I'd just purchased a rather well kept home that is just over a hundred years old before my dad had his airplane accident. It mostly just needed cleaning and the entire interior painted. It's about 3800 sq. ft. with 10' ceilings, so doing so was/is quite a chore. I opted to hire a couple of women who work hard at a reasonable rate to do the painting and cleaning for me.
I opted to use Behr's premium paint because it doesn't require primer and has good ratings. My thought was that, in the long run, I'd be better off with a high quality paint that took two coats than a cheap paint that took four coats and very likely would not hold up as well. They took all the room dimensions to our local Home Depot and bought the required amount of paint in the colors I designated for each room and ceilings. Rather than possibly having hundreds of dollars of left over paint that could not be returned, they bought (actually I bought) enough paint to get a coat or two on each room and ceiling to make sure I wanted to stay with the colors I'd chosen from a small sample. All looked fine, so I told them to go with it.
They went back to the same Home Depot store, worked with the same paint department manager and bought another $600 or so in paint. However, the new paint they picked up wasn't even close to matching. It looked like shit. Every place they touched up a spot was lighter in color. Thinking it was just because the paint was wet, they finished trimming out the house until I got there and said "stop!".
A trip to Home Depot and explaining and showing them the problem got me a reply that my Home Depot store and Behr changed their computers that mix the paint colors. One of the paint clerks said he didn't need to see the house because he said the numbers that tell the computers precisely how much of each color to add to a gallon or 5 gallon bucket of paint were all different now. So, I now have right at a thousand dollars in actual paint and just over two thousand dollars in labor (which should have finished the job) and the entire house needs to be repainted. They said they could try to match the "old" paint, but I'm not at all keen on having paint that cannot be matched if I need to touch up an area. Any paint with the same name as what I'd used would not match.
As you can imagine, Home Depot tells me to talk to Behr and Behr's "upper management" tells me to talk to Home Depot. It's been a full week now and all I've been offered is a "couple gallons" of paint at no charge. No way!! I very strongly feel that I should not be out another three grand or so because Home Depot and Behr changed their color mixtures over the weekend and never told us anything about it (I've heard that they now have several people complaining).
So, who should I press the hardest? I don't know Home Depot's relationship with Behr. I know Behr is Home Depot's premium brand and Olympia is Lowe's premium brand. IMHO, someone is going to foot the bill to make this right besides me. Both are trying to blow me off, but I'm not going away. Who should I go after?
I opted to use Behr's premium paint because it doesn't require primer and has good ratings. My thought was that, in the long run, I'd be better off with a high quality paint that took two coats than a cheap paint that took four coats and very likely would not hold up as well. They took all the room dimensions to our local Home Depot and bought the required amount of paint in the colors I designated for each room and ceilings. Rather than possibly having hundreds of dollars of left over paint that could not be returned, they bought (actually I bought) enough paint to get a coat or two on each room and ceiling to make sure I wanted to stay with the colors I'd chosen from a small sample. All looked fine, so I told them to go with it.
They went back to the same Home Depot store, worked with the same paint department manager and bought another $600 or so in paint. However, the new paint they picked up wasn't even close to matching. It looked like shit. Every place they touched up a spot was lighter in color. Thinking it was just because the paint was wet, they finished trimming out the house until I got there and said "stop!".
A trip to Home Depot and explaining and showing them the problem got me a reply that my Home Depot store and Behr changed their computers that mix the paint colors. One of the paint clerks said he didn't need to see the house because he said the numbers that tell the computers precisely how much of each color to add to a gallon or 5 gallon bucket of paint were all different now. So, I now have right at a thousand dollars in actual paint and just over two thousand dollars in labor (which should have finished the job) and the entire house needs to be repainted. They said they could try to match the "old" paint, but I'm not at all keen on having paint that cannot be matched if I need to touch up an area. Any paint with the same name as what I'd used would not match.
As you can imagine, Home Depot tells me to talk to Behr and Behr's "upper management" tells me to talk to Home Depot. It's been a full week now and all I've been offered is a "couple gallons" of paint at no charge. No way!! I very strongly feel that I should not be out another three grand or so because Home Depot and Behr changed their color mixtures over the weekend and never told us anything about it (I've heard that they now have several people complaining).
So, who should I press the hardest? I don't know Home Depot's relationship with Behr. I know Behr is Home Depot's premium brand and Olympia is Lowe's premium brand. IMHO, someone is going to foot the bill to make this right besides me. Both are trying to blow me off, but I'm not going away. Who should I go after?