MARNE, Mich. — Imagine this: you spend $8,000 of your own hard-earned money on a new patio door, only to find it's worse than what you had in the first place.
That's the ordeal Roger Westgate and family say they endured after purchasing a door from Home Depot for their home in Marne—several unsuccessful installations and a two year wait.
“We figured we'd have no problems,” he explained. “It's just been a problem after problem and doesn't stop.”
The family's previous patio door was tired and in need of an update. They turned to Home Depot for a replacement.
A copy of the contract that the Westgates—Roger and wife Jean—would later sign outlined the door’s purchase price and installation-related expenses.
The total amounted to $8,072.
The installation was scheduled to occur in May of 2021 with a crew contracted through the home improvement retailer.
“The door is a quarter of inch out of frame, so it's just a little bit like this,” Roger gestured to the side. “The guy was trying to make them go straight and he shoved them in. It chipped the doors on both sides.”
Instead of a feature they could take pride in, Roger said the installers left them with a draft and a downgrade.
Emailed correspondence viewed by 13 ON YOUR SIDE showed the company apologized and attempted to address the issue, dispatching the same crew to remove and reinstall the door that August.
The second installation, Roger related, faired no better than the first. The installer, Roger recalled, then told the Westgates their new slider was defective.
Documents showed the manufacturer later sent an inspector, who appeared to suggest the opposite.
A copy of the resulting report flagged more than a dozen errors that inspectors suggested were "all install related."
Based upon when the damage occurred, Roger noted, the door’s manufacturer warranty had also been at least partially voided.
“They put screws into the side of the door, they put screws on the inside where it actually chipped the wood,” he read selections from the report aloud. “They think it's nothing. I didn't pay $8,000 for nothing.”
It would mean emails, emails and more emails, but as of summer 2022, then roughly a year into the process, the dialogue led Home Depot to order replacement panels, which the company said would arrive that July.
“Come to find out the door was delivered to Home Depot on July 12 of 2022,” Roger recalled. “I called them on February 2 of 2023 mad again and told them ‘I want my door.’ The store manager told me ‘the door’s here. It's been here. They didn't take care of that?’ I said no.”
The doors would never be installed. As Roger said the installation crew would discover, the replacement wouldn’t work either. The new panels were also, as another email revealed, the wrong color.
Meantime, the delays have the Westgate's plans to fix-up the remainder of the home's main level on ice, in addition to the family itself.
The cold air pumping through visible gaps in the massive 16-foot opening, Roger said, meant they were paying a small fortune to keep the home livable, if not comfortable.
“During the wintertime, we go in the basement, because it's just cold up here,” he explained. “You can't keep it warm enough. It leaks air through the frame and everything. And it's just cold… I can't believe a company like this would even stand for this.”
In response to an inquiry submitted by the 13 Help Team and a subsequent phone call, Home Depot was understanding and cooperative.
The company said it intended to rectify the situation and had already taken steps to do so:
This story will be updated with additional details once an installation date is scheduled.
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