Home Depot - saving as much as I can...

[Hubie]

I'm going to be working with a medium sized real estate company that spends 6 figures at home depot each year.

My job: to save them as much as they can.


1. Order home depot gift cards off ebay (I'm assuming I can get them for less than true value).
Concern - I'll spend too much time buying individual gift cards from random ebay sellers
Ideally - I can find someone with a bucket of these I can buy at once

2. Use 10% off coupons every time they go to home depot
Concern - how many of these can I get? will the store catch on and stop me from using them after a few times?
Ideally - I can just keep printing 10% (or find a ton of 'real' 10% coupons) I can use. (Worst case use Lowe's 10% off, but that runs the risk each time of them not accepting them

Can you, the Slick Deals community, offer me some advice? This could really end up saving a LOT of $$$!

Hubie

[claddaghmom]

I'm going to be working with a medium sized real estate company that spends 6 figures at home depot each year.

My job: to save them as much as they can.


1. Order home depot gift cards off ebay (I'm assuming I can get them for less than true value).
Concern - I'll spend too much time buying individual gift cards from random ebay sellers
Ideally - I can find someone with a bucket of these I can buy at once

2. Use 10% off coupons every time they go to home depot
Concern - how many of these can I get? will the store catch on and stop me from using them after a few times?
Ideally - I can just keep printing 10% (or find a ton of 'real' 10% coupons) I can use. (Worst case use Lowe's 10% off, but that runs the risk each time of them not accepting them

Can you, the Slick Deals community, offer me some advice? This could really end up saving a LOT of $$$!

Hubie

Um, why aren't they working through the prodesk? :confused:

[Hubie]

I have no idea what 'prodesk' is. That's why i posted here for help. Explain?

[stufine]

pro desk kinda suks. do they still have their maintenance side?
what are you buying and spending money on?
if its any type of maintenance its already wasteful to be buying at HD/Lowes
also seems to be bad time management by "them" going to get stuff. can you give a bit more info on what "they" do.

[claddaghmom]

pro desk kinda suks. do they still have their maintenance side?
what are you buying and spending money on?
if its any type of maintenance its already wasteful to be buying at HD/Lowes
also seems to be bad time management by "them" going to get stuff. can you give a bit more info on what "they" do.

Not all of them do, but that's a good point/reason that they might not be using it. I can't imagine rolling '6 figures a year' through HD and NOT using the prodesk though. That's a lot of material.

I have no idea what 'prodesk' is. That's why i posted here for help. Explain?

The prodesk is just a separate manned station for bulk/frequent/contractor customers. You can fax, submit online or phone orders in ahead of time and at least where I worked...it was a huge deal for contractors as they got first dibs on clearance, overstock, damage etc.

If you are going to be using legit coupons, there's nothing for them to 'catch onto.' One HD q pers transaction (and even then...some front end people might override that, YMMV). Also, most HD stores take competitor qs so you could get a stack of Lowe's qs to use.

[stufine]

i would agree 6fig sales is alot. problem is pro desk anyone can use.. contractor or not. same with the phone/fax orders. thats why i dont use them.. i can pull my own stuff faster and pull better lumber than they give.
if this guy has employees getting material i cant help but to think the lost income in wages let alone the money spent there. one example for me is shut off valves. 5-6$ at HD 3.50 at barnett.. better if ordered in mass.
point might be mute if its not maintenance and can only use HD. if it was me i would pull last 6mths records and call up a place like barnett/wholesale and have a salesman run my figures on purchased items

[BigJ2078]

The greatest advantage the Pro Desk has for high dollar accounts is that they submit pricing on quotes over $2500 to the bid room. If you give them a list of what you need in the morning, they can typically get you an adjusted quote by that afternoon. You won't save all that much on lumber, but you can save 50% or more on things such as lighting fixtures, bath fixtures, etc. It all depends on the agreement we have with the merchant.

If you truly do have a 6 figure account with Home Depot, next time you're there, go to the Pro Desk and tell them you'd like the card of their District Pro Sales Manager. This is the guy that handles Pro Sales for the entire District and can make things happen for you. He can get you next day job site delivery on S/O stuff that would normally take a week to come in. He can get you quantities of merchandise the next day that would clear out the inventory of several stores. He's the man you'll want to talk to.