You enter through the front, an associate helps you load the items on your receipt into your car, and you drive out the back and you're on your way. (kind of like one of those beverage drive-through places, but you've already paid). Last time I bought something like that at Home Depot, I drove over to the garden center and nobody was around. Checked the side, checked the front, nobody. Finally took my receipt back in and went up to the customer service desk. Evidently the garden center closes 30 minutes before the rest of the store, which is why nobody was over there. But they said we could just grab a cart and go get the items ourselves. So we did. But it's a good thing for them that we're honest people. Within reason, we could have easily made off with a few extra bags or grabbed some more expensive bags instead. Nobody checked. But what a hassle. +1 Lowe's

Well, my most recent experience was with paint. July 4th weekend, 2006, both Lowe's and Home Depot were offering rebates on paint. I ended up buying two gallons of paint, one color from Lowe's and one from Home Depot.

• I mailed the Lowe's rebates on 7/10/06. I mailed the Home Depot rebate one week later, 7/17/06.

• Lowe's fine print said "Allow 6-8 weeks for processing." Home Depot's fine print said "Please allow a minimum of 11-13 weeks for processing."

• I received the Lowe's rebate check in the mail yesterday, 8/3/06. 4 weeks and 3 days after I dropped it in the mailbox.
  

I'm impressed :) +1 Lowe's

To be fair, if I get the Home Depot rebate within one week from yesterday, since I mailed it one week later, I will give them a +1, too. But I don't expect that to happen since their processing time was "a minimum of 11 - 13 weeks"


CURRENT SCORE:
Home Depot = 2
Lowe's = 3


Update: I got my rebate from Home Depot this past weekend. It was just barely shy of 7 weeks after mailing. So that was indeed much less than their stated "Minimum of 11-13 weeks" so I can't subtract any points from them. But I still can't give them a point because Lowe's turnaround time was SO impressive, but 7 weeks is not impressive. That's just average.