IN THIS ARTICLE: Introduction Which Stores Give Great Service? Which Stores Will Have What You Need? Which Stores Have Flexible Return Policies? Which Stores Have the Best Prices? Guide to Our Ratings

Ratings of hardware stores Introduction  You promised your spouse that this was the year you were going to add “do-it-yourselfer” to your long list of life accomplishments. But before you start knocking down walls and tearing up floors, you’ll want to make sure you’ve found a hardware store that will have whatever you’ll need, including a staff ready to answer even the toughest questions. To help you find one, our Ratings Tables have ratings of Twin Cities area stores for quality and price.  Which Stores Give Great Service?  Running a top-notch hardware store is a challenge, starting with recruiting well-informed, helpful staff. Given that the best hardware store salespersons have the knowledge of a plumber, painter, electrician, roofer, landscaper, carpenter, and a dozen other trades, it is no easy feat to find and retain a cadre of these professional know-it-alls.  In addition to superior staff, the best hardware stores are somehow able to stock just about everything their customers might need and are able to keep this amazing jumble of products organized in such a way that their customers or staff can find them.  Luckily, there are still many hardware stores in the Twin Cities area that are up to the challenge. For these stores, we receive reviews like the following from surveyed customers—  “A great place if you haven’t got a clue and are all thumbs.”  “Friendly, helpful staff—someone is always there to assist.”  “A great neighborhood resource. Staff are exceptionally customer-oriented.”  “Always great advice and plenty of people to help.”  “I park my car in front, walk through the front door, and ask the first clerk I see, ‘Where can I find small green widgets?’ He knows everything about green widgets, takes me to the right aisle, helps me choose the right widget, and I’m in and out...in five minutes... Heck, it takes five minutes just to park my car and walk to the door of a big box!”  But, unfortunately, it is clear that there are many other hardware stores that are simply unable to keep up with the best. For these stores, consumers lament—  “Impossible to get help when you need it; they aren’t just busy—they aren’t even there.”   “Shopping [there] is truly a painful experience. Service, if available, is slow and surly.”  “It’s hard to find anyone who knows about the things on the shelf, and impossible to find anyone who knows whether there might be things not on the shelf.”  “A real scarcity of competent help. The store is cluttered and not easily navigated.”  “Can’t find help when needed. They can’t find products in their own store. Customer service is typically discourteous.”  “Though this location is the closest hardware store to me, I cringe when I have to go.”  To help you find those hardware stores that have almost everything, and have staff ready to answer the toughest questions, our Ratings Tables show how CHECKBOOK and Consumer Reports subscribers we surveyed rated Twin Cities area stores. (Our customer survey and other research methods are described below and here.  As you can see from our Ratings Tables, to get good advice and the best staff attitudes—the two service features hardware store customers care most about—you’ll likely have to turn to an independent store, since the largest chains—Home Depot and Menards—received, on average, relatively poor ratings from their surveyed customers on these features. At the time of our last full, published article, Menards was rated “superior” for advice by only 31 percent of its surveyed customers and Home Depot was rated “superior” for advice by only 36 percent of its surveyed customers. That compares unfavorably to the numerous independent stores throughout the Twin Cities area that were rated “superior” for advice by more than 80 percent of their surveyed customers.  Among the many Ace and True Value stores in the area, there is no consistent pattern in ratings for advice or other service features. That is not surprising since Ace and True Value are buying cooperatives with which independent stores affiliate, and they don’t impose performance standards or specific operating procedures on affiliated stores.  Whichever store you choose, you will want to find the specific clerks most capable of giving you helpful advice. Over time, you’ll learn who they are by trial and error. But you might be able to speed up the process by simply asking—for example, “who will be able to give me the most expert advice on some plumbing questions I have?”  Once you have identified the folks with the know-how, the next challenge is to be sure you get served by them rather than by some willing but less knowledgeable clerk. We have all experienced the frustration of being latched onto by a clerk when both we and the clerk know—but are embarrassed to say—that the clerk doesn’t really have the answers. One strategy when approached by other clerks is simply to thank them but explain that there is a specific clerk you want to talk with.  Which Stores Will Have What You Need?  Compared to their ratings for quality of advice, the big chains do better when it comes to variety of products, another key consideration for many consumers in store selection. The Home Depot and Menards stores are particularly strong, compared to most independent hardware stores, on building supplies. Although they don’t generally rate as high for variety as for advice, many independent stores do seem to do a masterful job, often in relatively small space, of offering the variety of items their customers want.  In addition to varying in the range of products they carry, hardware stores also vary in the special services they offer. Services range from tool sharpening, key making, and glass cutting, which many firms offer, to bicycle and engine repair, which very few offer. Some stores also offer free classes on such topics as landscaping, floor installation, and cabinet installation. There are many places to rent tools, but the local hardware store is likely to be one of the more convenient. We have not reported on the range of services each store offers, but you can easily check whether stores offer services you need.  Which Stores Have Flexible Return Policies?  Before buying items at a store, you will want to check the refund policy. A liberal return policy is important in the hardware business because it is fairly easy to miscalculate the volume of paint, the weight of nails, or the size of a hinge needed for a job. Since you may buy materials for a project ahead of time, it may be months before you realize that you have too much, the wrong thing, or a defective product. It helps if you are dealing with a hardware store that will willingly accept returns.  