Does Your Portfolio Contain A Bad Experience?
June 21st, 2006 by Grant in: Investing
Over the last year or so I have noticed that the customer service at my local Home Depot (HD: chart) stores has gone down hill. From my own personal observations, it seems that employees in a specific department, while knowledgeable of the products in their department, have little knowledge of the products in other departments.
It was with a bit of a surprise that an article appeared in a recent BusinessWeek article that drove home the harsh reality that Home Depot was losing market share to its competitor Lowes (LOW: chart) and the reason was primarily related to customer service.
On top of that article, a post by The Dividend Guy revealed that he’d had such a bad experience at Home Depot that he considered selling his stock in the company on his drive home (without the products he’d intended to buy!).
Looking through the list of comments from his post shows that he and I are not the only ones with poor experiences at The Home Depot. Some thought that the idea of selling his stock based on an experience at a single store was a little extreme, while others thought that his experience was an indication of a much larger culture in the company as a whole.
So how do your personal experiences influence your investment strategies?
I strongly considered investing in HD right after the hurricanes swept through the Gulf Coast last year; thinking the push to rebuild the ruins would bring tidy profits to the company.
Now, after reading so much bad press about the company and it’s customer service, I’ve put their ticker at the bottom of my watch list…
What are your thoughts? Not just about Home Depot, but personal experiences and how they affect your investment strategy.
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