Gripe: Home Depot and Thomasville Cabinets

This past weekend was my anniversary.  In the middle of the celebration, we recieved a call from Home Depot's East Palo Alto store location indicating that a replacement cabinet facing had been delivered and we needed to pick it up.  The cabinet is from Thomasville.  We went into the store on our anniversary, and came back without our cabinet facing, for the 4th time. 

Here's the backstory. In June, my wife moved our baby chicks out of the children's bathroom and put them in her office space, attaching one of those heating lamps to the counter above the cabinets in her built-in desk.  The heating lamp clamp failed, the lamp fell down against the cabinets and started a small house-fire.  Not so much a fire as a cherry-wood BBQ that was easy to extinguish. 

Since early June, we've been trying to replace the cabinets.  The cabinets were purchased at a HomeDepot Expo store, and since those are no longer around, we've been working through the folks at HomeDepot in Palo Alto, the only place Thomasville is sold.  The people working the cabinetry section of the HomeDepot in East Palo Alto are a special kind of unhelpful.  The especially rude kind. 

My wife has ordered and returned the cabinets 4 times.  The problem has been that the floor samples were mislabeled, which we were assured they were not.  Every time we ordererd using the floor sample as the guide, the pieces that came in were natural finish cherry not the reddish-stained cherry "light finish" that matched our cabinets.  Each time, my wife insisted that the floor samples didn't match the cabinets, and each time, we were told there was no return policy and that we were wrong.  We simply refused to sign for the merchandise and take it home. 

These things happen -- sales and merchandising reps mislable things, but the sales folks at Home Depot should get a clue and cross-check every once in awhile. 

Here's the kicker, and the center of my gripe: EACH time that we talked with the sales folks, they told us that if we simply took home the merchandise, they cabinets would grow darker over time.  Even funnier, they gave us a "tip", that if we left hte cabinet facing out in the lawn, THE SUN would make our cabinet darker.  That has got to be the most idiotic thing I've ever been told in a sales process. WTF!

FACT: The sun bleaches everything, including wood.  The sun makes our skin darker because melatonin reacts to the sun and scarres, creating a "tan", to help guard against further sun damage.  Other than skin, anything left in the sun gets "whitened".  Everything. 

Just today, a Thomasville employee called my wife to get more info and convince her that she was wrong, and the agent repeated this ridiculous line about the sun.  No doubt, this is a line of BS that gets handed down from manufacturer to the channel marketing/sales managers to the in-store personnel at Home Depot.  Be aware of this nonsense if you're DIY or die. 

BTW, my wife finally performed the cross-check on the cabinet finish, and the folks at Thomasville now know that they have incorrect labels on the floor samples at the East Palo Alto Home Depot.  You can use this as post as a time stamp if you are caught in related cabinet monkey business.