From the store’s standpoint, there are real disadvantages to a liberal return policy. First, the long delays involved may mean a store no longer actively merchandises the product you want to return. Second, very likely you will have damaged the packaging. Hardware manufacturers, for inventory and merchandising reasons, now prepackage many items that used to be sold out of bins or from other types of open displays. Everything from bolts to braces is being sealed in clear plastic packs. If you find out only after opening the package that a corner brace is unsuitable and you want to return it, the store knows it will be very hard to sell. A further problem is crime; like other types of retail firms, hardware stores must deal with individuals who try to bring back stolen merchandise for cash refunds.  Despite these problems, we found return practices at most hardware stores to be remarkably liberal. Almost all stores will allow customers to return products for a full refund for an indefinite period of time, as long as the customer has a receipt and the item can be resold. In talking with store managers whose stores have stated policies regarding time limits and proof of purchase requirements, we found that actual practice is often much more flexible. The sign may say no returns after 30 days, but the store might allow a regular customer a refund on merchandise that was bought over a year ago. Some stores will even refund regular customers’ money if they have no receipts, and even if the items don’t have price tags.  Our Ratings Tables show how surveyed consumers rated their stores for “reliability (standing behind products, doing what’s promised, etc.).” Given the consumer-friendly return policies offered at many stores, it is not surprising that we found less variation in scores for reliability than we did for the other quality measures we asked about on our customer surveys.  Which Stores Have the Best Prices?  Although the area’s independent stores tended to score higher than the big chains for customer satisfaction, most were not competitive with Home Depot, Menards, or Mills Fleet Farm on price. We did, however, find a number of independents—including some that rated high for the advice they offer and on other quality measures—that had below-average prices.  At many stores, you can save money by asking for a discount. Some independent stores offer a 10 to 15 percent discount on all items when a customer charges purchases on a store charge account or the store’s own credit card. Such discounts would make the stores’ prices more competitive with the big chains than the price index scores on our Ratings Tables suggest, because the price index scores don’t take such discounts into account.  If you are working on a large project that will require a lot of equipment and materials, you might also be able to get a contractor’s discount at some independent stores—but not at the big chains—by simply asking for it. Such a contractor’s discount might save you 10 to 20 percent off the normal prices. Some stores will agree to give the discounts to normal homeowners who will be spending over $500—and in some cases even a lower amount—over the course of a couple of weeks. Our price index scores don’t reflect such discounts.  A Note on Lowe’s  Recently, national chain Lowe’s began expanding to the Twin Cities area. Unfortunately, at the time we went to press, we had only a handful of ratings for it, so Lowe’s does not appear on our ratings table. We periodically update our customer survey ratings, and will include Lowe’s in our ratings tables there once we have compiled enough feedback for it.  In the six other metropolitan areas where we publish CHECKBOOK, Lowe’s ratings for quality and price are similar to those for Home Depot. In each of those six areas, both chains receive customer survey ratings that are well below average for “advice” and “overall quality,” and both have prices that are well below average. In five of these areas, Lowe’s ratings for “advice” and “overall quality,” while below-average, are considerably higher than Home Depot’s.  Guide to Our Ratings  Customer Ratings  We regularly survey area consumers (primarily CHECKBOOK and Consumer Reports subscribers) for their feedback on services they have used. For our survey on hardware stores, we asked consumers to rate their experiences with hardware stores they had most recently used “inferior,” “adequate,” or “superior” on several aspects of service, including “advice on choice and use of products,” “promptness of service,” “staff attitudes/atmosphere,” “ease of looking at/testing products,” “variety of products,” “reliability (standing behind products, doing what’s promised, etc.),” and “overall quality.” Our Ratings Tables show the percent of each firm’s surveyed customers who rated it “superior” (as opposed to “adequate” or “inferior”) on each question.  We have included on our Ratings Tables all of the stores for which we received at least 10 ratings on our customer surveys. If a firm is not listed on our Ratings Tables, it simply means we did not receive at least 10 ratings for it; that fact has no negative or positive implications.  Price Index Scores  To compare prices, for firms that were evaluated in our last, published article, our shoppers made a number of calls to each of the stores listed on our Ratings Tables and, without revealing their affiliation with CHECKBOOK, obtained prices for a “market basket” of 18 items.  We used the prices we collected for each store to calculate the store’s price index score, reported on our Ratings Tables. Our price index scores are intended to show how a store’s prices compared to the average prices found at all surveyed stores for the same mix of items. The price index scores are calculated so that a price index of $100 is about average. A price index score of $110 for a firm means that its prices were about 10 percent above average; a score of $90 means that its prices were about 10 percent below average.  For the chains—for which we found little store-to-store price variation—we surveyed three or more sample stores within a chain and averaged the prices found to calculate the chain’s price index score for all its stores.  Keep in mind that in our price shopping, we used stores’ current prices, including sale prices, for the specific items in our market basket. We didn’t substitute similar items as alternatives for our market basket items just because the alternative items were for sale. Also keep in mind that the price index scores do not reflect discounts some stores give for using the store’s credit card or charge account, and do not reflect contractor’s discounts some independent stores will offer to customers who will be making large purchases in a short period.  Our Top Ratings  We give checkmarks to firms that score highest on a scoring system that we devise for each service field. Our scoring systems weight the various data in our ratings tables based on our subjective judgment of their importance. Since the scores are based entirely on information presented, you can apply your own judgments, and decide whether you prefer firms we have not given checkmarks.  Click here for more information on how we gather, and how to interpret, our data.  Ratings of hardware stores Back to top