BOSTON -- Team 5 Investigates Susan Wornick investigated Home Depot's remodeling services and found that there are hundreds of homeowners who claim they got nothing but shoddy service after shelling out thousands of dollars.

Team 5 Investigates spoke to three families. Jennifer O'Donnal, of Royalston, said, "We went to people who we thought we could trust. Not only do I have an ugly sliced-up floor with duct tape patches on it, but I'm going to have to replace the entire floor."

"I see the floor lifting, I see it separating and the floor's cracking underneath my feet," said Barbara Zemotel of Hanover, Mass.

"I paid for new siding to be put up correctly and I didn't get that," Sandy Tobin told Team 5 Investigates.

All three families paid Home Depot thousands of dollars to fix up their homes, work they complain was never done right.

"It was a nightmare," said Tobin.

Tobin signed a contract with Home Depot to put vinyl siding on her Bellingham home last year, but after paying thousands of dollars, she discovered they'd botched the job.

"They were putting up the siding incorrectly. It should not have been out up over the old siding," Tobin said.

She says the contractors were unresponsive, leaving the house exposed to the elements and her yard a mess.

"We definitely got the run-around," O'Donnal said.

O'Donnal's problems began after a new $1200 floor bubbled up and lifted. She says Home Depot didn't make good.

Zemotel says she also got a bad floor and a deaf ear from Home Depot.

"We tried very hard to settle it on our own and it got us nowhere," Zemotel said.

So she hired a lawyer.

The Team 5 investigation has found hundreds of complaints filed in Massachusetts and thousands across the country. They vary from shoddy work and poor customer service to misleading sales tactics.

"When you walk in the store there are signs that say 'we install'," said O'Donnal.

Tobin said, "I mean, you hire Home Depot, you think they're Home Depot people, you know. You don't know they're sub-contractors."

You have to read the fine print on the second page of the store's contract to get that information. But when Team 5 Investigates called Home Depot, we were not told they were sub-contractors.

Jim Ward is a former Home Depot salesman and project manager who left the company in disgust.

Wornick: "What did Home Depot tell you to say to the customers?"

Ward: "They told us to convey that the crews worked exclusively for Home Depot."

Wornick: "So not really address the question?"

Ward: "Right, don't say no, don't say yes, just get around the question."

Wornick: "How does this work gets so terribly botched?"

Ward: "The model that they have is great on paper: hand selected installers, project managers to walk you through, but it's all smoke and mirrors, you can't do it. A project manager has too much work on his plate to be what they say it's impossible. And then there's the contractor, anybody can go get a license."

As for Home Depot, they declined Team 5's request to do an on-camera interview. But in a written statement, the company defended its Home Services saying they do 55,000 installations a week, and only 2 percent of customers complain. They told Team 5 that the fact that they use sub-contractors is in the contracts and ads and their work is guaranteed.

Home Depot Statement

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