Problems with the countertops? We've been planning on ordering our countertops through Depot, they've got what we want, so I'm curious what your experience had been...
Like I said, I've ordered countertops and cabinets through Depot twice. The first time, I ordered American Woodmark Hickory cabinets and a laminate countertop. That was in 2001. Everything went fine. Cabinets were great, though one was damaged in delivery, but everything went fine. Laminate countertop was fine and delivered perfectly.
The second time, I went to the same store and ordered cabinets and countertops, but it wasn't quite as good of an experience (much like Bobby M below). The service in the design area had dropped off significantly, and they kept trying to sell me installation. I truely believe Home Depot and Lowes have moved from a warehouse store for pros and DIYs to a service store. I wasn't going to pay someone another $2,000 to install something that took me and my FIL one day to do.
They wouldn't sell me the countertops, even though I had the exact dimensions right away until I had the cabinets in place. Ok, fine I understand they don't want to be screwed if the measurements were wrong but that would be my mistake, not theirs. But, after the cabinets were installed I ordered the countertops, exactly to spec. as my cabinets were. Again, they kept urging me to pay for the installation. $1000 worth of countertops automatically shot up to $2000 for someone to do something that took me about 2 hrs.
They had my cabinet designs, just use those to spec out the countertops. Well, the design person was quite possibly the stupidest person because she kept trying to do everything from scratch rather than using my cabinet designs and using. The countertops were ordered. When they were delivered, they didn't deliver to my house though they were supposed to. They sat in will-call for nearly 10 days while I kept calling, then they finally delivered them to my house and they were completely wrong and damaged. Had to have them reordered and wait another two weeks for them to be delivered.
I would imagine problems with HD or Lowes cabinet orders would be in their design service. My initial run in with them wasn't positive.
I'd think on the countertop front, it's all about the subcontractor they hire.
If you're having countertops installed, like marble or something, then they may be just fine. I haven't paid for installation from HD or Lowes. If, however, you're doing laminate countertops, then you may want to reconsider whether you install them or not. Personally, if it's not something real complicated then laminate countertops are a breeze to install and I wouldn't pay someone else to do it, but be careful when you're ordering.