Good morning everyone, I hope you had a great weekend.  Long story short, I bought a few things at Home Depot, forgot to return them within the standard return period, and ended up with $175.86 in Home Depot store credit.  I figured Home Depot store credit would be easy to use, like a regular Home Depot gift card, but boy was I wrong.  I ran into the issue when I tried to buy some outdoor patio furniture slipcovers online.  When I entered the Home Depot store credit information into the gift card payment field, I got an error message saying “We’re sorry. Home Depot store credit can only be used in stores. Please use a different payment method.”  Dang, Home Depot took “store credit” very literally.  After some persistence and a visit to my local Home Depot store, I was able to use my Home Depot store credit for an online purchase.  Keep reading to learn more.

My first stop was at the Home Depot Check Gift Card Balance page.  Unfortunately, I received the same error message as before: “We’re sorry. Home Depot store credit can only be used in stores. Please use a different payment method.”

My second stop was to the Home Depot Gift Card Frequently Asked Questions page.  According to the FAQs, Home Depot store credit stopped working online on June 30, 2016.  Home Depot made this change in order “to avoid potential fraud, theft and consumer confusion… The Home Depot will no longer permit Store Credits to be redeemed online. This change may also protect customers from purchasing fraudulent store credits from third parties.”  You cannot check the balance of Home Depot store credit online or via a phone call, you must “visit a local The Home Depot store and ask a cashier to check the balance for you.”  Confused much?

Just for clarification, there are a few different Home Depot credit cards issued by different banks, traditional and virtual Home Depot gift cards, and lastly, Home Depot store credit.

I visited my local Home Depot store and went to the customer service department.  I explained the situation to the cashier and said that I needed help ordering the outdoor patio furniture slipcovers online and paying with my Home Depot store credit.  The cashier gave me bad news, store credit could not be used for online purchases and the item I wanted was only available online.  I asked if there was any way to use the store credit to buy the items online and the cashier called the manager for advice.  Apparently, there is a workaround…

Imagine you don’t have a credit or debit card and want to buy something on HomeDepot.com with cash, what can you do?  The customer service department orders the items online by creating a customer invoice and ships the order to the store.  When the order arrives at the store, the customer pays when they pick up their order.  Since the customer is paying for the order at the store, you can pay with Home Depot store credit.  Hopefully that makes sense.  If you run into any issues with the cashier, you may need to tell the cashier that you will pay cash when the order arrives at the store.  When your order does arrive at the store, you should be able to pay with your Home Depot store credit.

Along with the above customer invoice, you should also receive a Home Depot Special Service page with details of the will call process.

After you place your in-store order, you can Track Your Order online by looking up the order number and your phone number.

You will then be able to see details of your in-store order.

You should also receive an email when your order is shipped to your Home Depot store.

When your order arrives at your Home Depot store, you should receive an email telling you that your order is ready for pickup at the customer service department.  You may also receive an email that says your order has arrived at your Home Depot store.  Make sure you wait for an email that says your order is ready for pickup (otherwise you might get to the store before the order has been unloaded from the truck and have to wait for an employee to find your package).

If you already paid for your order ahead of time, you just need to go to the customer service department and show your receipt to the cashier.  If you haven’t paid yet, you can use your Home Depot store credit to pay at the customer service department.  You should also bring your driver’s license, in case the employee asks to see proof of identification.  Your store may also offer Curbside Pickup, but I think that usually takes longer than going inside the store to pickup your order.  Also, make sure you pick up your order within 30 days, or whatever the pickup policy states.

I asked the cashier to open the box to confirm that both outdoor patio furniture slipcovers were included in the box.

Once we verified that everything was there, the cashier completed the pickup process and printed out a pickup confirmation page.  I thanked the cashier and left the store.

Last but not least, you should receive one more email that includes the pickup confirmation page shown above.

To say that this whole process was quick and easy would be a lie.  If you have Home Depot store credit, you are better off using the store credit in-store than doing this workaround to buy items online.  If you have any questions about using your Home Depot store credit for online purchases, please leave a comment below.  Have a great day everyone!