Business ProfileforE & H Ace Hardware

This warning needs to be stated for everyone. Ace Hardware, whether purposely or negligently, has set up their business model to make you think you can get things at their store. "In Stock" does not mean "In Stock at the store". It means it will ship to the store from a warehouse, and take days, so you might as well ship it to your house. *********** Tru Value and Tractor supply, other suppliers of items Ace Hardware carries, are very transparent, and tell you, as the consumer that the item is "ship to store" or "available for pickup in 2-3 days". Ace Hardware is not, they will tell you the item is in stock, allow you to select in store pickup, then ask you to await an email confirmation your item is ready for pickup. This leaves the consumer under the impression the item is being pulled, and you will be able to retrieve it. I was expecting, if it wasn't in stock at the store, and their online inventory wasn't accurate, my order would be cancelled. Their refund policy is also very lengthy (stated up to 30 days) if you use PayPal, 7 to 10 if you paid by credit card. I waited 2 hours for someone to pull my order, then called the store to be told it's not in stock. At which point I cancelled my order.Their process of being transparent with the customer as to the availability of an item is very poor. Read the fine print I guess some would say, but the reality is, 3 other stores/competitors do a very good job of being transparent about their inventory. I can only assume this is purposeful since the majority of the industry are better at this.